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Can you merge apple ID accounts?

L

Luis Ortega

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 10, 2007
1,198
386
I have used my personal email to set up an Apple ID over the years, but I also created another Apple ID using a different email a while back, and I have purchased apps and music from the app store with both my iPad, iPhone and my desktop Mac Pro using both accounts over the years.

Now I want to combine all of my purchases into my personal email account because I will be shutting down the other email address because of hacking problems. I'm afraid that if I lose that email address, I would not be able to access the stuff that was purchased on that account.

Can anyone please advise how this could be done? Will I need to contact Apple? Thanks.
 
Its amazing Apple has not found a way to do this. Some people have been asking for this for years. I have used Family Sharing as a partial way round, but you still have to keep switching to the other account to see your purchases on that account.
 
chscag said:
Actually, it's a good policy not to merge Apple IDs. Just imagine someone getting hold of your Apple ID and password and then are able to merge it with theirs.
Click to expand...

I understand the concern, but I expect the real restriction is down to the content providers not wanting people's entire libraries being passed down to the next generation when they die.
 
Full merge may not be necessary if they go around and allow more than one account to sign-in to the app store/tunes. if you live between countries and you need to have an account for each country's app store, the localization settings are just suboptimal.
 
Can't be done. I ended up with two way back when they first started apple ids . I have two with music bought between the two. Every so often I have to update the password on the one I am not using so I can access the music I bought on it. When I worked at Apple I tried to get the old one merged into the new one. It can not be done.
 
One thing I'm curious about, Apple says to make sure both accounts are set to the same country before migrating - implying that purchases from another country can be brought across. Is this correct?
 
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WebHead said:
At last!
Click to expand...
Hooray! Can't wait to try it.
I have "secondary account" that was setup prior to Apple coming up with iCloud email, so I could purchase from iTunes. A a result, I had to use a non Apple email address. I've been wanting to merge that with my iCloud account for years.
Does this merging method work if the secondary account is non-Apple?
Do you know when Apple made merging available?
Thank you @WebHead for posting this.
 
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