My app store account is set to India and I want to purchase the app on my iphone and also have the same installed on my wife and kid’s phone via Apple’s Family Sharing.
However the app store description explicitly says that “Family sharing is not supported in India”.
Is this really the case and if yes can this restriction be removed?
I don’t want to end up buying the app and then realise that it cannot be installed on my family member’s devices.
If the restriction will continue, any other alternate solution is also fine.
Also curious why this restriction is there for the Indian app store in particular.
That is indeed what the description says – but I’m not sure exactly why. More specifically, when that was written, I don’t know if it was an App Store limitation, or an AnkiMobile limitation.
Let me look into this and I’ll see if I can get you more clarity.
In the r/MedSchoolAnkiIndian community on Reddit people often ask how to purchase AnkiMobile through Family Sharing, so it seems that this option should be available. (but I haven’t tried it myself so I don’t know and I’m not affiliated with the official Anki.)
Sorry, it took me so long to get back to you! I’m now confident that this was never an AnkiMobile-specific limitation.
Damien added that to our App Store description around 2022. Users with Apple accounts registered in India stopped being able to use Family Purchase Sharing, and he wanted to make sure we were giving fair warning of that. However, that issue was App-Store wide, and the result of a bicker between Apple and Reserve Bank of India (RBI). [You probably know even more about that than I’ve been able to learn in the past few days!]
The Apple/RBI/Family-Sharing/payment-method issues have resolved recently (in the past 6 months?), so if you have Family Purchase Sharing enabled, it will work with AnkiMobile just like with any other app. [And it sounds like it’s time for us to update our App Store description.] But I can’t be sure whether the changes in the past 6 months have made it to your Apple account.
If you have a Family group set up already, you can check if Family Purchase Sharing is enabled – How to share apps and purchases with Family Sharing on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support [or perhaps there is an India-specfic version of that support page that I haven’t located yet?]. If you don’t see any warnings there and/or if you have any other paid apps that you’ve been able to share with your Family group, this will likely work for you.
But I encourage you to contact Apple Support directly to get them to confirm that this will work for your account before purchasing AnkiMobile. I don’t want you to be in a situation where you’re stuck trying to get a refund from them after the fact.
Honestly even I did not know about this payments issue, since i started using Apple services in India after this change happened. I found about this today! I will check more, possibly try adding my credit card to Apple App store now and see what I can do then. I will post an update once I purchase the app and test family sharing.
I will post an update once I purchase the app and test family sharing.
I confirmed with Apple support and tested this and it worked. My payment method was the existing one though, which is the Apple Account balance, and not a credit card. Though it should work with the credit card also I think.
