With the advent of PlayStation Plus, it has become a bit harder to use all of the PlayStation 4’s online features, though it does come with a number of benefits, and those benefits can be shared between more than one user. Setting up family sharing for PS+ on your PS4? Easy peasy. Let’s get into it.
Setting up family sharing on PlayStation 4 couldn’t be made any easier. It involves setting up a primary account and signing in everyone who will use the PS4. Here’s how:
Select Activate as Your Primary PS4.
Select Activate.
Now that the account with PS Plus is signed in and associated with your PS4 as the primary account, any other username that signs into that PS4 will be able to use its benefits.
Simply put, family sharing allows you to share many of PlayStation Plus’s benefits with other members of your family. So long as one account on the PlayStation 4 has PS Plus and is set as the primary account for that console, anyone who signs into that console with another PlayStation Network account will be able to share much of its benefits and play any digital games associated with it. Family sharing also enables you to set up powerful parental control tools if you want to manage your children’s usage.
How to adjust parental controls on your PlayStation 4
No matter your need, family sharing makes it cheaper and easier to use the PS4’s online features with multiple accounts.
Before we proceed, you should know that not all benefits can be used by the accounts which don’t have their own PlayStation Plus subscription. We’ll run them down for you.
Here’s what you can use:
And here are the things you’ll miss out on:
Whether your secondary accounts need their own PS Plus subscriptions is up to you and your particular needs. If all you want is to play online and play all the games on that console, you’re probably OK without just the one subscription. Those with more elaborate needs may need to consider paying for more than one subscription.
Unfortunately, if you have more than one PS4 then you’ll need another account with PlayStation Plus for each extra PS4 you have. That’s because benefits can only be shared from the primary account to other accounts on the same console, and there can only be one primary account per console.
This also means that the second account will need its own copy of the games the user wants to play on it. The only way around this is to sign into the second PS4 with the account that has the PS Plus subscription and owns the games, and you must stay signed in on that account for the duration of your session.