Summary
This document provides some information about the legacy contact option for Apple devices. Some related information is also included.
For additional important context, read “Digital Will Guide 2024.”
The Apple legacy contact feature is a very small part of having a Digital Will, and it may or may not fit into your plans and desires for care of your digital assets.
The key point in this document is that Apple’s Legacy Contact feature can result in permanent loss of access to some important data once your Legacy Contact activates the feature after your death. So, you would want to fully review the guide before enabling it, or if you’ve already enabled it, consider disabling it, or have a plan to work around the limitations of Apple’s Legacy Contact feature.
Apple December Email
On 10 Dec 2024, Apple sent an email out to every Apple account owner with the subject, “Keep your Apple Account safe and secure.”
The email provides an overview of:
- PASSWORD — How to perform a password reset for your Apple account.
- CONTACT INFO — How to keep your contact information updated and current in your Apple account.
- RECOVERY — How to setup a “recovery contact” — a person who can help you recover your account if you forget your login, or if your account gets compromised, or if your device is stolen. [Recovery Contact Guide]
- LEGACY — How to choose a “legacy contact” — a person who you designate to have access to your Apple data after your death. [Legacy Contact Guide]
New Apple Account Portal
Updating your password and keeping your contact information updated can be done through Apple’s new account portal:
This new portal replaces the appleid.apple.com login page.
The Recovery Contact and Legacy Contact are more involved and have their own dedicated help guides as explained below.
Recovery Contact
As described above, a recovery contact is someone you designate who can help you recover your account if you forget your login, or if your account gets compromised, or if your device is stolen. [Recovery Contact Guide]
The recovery contact would typically not gain access to your account, but would only work with you and Apple to confirm account recovery. You would have your Apple device or a replacement, and when you choose account recovery, you would see the option to have your recovery contact be included in the process.
Legacy Contact
A legacy contact is a person who you designate to have access to your Apple data after your death. This is fully explained on Apple’s website. [Legacy Contact Guide]
What Data is Included
According to the support guide, your designated legacy contact will have access to your Apple data across your various Apple devices. The support guide states:
- “The data may include photos, messages, notes, files, apps you’ve downloaded, device backups, and more.”
Pitfalls and Problems
Some data is not available to your legacy contact. The support guide explains:
- “Certain information, like movies, music, books, or subscriptions you purchased with your Apple Account, and data stored in your Keychain — like payment information, passwords, and passkeys — can’t be accessed by your Legacy Contact.”
If you have been using Apple’s Family Sharing to give your family members access to “movies, music, books, or subscriptions” that access will be lost.
If you were the designated person to be renting and buying digital movies from Apple, that investment will go away.
According to the support guide, “Your Apple Account will no longer work, and Activation Lock is removed on any devices that use your Apple Account.”
As explained in the support guide, “data stored in your Keychain — like payment information, passwords, and passkeys — can’t be accessed by your Legacy Contact.”
So, some critical information will no longer be accessible since your account will no longer work, and the legacy person will not have access to some critical information.
For this reason, you would want to have “payment information, passwords, and passkeys” recorded outside of your Apple devices.
If you have given instructions to your real-world legacy contacts (those outside of the Apple world) and asked them to login to your accounts to close them out, they will not be able to do that if your only record of passwords had been locked into your iPhone Apple passwords feature.
Apple Pay and Credit Cards
Here are some considerations regarding credit cards:
- Apple devices have feature that allows you to save and autofill credit card information on websites.
- Most people have a credit card stored with Apple for purchasing software, books, music, and movies.
- There can also be credit cards entered on an iPhone using the Apple Pay feature.
The above payment methods would likely continue to be available and active unless you use the Apple Legacy Contact feature that is said to make those things unavailable after your death.
A trusted individual who has sole access to your computer and devices could be designated as someone able to simply login and use that access responsibly and/or asked to eventually go through the list of saved payment options and remove them, or change them for services that need to continue.
If you’re relying on some management of payment methods and oversight of subscriptions, then you would not want to use the Apple Legacy Contact feature. Otherwise, your Apple account becomes inaccessible and no updates or changes can be made. Presumably all paid services and subscriptions cease to function as well.
Your Phone Number
Probably the most important key to everything else in your life is your phone number. Phone numbers are used to recover accounts and gain access to services. After your death, unless you have specifically designated in writing a power of attorney or secondary owner of your phone number, the number will be lost and all access to accounts will be lost for those that require the number for two-factor authentication. So, having a person designated as a secondary owner is important.
Apple Device Enthusiasts
Most people who are Apple device enthusiasts will typically have an iPhone and an Apple Mac computer. There may be other devices such as an iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
The Apple “ecosystem” is what allows all of the devices to seamlessly synchronize contacts, calendar items, browser bookmarks, website logins, billing information, and more.
Because Apple makes life so easy, people are unlikely to manually maintain digital or paper systems outside of what Apple already provides.
For this reason, Apple enthusiasts need to use more caution and have more planning regarding legacy contacts.
Consider using a word processor to have a typed and printed list of important contacts, logins, and account information. Include anything your legacy contact may need. There is much information beyond what’s saved in the Apple ecosystem.
Your data synched with Apple is only a small part of a larger puzzle that your legacy contact may need for taking care of tasks you’ve asked of them.
Windows Computer Users
For people using Windows computers, your iPhone may be the only Apple device you have. If you use Google Chrome and Google Gmail, it’s possible your calendar, contacts, emails, photos, files, and other data are in Google’s cloud.
You may already have some well organized method of keeping your list of passwords and logins. You can share that with your legacy contact and it will make their life much easier.
What’s nice about having a manually maintained list of important logins and accounts is that you can maintain a list you plan to share with your legacy contact, and have a separate list of items that you would prefer not to share, or that are irrelevant for purposes of what someone would need after your death.
Conclusion
Various services have a repository of your data. Google, Microsoft, and Apple offer synchronization of contacts, calendars, tasks, documents, emails, photos, and other content if you’ve selected to use those services.
It’s helpful to consider ahead of time what you want to have accessible after your death. A designated person can be given instructions such as: “share the family photos with everyone” and “delete my streaming accounts and subscriptions that will no longer be used.” The person designated to handle such tasks would need your logins.
The Apple Legacy Contact feature would delete access to all logins on your Apple devices. It doesn’t allow selective decisions about which accounts to allow access and which to prevent access. For more specific guidance from you, a separate manually generated list of logins would be required.