How to Setup Game Share With a Friend on Xbox One

how to setup xbox one game sharing

If you’re unaware by now, the Xbox One has this great feature that allows you to share digital versions of your games with other Xbox One’s in your household. The purpose of this is that if you have more than one Xbox One in your house, and you are buying your games digitally, you do not have to purchase multiple copies of the games for use on each of the two Xbox One consoles. These consoles can share the digital games as long as they are setup to do so… but it only works across two Xbox One’s at a time.

So while it is intended to allow digital games to be shared between consoles within the same household, there is nothing that restricts you from setting up Game Sharing with a friend that does not live with you… and here’s how to do it.

We definitely suggest upgrading your Xbox One’s hard drive to one of these Xbox One compatible external hard drives to ensure that you have enough space for all of the digital games you’re going to be purchasing. And you’ll probably want a quality headset since you and your buddy will now have all of the same games and can play together.

How to Setup Xbox One Game Sharing

  1. Find a friend that loves to buy his/her video games digitally. This only works for digitally purchased games so games you have on disc will not be downloadable by the other Xbox.
  2. Find a friend that you trust with your passwords, or that you can meet in-person to sign-in on their Xbox One. In order to setup gamesharing, your Gamertag must be setup on both Xbox One’s (and subsequently, your friends Gamertag has to be setup on both as well), so I wouldn’t just try to game share with a stranger on the internet, as you have to give this person your password in order to set this up.
  3. ADD NEW account to your Xbox One and sign-in with your friend’s Gamertag and password.
  4. Make sure you are SIGNED-IN as your friend.
  5. Go to SETTINGS > MY XBOX > MY HOME XBOX and select “Make this my Home Xbox”. This will set your friend’s Gamertag/Xbox as your “Home Xbox”, thus giving you access to all of his digital game purchases.
  6. Have your friend repeat steps 3 – 5 on their Xbox One using your Gamertag and password.
  7. Once you’ve set the “Home Xbox” on an individual console, you can log out of your friends Gamertag (or have your friend log out of yours), and you can log back into your own.
  8. All of your available games (both you and your friend’s) will then appear in the “READY TO INSTALL” section of the “MY GAMES & APPS” screen.

Once you’ve setup everything outlined in the steps above you can download and install any of the games purchased by you and your friend to either console and you will be able to play it as if you purchased the game yourself.

Keep These Things in Mind

YES, you will still be able to play online on Xbox Live against one another using the same copy of a game that one of you purchased.

YES, you will be able to use your respective Gamertags and should never have to log back into the other account ever again. You can even go in to the other account when you are setting up Game Sharing and change all the security settings so you can’t accidentally purchase something or change something on your friend’s account. You can even change the password on your account if you’d like.

This only works across 2 Xbox One’s at a time, so you cannot then go and sign into a third Xbox and set it as your “Home Xbox”, it won’t work.

You can only change your “Home Xbox” 3 times in a year. So if you decide not to Game Share with your friend anymore and you want to Gameshare with another friend, just note that you can only set the “Home Xbox” 3 times a year.

Doing Game Sharing also shares your Xbox Live Gold account, all DLC and Season Passes, as well as access to the EA Access Vault (if you subscribe to said service).

Make sure you maintain an Internet Connection when game sharing as your console will need to verify the game licenses in order for you to play them. If you disconnect from the internet, your games may not launch.

Game Sharing is meant to be used within your own household, so if you plan to Game Share with a friend outside of your home, make sure you absolutely trust this person. DO NOT agree to Game Share with random strangers over the internet.

Do you own a Playstation 4 instead of an Xbox One? No worries, here’s how you can setup game sharing on your PS4!

Now grab some cheap digital games and get sharing!

Update – a reader (Stephen) posted this comment below that we thought was worth discussing in case anyone else has this issue.

“I just want to point something out about this method that will not affect a lot of people, but might be something to consider. An account that has its Home Xbox set as a specific Xbox will share games/ Xbox live with any profile on that Xbox. If your Xbox is NOT set up as your Home Xbox, then only YOUR profile can access YOUR purchased games/ Xbox live. This will only affect people who have multiple users/profiles set up on their Xbox one. So lets say you purchased a game on your Xbox but it is not set up as your Home Xbox. Only your profile will be able to access this game on your Xbox but the console that is set as your Home Xbox will share with everybody on that Xbox console. So if you have kids that like to have their own Xbox accounts on a single console and you wish to game share, it is advisable that whichever profile is set up to have the Home Xbox set on that console purchase the games. This way all of their profiles can use the game. If you have purchased a game on your account and you want to have somebody else play with another profile on your Xbox console, your profile will need to be signed in as well the entire time to access your game if the console is not your Home Xbox.”

About the author

Tom

35 years old, married with children (1). My gaming is done exclusively on the Xbox One these days, but my gaming history goes all the way back to the Atari 2600. FPS and racing games mostly, but I dive into other genres on occasion.

104 Comments

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  • Thanks for this article. Best one I found explaining the steps.. My question is, after going through the process, downloading digital games and then each person changing their login password, wouldn’t that keep everything safe/secure from then on out while still being able to share digital games?

    • Yeah, changing the passwords would keep everything pretty safe and secure and still allow you to play the games. I still wouldn’t trust giving my password to a stranger in any capacity though.

  • Just curious.. I understand basically have your friend add his live account to your Xbox.. Then set his name to home. Then you’ll be able to download the digital games..

    Now, once said games are downloaded, can you now set your profile back to home and vice versa for your friend and games should still be there?? Or does his name have to stay on my Xbox as home in order for the games to still be there?

    • No, you need to keep the Home xbox set to your friends in order to maintain the ability to play and/or download the games that your friend has purchased on their account. If you change the Home xbox back to your xbox live account, it will yell at you when you try to play any game that is attached to your friend’s account.

  • Hi. This is a great explanation although we are confused slightly. Me and my boyfriend want to gameshare. If I have his profile set to home on my xbox will that then limit what he can do on his own xbox? Will he still have full access to buying games downloading games with gold etc? We were looking to effectively ‘swap’ profiles over so he can access mine and I can acess his but we both still want full access of our own profiles on our own xboxes. Thanks

    • The only thing it will limit is the games you can play if your Xbox One becomes offline, everything else will remain the same as it was. You’ll still be logged into your own Xbox Live Account and do everything as you normally would, there should be no issues there. Like I said, if your Xbox One goes offline, you won’t be able to play any digital games because it needs to verify the digital licenses online associated with his account.

      I’ve been game sharing for almost a year now and haven’t run into any other issues outside of this one.

      • on this issues, I THOUGHT you could play the games associated with the home xbox profile even when offline…no?…so in the above situation shouldn’t the girlfriend be able to play the boyfriends dl games even when offline because his profile is listed as the home one?

        • I still believe that it needs to verify the license in order to play no matter what, but I could be wrong. I’ve actually never tested the offline stuff because my console is always online, so I’ve never had that issue. If I get a chance I’ll set my console to offline and see if I can play the games my buddy has purchased (with whom I gameshare), and I’ll let you know for sure.

  • Great article, I found this article after I did the xbox sharing. I tried to game share modern warfare remastered and now whenever I try to play the game on my Xbox, it says “the person who bought this needs to sign in, sign in with the profile used for purchase, or buy a copy at the Xbox Store.” Is it essential for my friend to sign onto my account on his Xbox as well? I only signed on to his account on my Xbox and went through the game sharing process. Is there anything you would recommend? Thanks.

    • Yes, both people have to have their accounts signed in on both machines and each others accounts set to “Home” in order for it to work.

    • Thanks Emmett, that’s what I thought too, which is why I wrote this as clearly as I could after going through the process myself. Feel free to ask any questions if something is still unclear.

    • I’m not 100% sure on this. I’m going to say to stay on the safe side, yes, both users should have gold. I’ve only tested it with two people that both have xbox live gold, so I can only say for sure that it works properly with that setup.

      If anyone else knows, maybe they can chime in.

  • I have a question. I want to Gameshare with my sons (who live with their mom), so I am going to load my profile to their xbox and make it the home xbox and do the same for me. What if my kids accidentally log in to my account when playing at their house …..would that stop me from playing on my account at my house?

    • Yes, if they accidentally log in as you it will kick you off. I think you should be able to change your password after you log in and set your gamertag as home on their xbox though, so that if they try to login, it will prompt them for a password, thus not knocking you offline.

      • We’ve tried this. I managed to set my friends Xbox as my home but when he does it it says ‘unable to save changes’ any ideas???

        • Has he changed his ‘home’ xbox previously? You can only do it 3 times during a year. So if he’s done it with other people within a year, then it’s not going to work. If he hasn’t done it 3 times over the course of the year, I would contact MS support and tell them that you’ve got 2 xbox’s in the same house that you’re trying to make work and you’re having issues… they might be able to check on how many times you’ve set the console to ‘home’.

  • Thanks for the post. Are you 100℅ sure this is legal? Essentially you are using two copies of a game for which you had bought one license. Isn’t game sharing intended only for people using a single console and sharing this way is simply exploiting a loophole? I don’t want my account banned if I try this.

    • This will not get your console banned. It’s intended use is for 2 Xbox’s within the same household to use the same license for a game, it’s a feature created by Microsoft, they just did not put any technical limitations on where those 2 Xbox’s had to be, physically. If Microsoft really didn’t want people to use the feature, they would remove it, or make it so the Xbox’s had to be on the same network. There are tons of people out there using it, and no reports of being banned, I think you’re safe.

  • So I got on my friends account and he still had the game downloading, it’s downloaded now but it’s not popping up for me so can I still download the game he had downloading

    • it should appear either in the “ready to install” section or the normal “my games and apps” if you set it up correctly. Whether or not your friend downloaded the game on their console doesn’t mean it will automatically download on your console. You still have to download it as you normally would, so if you don’t see it in “My Games and apps” check out the “Ready to Install” section and see if it’s there.

  • I have a similar situation where I want to game share with my girlfriend. I just need to make things clear. Say im at work and my girlfriend wants to play a game that i games shared with her, Does my xboc have to be on the whole time im at work? or can she just turn her xbox (my home xbox) on and play shared games without my xbox at home being on?
    Thanks

    • Nope, your Xbox does not have to be on. It’s not like a screenshare type deal, it’s basically just having your account on her xbox and vice versa. She can turn her xbox on at any point (whether your xbox is on or not) and play whatever game she wants (whether she purchased it or you purchased it), you can even be playing the exact same game at the same time with no issues. Hope that helps.

  • Hey so I need your help now my friend recently shared his account to another system for the third time however he wants to share his game again since he did this in2016 does that mean that as soon as January 1st 2017 hits I will be able to get his account?

    • I believe it’s based on a year’s time-frame, not the calendar year. So it wouldn’t necessarily start over on January 1st, it would start over on whatever day he first shared the console. I’m not 100% sure on this though, so if anyone else has any insight, please feel free to chime in.

      • I have my nephews set as home eveytime i try to play i get the message about did i purcjase this game? What am i doing wrong? If i login as him and launch the game then switch to my profile it works

        • I believe your nephew also has to have YOUR account set to home on HIS xbox. It sounds like right now you’ve just got the setup going one way, when it needs to go both ways.

  • I’m probably going to annoy you as I’m sure it’s been answered numerous times. But I need to ask in my own way to fully understand.

    I want to game share with my brother who lives up the road from me. So the process is…

    We grab each others login details. I sign onto my xbox with his login and set as home xbox. He signs into his xbox with my login and sets as home xbox. Once this is done, we can immediately sign back into our own login/gamertag? My purchases will appear ready to install for him and vice versa? Or do we need to download the games whilst signed into the others account before switching back? Is there any need to log back into each other account?

    Providing we don’t change the “home account” back to original, they’ll be no problem with playing each others games… Even at the same time?

    Final question If I wanted to purchase another game.. As long as I’m signed into my account it’s me who gets charged.. The game will then appear in the “ready to install” section on my brothers box? The “home xbox” setting has no bearing on this? We will only ever share between us… So there’s no reason to switch “home xbox” back to our own homes.. Theres nothing we lose out on in the future by not having our personal xbox’s set to “home xbox” on our personal accounts, as it originally was (if you get me?)

    Sorry for list of questions.. Just don’t want to muck my brothers xbox up, and he’s not convinced that he won’t muck up his account and box by doing this.

    Many many thanks,

    Eagerly awaiting your reply

    Martin

    P.s. Happy new year

    • Hey Martin,

      Happy New Year to you too.

      No problem on the questions, I had the same ones when I was looking into doing this, which is why I wrote the post 🙂

      Everything you said is correct. Once you have signed in on his xbox as your account and set it to home (and the same with his account on your xbox), you can immediately sign out of each other’s accounts on your own respective Xbox’s and then sign back into your own account and never have to sign into the others’ account again. You can even change your passwords if you want so that the other person doesn’t accidentally sign back in as you.

      Once that’s done both of your digital games will appear under the “Ready to Install” section for you to download, which you can do so when you’re logged in as yourself (you don’t need to be on his account to download his games on your xbox). And as long as you don’t mess with the xbox home settings you will have no problems.

      Regarding the purchasing of games, you are correct. Whichever actual account you’re signed into is the one that will get charged, but the other will see the game in their “Ready to Install” section. If you ever change the home xbox, then you’ll only see the games that were purchased on your account and your brother will only see the games purchased on his account.

      The only thing you will lose out on by having someone else’s account set to Home on your console is the ability to play games without an internet connection. Due to the way it works, the console needs to validate the license for each game in order to launch it, so if you don’t have an internet connection you won’t be able to play any games, even if they are ones that you purchased. That’s the only downside, but everything else should work as normal.

      • Thank you Tom, perfectly explained.. As was your original post lol… I’ve no concerns with doing this now. Thank you for getting back to me

      • Does that mean in order for me to play a digital download game that was purchased after doing this new home setup, I have to switch my xbox back to home since it only shows up in the other’s xbox “ready to install”?

        • no, as long as you follow the instructions in this post, and set your gamertag to home on a different xbox, and your girlfriend’s gamertag to home on your xbox, you can both sign in as yourselves on your own xbox and see both people’s games in “ready to install”. You should never have to switch the home xbox again unless you no longer want to gameshare.

      • So everything I hear sounds great, but I want further clarification. Are you saying if we do this, even if I purchase the game myself digitally, I would always have to be online because my friend’s profile is set to home on my xbox? A way around this could be me removing his profile as home on my console if I am without internet and want to play my own games??? Im not sure if that would work, but idk, I dont like the possiblity of being without my own games if my internet is trippin, or my parents internet when i go home to visit, is acting up.

        • yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If you aren’t online you won’t be able to play the games you purchased because your account is not set as the Home account. Your way around it would work, but keep in mind that you can only change the Home xbox 3 times per year. So changing it and changing it back would could as 2, and then since you already set your friends as home once, that would be your 3 times (assuming they all happened in a year).

      • So wait I have a question. My friend got his xbox first and I downloaded my profile on his and set it on home xbox. So I got my own Xbox and I set it as my Xbox and now he added his profile on my Xbox and set it on home so 2k18 and halo 5 popped up as ready to install. The only problem is he didn’t log out his profile on my Xbox so the games started downloading and when they downloaded and signed out his profile I tried playing 2k18 or halo 5 but it said I need to buy the copy or don’t have the rights to play it and he needs to be signed in for me to play. But the thing is when he sign in on his xbox and I’m on mine wouldn’t it sign him out of my Xbox and I can’t play the games cuz he signed in on his. I need help!

        • Try deleting the 2 games that downloaded while his account was logged in on your xbox, then log in on your account on your xbox and download them again and try to play them. Once his account is set to home on your xbox, and vice versa, you should never have to sign in as the other person again. You don’t download the games from that persons account, you literally just set it as the home xbox, log out, and log back in as yourself and never touch their account again.

  • hi all !
    great post
    i have a weird situation..
    i just purchase a use xbox one (COD advance warfare edition) who was factory reset by the other owner , when i sign in with my xbl account (without gold )i see in” ready for installation ” section a lot of game i never own and not demo , game like dying light , the crew (lot of good games!) so i lunch the install and it work ! i can play full game version without having pay for the game . and i also try to log with my kids account after removing mine and it still work .
    does anyone have ever see this before
    ps i do game sharing with my friend but he didnt have bought these games
    pps i have put my xbox account on many xbox one in the past but none of them still have it on (except my game sharing friend one)

    any idea if its gone last ?
    tks!

    • Hi Patrick, that is a weird situation and I’m not sure if it will last or not. It’s weird that if it was factory reset that there would be any remnants of any old games left on the hard drive. Keep us posted on if the games disappear after a while.

      • So both parties have to do the same steps not just one? Has this been proven? I dont have games to share but my brother does hes doing this so i can play the games he has ..i did the steps n have his profile on mines, but he doesnt have mine.. I logged out and even restarted my console to see if it would tell me i need to buy tthe game but it hasnt so far.. So does it work this way too? Lol wanna make sure cuz this is my 2nd time tryn to do this cus i told my brother to make his xbox console home again the first time

        • I only have experience sharing games both ways, and to do that, yes, both parties need to complete all of the steps. If you’re having success only doing it one way, then it might be ok, but I have a feeling you might run into a problem where it tells either you or your brother that you don’t own the game. I’m not sure when that might happen, but make sure your brother can still play all of his games. But if it’s working for you, then more power to you. I just haven’t run into the situation where one person is willing to share games, but the other is not… doesn’t seem fair in most cases, but yours is obviously different with your brother.

  • Hi Tom,

    I’ve been looking all over the internet for the answer to this but cant find it, maybe you can answer it for me. Ok so, if after Gamesharing i purchase a digital game or season pass and we stop Gamesharing. Who keeps the game/season pass? Me cause i purchase it under my account or my friend cause it was purchase with his Xbox license?

    Thanks for your time!

    • The game license is attached to the account that was used to purchase it. So if you buy it under your Microsoft account it will be attached to you if you stop game sharing.

          • I have my brothers account signed as my home xbox and don’t see his games under ready to install or under my games. He also has my name set as his home xbox and he is able to see and play all my games. We looked and our xboxs definitely are set as each other’s home xbox (his is my name and mine is his name)…Any ideas?

          • honestly not sure Josh, if you follow the steps correctly then you should both be able to see each others games.

  • Hi Tom, I have a problem I’m hoping you can fix…I’m hoping to gameshare with a friend who claims he’s only used this feature twice this year. He hasn’t yet tried signing into my account to “Home Xbox” it, but I have a couple times on his account. When I try, I run into the problem of “can’t make this your home xbox”…you can only have one xbox as home at a time…and three times a year…So I’m wondering if he were to GO 1ST and successfully make my account to be Home Xboxed on his console, that that might solve the issue on my side of being able to make his account work on my console. Is it that his account is already home to his console n he needs to choose “this is not my home console” before I can move it to my console or maybe the previous friend he shared with still has his account as home to their console…? Or maybe he’s just unaware of using it 3 times already lol. Anyways, sorry for the length, but thanks for the help/response!

    • Hey K,

      It sounds like you might have answered your own question. If his Gamertag on his Xbox is set to home, he shouldn’t need to make your account home on his Xbox first. It sounds like more like he’s switched it 3 times within the year already. Remember, if he’s gameshared with someone in the past, and then moved the home xbox back to his account, that counts as 2 switches. So then if he gameshared with someone else, that would be the 3rd time. It shouldn’t matter if his account is set as home on someone elses console current, cause if he was able to move it again, it would just remove that setting and switch the the new console, I believe. This wouldn’t really work if you couldn’t assign a Home Xbox to an account that already had a Home Xbox, since every main account on a console is set to Home by default. So I’m guessing he doesn’t quite realize what the 3 moves in a year entails, and that he’s probably already hit that limit.

  • Hi,

    I’m trying to set up game sharing with two Xbox’s here but it’s not working!

    I just got a new Xbox, so I made a new Xbox account and set the new console as the home console for the new Xbox Live account. My old Xbox is registered as the Home Console for my Xbox account.

    Why can’t my friend play my copy of Rocket League on the new Live account on the Old Xbox One? What are we doing wrong?

    • I’m a little confused by your question, but essentially you need to have the main account on the opposite xbox set as the home account on each xbox. So if your main gamertag on XboxNew is GamerTag1 and your main gamertag on XboxOld is GamerTag2, then you need to sign in to GamerTag2 on NewXbox and set it as home, and sign in as GamerTag1 on XboxOld and set it as home.

  • Done this but go on ready to install nothing there but if I log in on his name all there but I can still downloading them on my xbox when I sign out of his and back to mine but its only showing the ones that I clicked on for download, how do I get all the games?

    • you both need to do all the steps. He needs to log in to your account on his xbox and set your account to home on his xbox.

  • I just want to point something out about this method that will not affect a lot of people, but might be something to consider. An account that has its Home Xbox set as a specific Xbox will share games/ Xbox live with any profile on that Xbox. If your Xbox is NOT set up as your Home Xbox, then only YOUR profile can access YOUR purchased games/ Xbox live. This will only affect people who have multiple users/profiles set up on their Xbox one. So lets say you purchased a game on your Xbox but it is not set up as your Home Xbox. Only your profile will be able to access this game on your Xbox but the console that is set as your Home Xbox will share with everybody on that Xbox console. So if you have kids that like to have their own Xbox accounts on a single console and you wish to game share, it is advisable that whichever profile is set up to have the Home Xbox set on that console purchase the games. This way all of their profiles can use the game. If you have purchased a game on your account and you want to have somebody else play with another profile on your Xbox console, your profile will need to be signed in as well the entire time to access your game if the console is not your Home Xbox.

    • Hey Stephen, great point! My kid is too young to have her own account on the console, so this doesn’t really affect me, but it could definitely affect a lot of people so thanks for bringing it up.

    • This sounds like what I have going on with my box and my sons box. I could have sworn I did the process of making our boxes the home boxes so that we could share digitally downloaded games. The problem is, when he tries to play Destiny for example. He downloaded the game onto his box, from my box. When he goes to play, it always tells him that the person who purchased the game needs to be logged on to play. Which he has to kick me off of whatever im playing at the time, so that he can log on as me, and immateriality go back to his account to play. However, it won’t stick….after 15-20 minutes, he will get kicked off again, and have to log in as me…again….so on and so forth. It’s incredibly frustrating, and I can’t figure how to fix it.

    • you have to set your brothers account on your xbox as home on YOUR xbox. And your account on his xbox as home on HIS xbox. You can’t set his account on your xbox as his home… that’s not how it works.

  • If i game share with a friend and get his season pass dlc and everything, then if i go offline, will i still have the dlc on my game???

  • Reason im asking, my friend has the games n dlc and internet, i dont, if we share and im offline at home, will i still b able to play with the dlc since i dont have internet

    • Gamesharing requires you to be online for the most part. If you go offline, you won’t be able to play any of your own games because your Xbox will try to verify the license online… I would avoid game sharing if you don’t have an internet connection.

      I thought I included that in the post, but I guess not. I’ve updated it.

  • So if I get an Xbox one, and my friend has Xbox Gold, if I get his account on to my Xbox, and set it a home, I get access to every game he has, even when I switch to my profile?

    • Yes, as long as they are digital games. He also has to have your account on his xbox and set to home though.

      • If I give my friend my account and he sets it as his home Xbox and downloads the games can he then delete my account and I can set my Xbox as home Xbox and have him still able to play the game with me online? Pls would like to know

        • No, he can’t delete your account off of his xbox, it needs to remain as Home on his Xbox. He can, however, log out of your account and never sign into it again… you can even change the password if you want.

          You can still play your games online if your account is set to Home on his Xbox, and you can still play all your games online if his gamertag is set to Home on your xbox… you’ll just need to have an internet connection. If you don’t have an internet connection, your console won’t be able to verify the game license and you won’t be able to play (even single player).

  • Hey Tom, i have a question, i’m going to buy a new xbox, i will not share with anyone else, as i understand i only have to sing up in the new xbox and make it my home xbox and it will work, there’s no need for me to create a new account in the new xbox and sign up in the old one and set it as home xbox, is it? Also, i have more accounts or gamer tags logged in my old xbox, will they be able to play in the new one? thaks a lot man, this is kind of confusing.

    • hey Carlos, if you’re just buying a new xbox for yourself, you should just be able to login to your new xbox with your main gamertag (that was used to purchase all the games) and you should be able to play them still.. I think. It should automatically set it as home if it’s the first/only gamertag you sign in with. As for the other gamertags on that xbox, I believe you should still be able to play the games on those other gamertags on that xbox, but I’m not 100% sure. I’m kind of in the same boat as you as I was thinking of picking up another xbox one for upstairs, but I do gameshare with a friend, so I’m not sure how that would all work. I think in my case I would have to make my friend’s gamertag the home xbox on my new xbox as well, but I’m not sure if that would work or not… You do get 3 changes to your home xbox a year, so if it doesn’t work you can always change back.

  • Great article, thank you, I have Xbox live gold and have sharing all set up with the person I’m sharing with, he logged back in to his account on his console and is able to see my games available to download but is not showing that he has good. Also there is no “gold” section on his home screen where he can download the free featured games. Is that not able to share?

    • Hey John,

      I’m not 100% sure how the gold sharing works, since my and my buddy who gameshare both have Xbox Live Gold. Has your buddy tried to play a game online to see if that aspect of Gold is unlocked for him? Maybe it just allows him to play the games online. However, since you have Gold, and you’re gamesharing with him, if you download/”purchase” the Games with Gold free featured games, they will show up on his console anyways, so you’ll both have access to them just like the rest of your games.

  • I game shared with my brother and some of his games havent showed up on ready to install when he bought it digitally so dont understand whats happening

    • you’ll either see all or none, it’s not going to randomly show you some that he bought digitally and not others, so either he didn’t buy them digitally or he bought them on a different account.

  • If the the person that allowed you to gameshare off them changed their password then will it still work?

    • yeah, once you’ve logged in as that person and set their account to “Home” you can log out and they can change their password.

    • after you set the home xbox, while signed in as your friend, you can sign out of their account and never sign in to their account again. They can even change their password if they’d like, but the account must remain on your xbox and set to home.

    • if you have it setup correctly, you should see his games. Without having your console in front of me it’s hard to troubleshoot, but I would double check that you actually have his account set to home on your xbox.

  • I just bought a new xbox one so i dont have to share with my brothers. But when i put my account on the new xbox none of my games are there and the xbox live isnt showing up. What should i do?

    • Are you sure the games were purchased with your account and the xbox live gold is attached to your account? It sounds like, if you were sharing with your brother, that his account was the main account and everything is attached to his account…

  • I wanted to throw this out, as another point of clarification. I just set up a game share with my nephew (sharing my games with him), and I didn’t have to put his account info or profile onto my console. All I did was add mine to his console, set it to home, and now he has access to all my content. The only reason i would need to put his onto mine is if I wanted to play anything he owned. This was confirmed by an Xbox support operator, it is possible to have a “one way” connection with no impacting of gameplay.

    • you are correct Dennis, it is possible to do one-way game sharing if that’s what you want to do. In most cases though it’s 2 people wanting to share each others games, so that’s why I only focused on that aspect of it, but you are correct. I actually have mine setup where I’m 2-way gamesharing with a buddy of mine, but my brother shares all his games with me as well. Him and I had originally been gamesharing, but he never buys any games, so I decided to switch to sharing with my buddy, but my brother never took me off of ‘home’ on his Xbox, so I get all of his games now as well as my buddy’s.

  • Hi I have just do all your steps with my friend and it works perfectly thank you!
    We have only a single problem, the problem is when one of us start to download and install a game in the console of the other person the game start to download and I dont want all the games he installs. Can I change something to stop this system?
    thank you!

    • unfortunately that’s just how it works. You’ll just have to cancel the download on your own console or uninstall the game once it finishes downloading. It will still download on the other persons console as long as they dont manually cancel it or remove it. So you dont need to have the same games on both consoles in the end.

  • Hey Tom I’ve got a problem, so me and my friend gameshared and I have most of his games but their is one game that I can’t download, it doesn’t even show up in ready to install. The game is call Warriors Orichi 3, and I can download it on his console but not on mine when I’m logged into his account or my account on my console. Any suggestions?

    • was it maybe purchased on a different account on one of the consoles? meaning not the one that you guys setup as home?

  • Hi!
    I wanted to share my gold with my friend. I am home on his xbox1 and he is home on my Xbox1S. I checked in my MS account, I have 2 consoles, his xbox is marked as my home console, in his account my xbox is marked as home. We can see each others games he can use my games. BUT i cant play anything as long as he is logged in because it signs me out and ask for sign in in every 2 minutes. We cant play together forza horizon, he invites me but it keeps signing me out. When I play fifa alone I can play but it signs me out and I sign back also in every 2 minutes. Why is that? Thank you

    • Hey Barnabas, the only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with the fact that you have 2 Xbox One’s. Im guessing the other one is trying to “call home” or connect to MS’ servers or something while you are playing, thus you would have to make your buddy’s account the home account on your 2nd xbox as well. It sounds like things are just getting confused because of that second Xbox. Other than that, I’m not sure what might be happening.

      • Hey Tom, I have a question that I can’t seem to find a clear answer for. If you gameshare between two Xbox’s and you’re on a console that isn’t your home Xbox but someone turns on the console that’s set as your home Xbox, wouldn’t it sign you out of the console you’re pkaying on? Cuz if so I’m curious as to how to make it so it doesn’t do that

        • I believe it is doing this, because you have more than one Xbox set as your home Xbox for the same profile. You can only sign into one version of your profile at a time. The purpose of setting it to home is so that the Xbox One can recognize your info “without” being signed in. He must have your account logged in on his console and that’s why you are being kicked out.

          I once made the mistake of setting more than One Xbox One to “home”, and that can cause some serious confusion. If you see his is the only one showing it, then you need to still make sure it’s not set to “home”, on your Xbox One. The site may only be reading one, but your console could still be thinking both are trying to access the same account.

          Long story short, (1) you can only be kicked out, if more than one version of the account are active at the same time. Set your account on his Xbox One to “home” and create a password, so that you can’t be logged in by accident. (2) Please make sure your account is not considered “home” on your Xbox one. It has to be one of these two issues. I had this same issue. I hope this helps.

  • Does anyone know if game sharing allows both Xboxes to play the same game at the same time even in the same game? I’d really like to know…

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