Question

Managing Multiple User Accounts on Same Device

  • 18 July 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 455 views

Badge

Hello RevenueCat community,

I am experiencing a challenge in managing in-app subscriptions for multiple users on the same device. Here's the situation:

  1. User A has an active subscription and is logged into the app on a device.

  2. User A logs out, and User B logs in on the same device. User B doesn't have an active subscription, so they are correctly presented with the paywall.

  3. When User B attempts to purchase a subscription, Apple's system sends an alert that a subscription already exists (referring to User A's subscription).

  4. Upon dismissing the alert, the purchase process proceeds, and User A's subscription gets linked to User B's account.

  5. When User A logs back in, they are incorrectly presented with the paywall, and RevenueCat's records show User B as the owner of the subscription.

In this situation, my goal is to keep User A's subscription linked to User A, and alert userB that there is already an active subscription linked to the current appleID, and therefore cannot proceed with the. The challenge is to prevent the "subscription already exists" alert from Apple and the subsequent linking of User A's subscription to User B's account.

I would greatly appreciate any guidance or advice on how to resolve this issue.

Thank you in advance!


3 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +6

Hey @etienne_ ,

What happened here comes down to the restore behavior that you have set, “Transfer to new App User Id”. This is our default behavior, which ensures that a user can always access their subscription, even if they are on a different device, but the subscription is always only owned by one user id. You can read further about it here: https://www.revenuecat.com/docs/restoring-purchases#transfer-to-new-app-user-id

The goal that you describe sounds like it could possibly be met by one of the other restore behaviors, which are: 

  • Transfer if there are no active subscriptions” - a transfer would only occur in the case of there being no active subscriptions. In the scenario you described above, the transfer wouldn’t occur and User B wouldn’t be able to purchase at all.
  • Keep with original app user id” -  This would meet your goal but is a pretty strict behavior. When User B attempted to purchase, it would throw an error. We only recommend this behavior for apps that have strict log in logic and never allow a user to access their app without logging in. 

You can follow the links at each bullet point to read more about the behaviors and decide which works best for your app!

Badge +5

So on this topic, what is the best approach like the OP mentioned? Where would the user A userId be stored? If one option is picked, does it mean user A trying to login to a different device will or will not get their entitlements?

The confusing part for me is how does it work when say user A deletes their account with the app without doing anything else. Then after a couple days goes back and creates a new account. Will restore work even if user A now has a new userId inside the app?

Badge +5

@kaitlin are you able to help determine best way to setup the transfer configuration in the scenario described above?

Reply