Your Apple ID is much more than a simple username. It’s a key that unlocks a long list of Apple products and services on any of numerous devices. iCloud uses an Apple ID, as does Apple Music; the App Store; the Music, TV, and Books apps; and more. An Apple ID protects your personal information, including email and iOS/iPadOS backups; helps you find a lost iPhone; and can even unlock your Mac. So it goes without saying that if something goes wrong with your Apple ID, you could be in for a world of hurt.
Unfortunately, things go wrong with Apple IDs all the time. Fortunately, Glenn Fleishman, a veteran technology journalist and the author of Macworld’s “Mac 911” column, is ready to help with expert advice on how to manage your Apple ID—including how to prevent, solve, or work around most common problems!
In this book, Glenn answers questions like:
- What all is my Apple ID used for?
- How does my iCloud account relate to my Apple ID?
- What problems can two-factor authentication (2FA) solve, and how do I use it?
- Are there other mechanisms I can use to ensure that I can recover an Apple ID in the event of a problem? (Spoiler: yes!)
- What if I have a device that’s too old to work with two-factor authentication?
- What should I do if I have two or more Apple IDs or iCloud accounts?
- Will I lose access to all my Apple media purchases if I move to another country?
- Can I share an Apple ID with someone else?
- What exactly should I do if I think someone is hacking my Apple ID account?
- How can I recover a forgotten Apple ID password?
- What steps should I take if Apple locks me out of my account?
- If I lose access to an email address associated with my Apple ID, what can I do?
- What Apple ID changes in iOS 14/iPadOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur do I need to know about?
- How does “Sign in with Apple” work?
- How can I use Family Sharing to share data and purchases within my family?
- What types of subscriptions can I manage with my Apple ID, and how?
- Which payment methods can I associate with my Apple ID, and how do I manage them?
And that’s just the beginning. Glenn has packed a remarkable amount of concise problem-solving information into this compact, 124-page book. Read it before you encounter Apple ID problems to minimize your risk, and if you’ve already encountered a problem, read it to find the best path to a rapid solution.
Glenn Fleishman is a veteran technology writer who has contributed to dozens of publications across his career, including Macworld, Fast Company, and Increment. He has also written dozens of editions of books in the Take Control series. He is currently building 100 tiny type museums full of real printing artifacts. Glenn lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.
This edition of the book has been substantially expanded to include two increasingly key areas that are directly connected with Apple IDs and which people have indicated they need more guidance and troubleshooting help with:
- Family Sharing: Apple introduced Family Sharing several years ago as a way to share purchases and pool iCloud storage among up to six people in a family group. In September 2020 and later in the year, Apple added new features to Family Sharing, including letting in-app purchases and subscriptions be shared (at a developer’s discretion) and the Apple One family subscription plan. Family Sharing is based entirely on grouping Apple ID accounts. See “Share with Your Family.”
- Subscriptions: While previous editions of the book mentioned subscriptions, Apple now offers so goldarn many that I added an entire chapter to explain what’s available and at what cost, how it’s tied to your Apple ID account, and how to manage these services. Read “Subscribe to Services.”
- Payment methods: Apple’s tools for managing payment methods associated with your Apple ID—adding, changing, deleting, and viewing them—are quite a big ball of wax. In this updated edition, I pick apart the details so you can better figure out how to pay and what’s being charged. Consult “Manage Payments with Your Apple ID” if you dare.
Also in September 2020, Apple released iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS, with macOS 11 Big Sur soon to follow. This book has been updated to reflect interface and service changes that came along with it. (I’ll update the book if anything in the final shipping version of Big Sur is different from the current public beta.)
The largest change to Apple ID this year was the return (with the release of iOS/iPadOS 14) of the recovery key, a way to restrict password resetting for your account as well as an additional way to recover access if you lost all your trusted devices but can retain the key. See the full details in “Set a Recovery Key for 2FA.”
Posted by Glenn Fleishman on February 15, 2019
Apple recently told software developers that two-factor authentication (2FA) will be required as of February 27, 2019, for Apple ID accounts used to log in to the company’s developer website, and which are used for other purposes to create identification and encryption documents. That’s a concern for some developers who haven’t enabled 2FA on the account or accounts they use for development purposes.
Apple requires that you use macOS or iOS to enable 2FA for an Apple ID, as I describe in Take Control of Your Apple ID in some detail (along with how to take steps so that you set up 2FA with the right recovery details in case you have a problem with the account or someone tries to hack into it). That requires a given Mac or iOS device has that Apple ID used as its iCloud login account.
But some developers use one or more Apple IDs for development that they don’t employ with iCloud on any device. They were left wondering how they could possibly enable 2FA, even though they can use telephone-based SMS or automated-voice codes to confirm logins after setting it up.
Fortunately, Take Control of Your Apple ID has the answer (in the section “Set up 2FA Without a Device”). Here’s a brief rundown:
- Set up a separate login account on a Mac, even one you don’t routinely use.
- Log in to iCloud via the iCloud preference pane using the Apple ID you want to upgrade to 2FA.
- Make sure to set at least a couple phone numbers to use as verification codes in the process of set up.
Now, whenever you log into a developer resource or any Apple site or service that requires that Apple ID, Apple will attempt to send a verification code to the macOS account you logged in with, which won’t do anything. Instead, click or tap “Didn’t get a verification code” and then you can choose to receive an SMS or voice-based code to complete the login (as explained in depth in the section “Log In with 2FA by SMS or Voice Call”).
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