Family Sharing question

[Freeman]

So me and my wife are trying to share our libraries and we followed the steps to add each other. She owns Rimworld and I wanted to try it out, but it wont let me play it because it told me 'she wants it back you have 5 mins'.

She is logged in on her Steam account playing Planet Zoo, so are we right in thinking gamesharing only works if the person you are sharing with isn't online?

[Ogami]

A library can only be used by one user at any given time. So if your wife plays ANY of her games you dont have access to her shared titles.
Only if your wife is either offline, not playing or playing a game from YOUR library do you have full access to her shared games.

So either each play a game from the others library OR (which is a workaround) tell your wife to set her Steam account to offline.
She will still be able to play her games ( if not a online focused title obviously) and you can play her shared games at the same time.

[Maria]

That's right.

Family sharing in essence is library sharing. One library for one person at a time. It's to prevent abuse.

It won't be the case if the person that you shared with/the one that is sharing their library with you is offline though (playing the game in steam offline mode).