San Francisco, Dec 5 (IANS): Apple has announced that family sharing for in-app purchases and subscriptions is now available for up to five members.

Apple said on Friday that people can now enable Family Sharing for auto-renewable subscriptions and non-consumable in-app purchases, allowing them to share their purchases with up to five family members.

"Family Sharing feature provides a streamlined, convenient user experience and can help you attract subscribers, encourage paid subscriptions, increase user engagement, and improve retention," the company said in the latest update.

Developers will now need to bring this change, allowing Family Sharing of a subscription or purchase is a manual opt-in.

Apps that offer auto-renewable subscriptions and non-consumable in-app purchases can enable Family Sharing, which will allow customers to share their purchase with up to five additional family members.

"You can choose which of your in-app purchases to allow Family Sharing for in App Store Connect," the company informed.

Whether or not a customer's purchases are automatically shared with their family members depends on the type of in-app purchase, the customer's iCloud settings, and if the purchase was made before or after Family Sharing was turned on in App Store connect.

Users have the option of turning off Family Sharing in their subscription settings at any time.

Apple said that for new customers, Family Sharing is enabled by default and existing customers must opt-in to Family Sharing from within their manage subscriptions page.

"Once you turn on Family Sharing for an in-app purchases in App Store Connect, you cannot turn it off".

Family Sharing lets you and up to five other family members share access to Apple services like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade.

"Your group can also share iTunes and App Store purchases, an iCloud storage plan and a family photo album".