Unable to open Family Sharing in settings on iPhone and iPad

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Level 1

4 points

Unable to open Family Sharing in settings on iPhone and iPad

Both iphone and ipad unable to open Family Sharing in settings, yielding a non stop spinner. I have shut off and turned back on my iPhone, also my iPad. Backed up on iCloud, and attempted to sign out of my iPhone. But canceled after waiting about 45 minutes. I upgraded to iCloud Plus and wondered if perhaps I needed to wait 24 hours. Anyone have any ideas. I have an IPhone 16e and an iPad both with IOS 26.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: iPhone and iPad unable

iPhone 16e, iOS 26

Posted on Nov 17, 2025 5:57 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Voidy_yy

Level 1

38 points

Nov 17, 2025 6:01 PM in response to Richard1272

Hello there,

A nonstop spinner when opening Family Sharing usually means your devices are having trouble loading your Apple ID details. This can happen after an update or an iCloud plan change, but you normally do not need to wait 24 hours.

Here are a few solutions that should fix your issue:

1. Sign out of your Apple ID and sign back in

Go to Settings > [your name] > Sign Out.

If signing out takes a long time, let it run. iOS 26 can take several minutes to disconnect your iCloud data.

2. Make sure you are on a stable Wi-Fi connection

Family Sharing will keep spinning if the connection is weak.

3. Refresh iCloud settings

Go to Settings > your name > iCloud and toggle a service off and back on (for example, Photos). This forces a refresh of your account connection.

If none of this works, a full sign-out on both devices and then signing back in usually clears the problem, as long as everything is backed up to iCloud first.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Richard1272 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 18, 2025 7:39 AM in response to Voidy_yy

Thank you for your rapid response!!

So far, no success, however I able to successfully sign off my new iPhone 16e, my iPad, and my old iPhone XR that I now use WiFi only. Sorry, perhaps my iPhone XR needed mentioning. I will explain fully for the purposes of this site, as this may help someone else. I decided to go another route since family members most often share the same photos. So they will send me what they want backed up since I splurged for the $.99 subscription upgrade. However I am still very interested in solving this, and wonder could this be an IOS 26 glitch. I’m unqualified.

So I recently replaced my iPhone XR. I backed up my iPhone on iCloud, before I signed into my new iPhone 16e. Everything went smoothly. All devices are connected to my strong 5G WiFi network and we’re all in close proximity. I upgraded iPhone 16e and 10th generation iPad to IOS 26. I then deleted the backup saved on iCloud to save iCloud space. That’s my full disclosure. One thing I would not do is do a factory reset of my iPhone e, but I am open to make an effort to resolve this if it may help someone in the future.

Again thank you for your time and response.

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