With Netflix cracking down hard on account sharing, you might be wondering what this means for other streaming services.
One such service is Disney Plus, an extremely popular platform that provides access to a huge variety of content from Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, National Geographic, and others.
With so much high-quality content on offer, it’s only natural to want to make the most of it with those around you.
So, can you share your Disney+ account with friends and family? What about people outside your household?
How many people can share Disney+ at once, and are there any alternatives to password sharing?
We’ll answer all of these questions (and more) in the article below. Let’s get straight into it!
Can You Share Disney Plus With Friends?
The Short Answer
Kind of.
It’s possible to share Disney Plus with friends but technically isn’t allowed. However, at this point, Disney hasn’t made any attempts to stop password sharing between households.
Can Two People Use the Same Disney+ Account at the Same Time?
There are no rules against sharing your Disney+ account with other people in your household. In fact, this is encouraged through the profiles feature.
However, there is a limit on how many people can stream at the same time. Only four streams can be running at once. If someone tries to start a fifth, they’ll get an error message stating that too many shows are being watched already.
This is the biggest danger of sharing your account with others. If too many people are trying to watch at once, you might find yourself locked out of your account right when the next episode of The Mandalorian comes out.
What About People in Different Households?
There’s nothing to stop you from sharing your password with people in other households.
Technically, Disney+ requires you to only share your account with other people who live with you. However, this isn’t monitored or enforced at this point.
Unlike Netflix, Disney+ doesn’t track the location data of the different users of an account.
This means you won’t have any issues with people streaming from other locations, as long as you stay under four simultaneous streams.
How Many Profiles Can You Have on One Account?
Within an account, you can create up to seven separate profiles.
All of these fall under the same subscription to Disney+, but each has separate watchlists, watch history, and other information attached to them.
This means that each person will get their own personalized recommendations and can save their progress if they’re in the middle of watching a show or film. The four-stream limit still applies, however.
Another advantage of profiles is that you can mark certain profiles as “Junior”. This means that only kid-appropriate content will be offered to that user, allowing parents to limit their kids’ options when unsupervised.
Will You Get in Trouble for Sharing Your Disney+ Account?
As we’ve said, sharing your password with people outside your household is technically not allowed.
When you sign up for Disney+, you must accept the user agreement which stipulates that you only share your account with the people within your household.
So yes, if you share your account in this way you are breaking the rules laid out by Disney.
However, this rule has never been enforced (so far), so you’re unlikely to get into any trouble for it.
Disney’s subscriber agreement puts much more emphasis on protecting your password from unauthorized use by people who you haven’t given permission to use your account.
It also stipulates that anyone who is given access by you is also bound to the agreement you signed.
Basically: account sharing is not allowed, but it doesn’t seem like Disney cares too much at the moment.
For now, the account you share with your friends is safe. However, you should keep in mind that Disney could change their mind at any time and crack down in the same way as Netflix has in recent months.
If they do this, you’re unlikely to get in trouble. However, accounts will likely monitor streaming locations and stop users from streaming outside your home address.
How to Share Disney Plus: Other Options
If you want to share the viewing experience with your friends and family but don’t want to break the rules, we have some alternatives.
Of course, you can always do things the old-fashioned way; get some popcorn, a big couch, and invite everyone over to watch in person.
However, if that’s not an option, here are some other ways to share the Disney+ experience with loved ones:
Downloads
With a premium subscription, Disney gives you unlimited downloads that allow you to view shows and movies offline. You can download these to 10 different devices at once.
This is extremely useful if you’re traveling or have spotty internet. However, it also lets allows you to bypass the four-person restriction on concurrent viewing.
To do this, simply download your content onto your device, then disconnect from the internet.
Disney+ would have no way to tell how many people are already watching on your account and it wouldn’t stop you from enjoying your show – even if four people are already streaming.
Watch Parties
You can also set up virtual watch parties thanks to a couple of new features introduced by Disney in the last year.
These are not only a lot of fun but are also sanctioned by Disney (and won’t break any of their rules).
SharePlay
This is only available for users on iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. All participants will also need access to a premium Disney+ account.
SharePlay will allow you to watch content at the same time as your friends and family, with each person being able to control the pause, play, fast forward, and rewind functions for everyone in the watch party.
It’s also seamlessly integrated with FaceTime, with a picture-in-picture mode that lets you see your loved one’s smiling faces while also enjoying your show. This is a great way to all enjoy the same content at the same time.
It should be noted that junior accounts can’t start a SharePlay session, and that content is still limited by region.
This means that if someone from a different region tries to join a session watching content that they can’t normally access, they’ll get an error message and be unable to join.
SharePlay allows up to 7 people to watch at the same time. However, only 4 of these can be from a single account, and all accounts watching must have a premium subscription.
GroupWatch
GroupWatch is very similar to SharePlay but lacks FaceTime integration.
It allows your family and friends to join a session and watch content together, in sync. Any member can also control pause, play, fast forward, and rewind functions for everyone.
Similar to SharePlay, content is still dependent on the region of the watcher. As such, users can’t join streams that are playing content that is normally restricted in their region. Additionally, Junior accounts also can’t participate just yet.
GroupWatch allows up to 7 people to join at a time but only allows up to 4 people from a single account at once.
Summary
In short: sharing your Disney+ password with people outside your household is not technically allowed by Disney.
However, this rule isn’t enforced, and Disney hasn’t shown any sign of cracking down on password sharing any time soon. Chances are you can keep sharing your account this way without any issues for the foreseeable future.
If you’re worried about breaking the rules, watch parties are a great option for sharing content with loved ones.