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iOS 18.1 Includes Option to Set 'Primary' Email Address and Change iCloud Email
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I understand. Thanks for clarifying!
I saw your post here. Were you able to change your primary address from a gmail to an iCloud?
Yes, confirming my primary was Gmail and I was able to make it iCloud
Thankfully my @mac.com address works for everything and both Mac and iOS devices. I know Apple doesn't let anyone create @mac.com anymore for quite sometime. I just hope they don't say I can't use that as primary email anymore. It's been my primary email from the very beginning @mac.com
Twelve years later, Apple is still trying to erase mac.com email addresses | AppleInsider
If you've been around the Mac long enough to have an @mac.com address, you've seen Apple trying to migrate you to @icloud.com. Now it's removed yet another trace of the old, favorite email address.
appleinsider.com
About your @icloud.com, @me.com and @mac.com email addresses – Apple Support (UK)
Depending on when you created your iCloud account, your iCloud email addresses and aliases may end with @icloud.com, @me.com or @mac.com domains. Learn how these email addresses are granted.
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Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.
My iCloud account was started in the beta back in 2011, when they were issuing me.com. I chose my name back then and then when iCloud rolled out the new iCloud.com domains, I started using it. What I really want to do is drop the me.com but keep the iCloud. I am happy with my firstnamelastname username. I have had the main iCloud as my primary for many years now, probably since 2019. Once Apple finally let you ditch the 3rd party email. I don’t even have a 3rd party email at all these days. I don’t like them, never could find one I liked, so I wanted to stick with Apple/iCloud.
I don’t use aliases much (not really ever), so no, I have not tried that yet. All I tried to do yesterday was make a new username, and it warned me that I will lose both the current iCloud and me addresses (same username on both of course). I tried to proceed and change it to something else, which is when I get the error.
I don’t know what the reason is, but my guess is because I have both the me and iCloud.
I created a new Apple account with my work email, issued it an iCloud address, made that the primary, and then changed the iCloud address multiple times flawlessly. So it probably has to do with my older account, unfortunately. I have wanted to drop the me for over 12 years now (when I started using the iCloud domain). Oh well.
Thanks YPL.
The thing is, both my Yahoo addresses have never had an Apple address. I wanted one but was told this was not possible. I would love to change the Yahoo addresses to iCloud.com or me.com.
On both Yahoo addresses I have purchase films, so gotta be careful not to lose them.
It will 😁
Brilliant, thanks for the help Charles. Is there any website I can check to see what apple addresses are available?
Hehe, such a list would ensure that every iCloud user received mountains of spam. Those of us who have old email addresses we used for everything back in the day are already on many such lists on the dark web, according to what I'm reading.
If you want to see what email names are available, your only option is to try entering it in the settings where you create a new ID and it lets you know if it's available and if not you can create it.
Ahhh! Good point 😂
And I'm one of those people being barraged each and every single day worh junk. It stops for a while and just when you think you're safe, BANG they start flooding in.
You mean, both of your accounts identified by Yahoo addresses have never had iCloud Email service configured? OK, understood. So, for my first point, instead of "Create alias" it would go like "Create primary e-mail service". But you are aware of this already, as you ask good questions and got good answer - just prepare some clever usernames (iCloud.com is quite old - most of simple usernames were taken long time ago) and try to configure as primary e-mails for both accounts.
And, yes, you have to be very careful. Theoretically all purchases are bound to account not to specific e-mail identifier of the account, but ... who knows. Even if you loose all films due to Apple fault, they will never admin to be guilty and will just pretend that nothing wrong happened and will ignore you.
Maybe you should create 3rd account based on Yahoo address just for testing purposes, make one cheap purchase and try to migrate to iCloud.com address and see what happens. Your choice. Good luck anyway.
Hey BL to the mf P, thanks for sharing this.
This has been a consistent experience from users who have legacy email accounts such as @me.com and @mac.com.
There must be some deeply engrained server setting preventing these accounts from swapping to an iCloud alias.
If you have some time, check out the reddit and try making an alias and let us know how it goes.
Thanks so much for your time and sharing these details.
I just made an alias and tried to implement it as my new primary. No go…
I think I’m stuck. Unfortunate.
Edit: maybe not. I didn’t realize the alias needs to be added to the list of sign-in option emails first. I did that, but due to stolen device protection, I have to wait an hour to find out. Will report back when that’s done.
Final update: no, I cannot make the alias my primary. I get the same “could not update email - error description not available” issue.
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Make Finał update after Apple releases stable iOS 18.1. It looks like now it's just first beta release of updated functionality available only on iOS. In final release it should be available through updated web interface (and possibly on macOS) as well and error codes will hopefully be more descriptive. You'll hopefully succeed eventually.
And do not forget to provide feedback to Apple (bug report). From my experience it seems that Apple listens to users feedback (sometimes after many years though).
I tried to read as much as I could in this thread but I still cannot see if my 'issue' would be solved with this new feature.
I have 2 apple id's, let's say :
Account A with primary email steven@abc.com
Account B with primary email steven@xyz.com
Account A is where all my stuff is, purchases and whatnot. Account B is empty but it does have the email address I would very much like to use, i.e. steven@xyz.com.
Important note: I had steven@xyz.com added to Account A as a backup/notification email address while it was also the primary in Account B.
Can I change the primary email address in Account A with the one used on Account b (steven@xyz.com)?
I tried in the past by removing the primary email address in Account B with some other unimportant email address.
Now during the process of removing/replacing the primary email address in Account A you have to specify a new email address as primary and I entered the address steven@xyz.com but got a message like this:
"Your new Apple ID cannot be the same as your notification email address. Choose a different email address."
I have removed all references of steven@xyz.com where I could find it and logged out of apple id over all devices to make sure it was not cached or something. Still got that error/message about not being able to use the address due to it being a notification address somehow.
So it seems like once you used an address somewhere, like I did as notification address in Account A, you can never use it as primary email address. Or perhaps once Apple has registered any email address once in Apple ID/Account somewhere it is no longer allowed to use it other then as a notification email address?
Can this new feature in iOS 18.1 be a fix for this?
Sorry for the long message, I wanted to be as clear as I could on this.
I have 2 apple id's, let's say :
Account A with primary email steven@abc.com
Account B with primary email steven@xyz.com
Account A is where all my stuff is, purchases and whatnot. Account B is empty but it does have the email address I would very much like to use, i.e. steven@xyz.com.
Important note: I had steven@xyz.com added to Account A as a backup/notification email address while it was also the primary in Account B.
Can I change the primary email address in Account A with the one used on Account b (steven@xyz.com)?
I tried in the past by removing the primary email address in Account B with some other unimportant email address.
Now during the process of removing/replacing the primary email address in Account A you have to specify a new email address as primary and I entered the address steven@xyz.com but got a message like this:
"Your new Apple ID cannot be the same as your notification email address. Choose a different email address."
I have removed all references of steven@xyz.com where I could find it and logged out of apple id over all devices to make sure it was not cached or something. Still got that error/message about not being able to use the address due to it being a notification address somehow.
So it seems like once you used an address somewhere, like I did as notification address in Account A, you can never use it as primary email address. Or perhaps once Apple has registered any email address once in Apple ID/Account somewhere it is no longer allowed to use it other then as a notification email address?
Can this new feature in iOS 18.1 be a fix for this?
Sorry for the long message, I wanted to be as clear as I could on this.
Have you tried updating to new beta release from today? Maybe they improved error descriptions at least? Seems like the feature is still work in progress on quite early stage.
I just updated to the new Public Beta today (Oct 14) and still no luck. Same “Error Description not available” message. Guess I’ll just have to patiently wait for the official release.
I encourage everyone that has the “Error Description not available” message to report it in the feedback app.
After all our « job » as beta testers is to report that kind of bug.
After all our « job » as beta testers is to report that kind of bug.
For yourself and others receiving an error message, I highly recommend viewing my Reddit post from over a week ago and checking out the notes at the bottom.
This story was picked up from my post and unfortunately it’s being pushed as a feature when it could very likely be a bug - please proceed with caution!
Specifically regarding these errors, it seems like many users who created their accounts using legacy email suffix or third party emails are unable to make the transfer to an alias.
I had a negative experience with this. Back from 2011, my AppleID/AppleAccount was a @gmx.de mail address. Now I tried to move to my @me.com mail address as primary e-mail. First, all seemed well - until I noticed, that the AppleTV+ subscription was gone. Although in settings (iPhone, iPad) the subscription showed up as active, my AppleTV 4k nevertheless handled me as a new customer. Had to revert to my original primary e-mail for my AppleID. D´oh!
Always loved my v v short email address
****@me.com
Won't be changing as so easy to give to people.
****@me.com
Won't be changing as so easy to give to people.