Hi. I have „ask to buy“ activated so the kids can‘t buy apps without permission. I also have the family sharing. Looks like this way the kids can download everything I ever bought. Isn‘t there a „ask to download“ function? I found out I could disable it altogether or manualy hide apps (which would hide them for myself as well). Am I missing something?
No, it’s how the system seems to have been designed
Strange. If it was only about the money I wouldn’t have to permit free apps. I always figured it’s about money and content.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple loves money, but they also love solving problems for users, the old system (pre family sharing) for kids was more of a problem, this allows Apple to earn more money AND make it easier for people to share things assuming Developers allow it for their apps.
But it would‘t be much of a problem to tweak the current system to „ask for download“ as well.
With „about“ money I actually meant: The purpose of the restriction seems to be to prevent children of spending money without permission of the parents. But if that is the purpose of the restriction it doesn‘t make sense that the kids have to ask for permission for free apps. If the purpose is to save them from specific conent it doesn‘t make sense to ask only for apps that are new to the family sharing pool.
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Seems like the only way around this is to disable Purchase Sharing, but that disables it for everyone. 
I imagine Apple did think about this, but deemed it too difficult (not worth their time) to enforce an “ask to download” from every piece of existing content in your shared library. They probably view it like a physical “home” where everything you have “downloaded” (on your shelf in your house) is accessible for your children automatically.
I would love to have more granular control over everything on our devices, but it gets into the weeds really quickly.
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They want you to restrict content through parental controls. E.g. you allow app installs but only rated 4+ and no movies or TV. Or you don’t allow any app installs so they have to ask you first and then you do it. Parental controls have multiple limitations and bugs, and I share your desire for ask to install to do this job.
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Fortunately, with screen time you‘d see what was used anyway, so there isn’t much risk of something being downloaded (and used) secretly.
My pet peeve with all of this is that my son will ask if he can buy or download a free app; I’ll say yes, send me the request. He’s got his phone open, I’m using my phone right next to him. His phone says, 'request sent." It never shows up on my phone. He tries again. Then 3 hours later I wake my laptop of desktop from sleep to a dozen notifications that he wants permission to download an app. Or, the notification just never arrives to any of my devices / machines.
-Eric
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I had that issue before, but recently the request appeared right away.
We don’t know how significant a change to enable this would be, what it would do is add complexity for Apple, potentially Complexity they don’t want to add, especially as they’re investigating options around opening up the App Store (either voluntarily or to meet legislation).
To be honest this is the first time I’ve seen someone mention this as an issue for them. For me, the options are in place cover this, you can hide apps you don’t want others to see in your purchase history and/or download. For Apple I suspect this is covered.
This is what I was going to suggest
Hiding isn’t really a good solution as I might want grown ups in my family to be able to download it, but I just want smaller kids to not install stuff on their own. Maybe I missed something, as I assume that’s not a too exotic demand.
As @cornchip has said, if that’s the concern, then Restrictions is the way to go to stop apps being downloaded which are above the age category allowed.