Saturday, August 11, 2018

"This app is no longer shared with you" on iOS

I stumbled across a new problem today.

I'm very much a part of the Apple ecosystem.  On my iPhone, an app that had been purchased by my husband (AutoSleep) with Family Sharing would not open for me.

"This app is no longer shared with you.  To use it, you must buy it from the App Store." I had options to View in App Store or Cancel.  To further my confusion, viewing it in the app store only gave me an Open button.  Restarting my phone didn't help.

I found a quick answer that worked great here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8273516

On iOS11, there's a new feature called Offloading Unused Apps.  If you're low on disk space, it lets you remove apps from your phone without deleting data.  If you delete an app in the traditional sense, it discards the data along with it.

So to fix my broken app, I went to Settings | General | iPhone Storage.  I selected the app in question.  I then selected Offload App.  Once that was finished, I then picked Reinstall App.

Lo and behold, the app is working again for me.