Apple Legacy Contact: how to set it up
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My mother-in-law has 47,000 photos on her iPhone. Forty-seven thousand. Birthdays, holidays, blurry shots of the dog mid-sneeze, that one perfect sunset from a trip to Oregon she still talks about. When I asked her who could get into her iCloud account if something happened to her, she looked at me like I'd asked her to do calculus.
"My daughter knows my password," she said.
She doesn't. I checked.
This is the problem Apple Legacy Contact is designed to solve. Not with lawyers or court orders or six-week waiting periods, but with a two-minute setup that gives someone you trust a way to access your iCloud data after you die.
What Apple Legacy Contact actually is
Apple Legacy Contact is a feature built into every iPhone, iPad, and Mac running iOS 15.2 or later (released December 2021). It lets you pick up to five people who can request access to your iCloud account after your death.
Each person you designate receives an access key, which is a long alphanumeric string stored in their device settings (or printed out, or saved as a PDF). When you die, they combine that access key with a copy of your death certificate, submit both through Apple's Digital Legacy portal, and get access to download your iCloud data within a few days.
No guessing passwords. No calling Apple support. No hiring an attorney to petition for a court order.
The feature exists because Apple's previous process for handling deceased users' accounts was slow and uncertain. Families had to submit a formal request, provide legal documentation, and wait, sometimes for weeks, with no guarantee they'd get what they needed. Legacy Contact replaces that guessing game with something your family can actually use under stress.
What your Legacy Contact can and cannot access
This matters, and Apple isn't always clear about it, so here's a plain breakdown.
They can access: iCloud Photos, Notes, Mail, Messages (if backed up to iCloud), Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, iCloud Drive files, Health data, Voice Memos, Safari bookmarks, and device backups stored in iCloud.
They cannot access: Keychain passwords (your saved logins for other sites), licensed media (movies, music, books you purchased through iTunes or Apple TV), in-app purchases, payment information, or Apple Pay details. Anything protected by Digital Rights Management stays locked.
The distinction makes sense if you think about it from Apple's perspective. They're giving your family your personal data, not your commercial licenses. The photos of your kid's first steps? Yes. The copy of Inception you bought in 2012? No.
One thing people miss: if you use iCloud Keychain to store passwords for your bank, email, and other services, those passwords won't transfer through Legacy Contact. Your family will still need another way to get into those accounts. A password manager with emergency access fills that gap.
How to set it up on your iPhone
Open Settings on your iPhone. Tap your name at the top (your Apple ID). Tap Sign-In & Security, then Legacy Contact. Tap Add Legacy Contact.
You'll be asked to choose someone. They can be anyone in your contacts, and they don't need to own an Apple device. Apple will generate an access key for that person, and you have a few options for sharing it:
- Send it directly via Messages (if they have an Apple device, the key gets stored automatically in their settings)
- Print it out as a physical document
- Save it as a PDF to store or share however you'd like
If you send it via Messages to someone with an iPhone, it files itself neatly into their own Settings under Apple ID > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact. They don't have to do anything with it until they need it. If your contact uses Android, printing the access key or saving the PDF is the way to go.
The whole process takes about two minutes. Repeat it for up to five contacts if you want more than one person to have access.
That's it. There's no account to create, nothing to pay for, no recurring setup. Once the access key exists, it stays valid until you remove that Legacy Contact.
Choosing the right people
Five slots is generous. Most people use one or two.
Think about who would actually need your photos, files, and messages after you're gone, and who would be organized enough to follow through on the access process during an incredibly hard time. Those two qualities don't always overlap.
Your spouse is probably first on the list. But consider what happens if they're also affected by whatever happened to you, say, a car accident. Having a second contact, like an adult child or a sibling, means there's a backup.
Here's a common mistake: people add a contact but never tell them about it. Your brother might receive an access key via Messages and never notice it, or see it and have no idea what it's for. A 30-second conversation changes that. "I added you as my Apple Legacy Contact. If I die, you'll be able to get into my iCloud stuff. Here's what that means." That's all it takes.
Similarly, if you print the access key, treat it like you'd treat a spare house key. It belongs in a secure location: a fireproof safe, a sealed envelope with your estate documents, or wherever you keep important paperwork. Not in a drawer full of takeout menus.
What the access process looks like for your contact
After you die, your Legacy Contact goes to digital-legacy.apple.com. They upload a copy of your death certificate and enter the access key you gave them. Apple reviews the request and, once verified, creates a special Legacy Contact Apple ID that gives them access to download your iCloud data.
This temporary account lasts for three years. During that window, they can sign in and download photos, files, messages, and everything else that falls within the accessible categories.
After three years, Apple deletes the account and the data. So if your family wants to keep those 47,000 photos (or whatever your number is), they need to download them within that window. Three years sounds like plenty of time, but grief and procrastination are a potent combination. Mentioning the time limit to your contacts is worth doing.
One practical note: the data download can be large. Years of iCloud Photos might be hundreds of gigabytes. Your contact will need enough storage space on their computer or an external drive. It's not something to attempt on a phone with 3 GB of free space.
What if you don't set this up
Without a Legacy Contact, your family has two options. Neither is great.
Option 1: Apple's formal deceased-user request. Your family submits documentation to Apple, including a death certificate, proof of their relationship to you, and their own ID. According to Apple's support page on accessing a deceased person's account, the review process takes time and Apple may request additional documentation, including a court order. Even after all of that, access is not guaranteed.
Option 2: A court order under RUFADAA. Most U.S. states have adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives executors legal standing to request access to digital accounts. But getting a court order takes time, costs money, and requires an attorney. Your family is doing this while also handling the funeral, the will, the finances, and their own grief.
Legacy Contact makes both of those paths unnecessary. Two minutes of setup now versus weeks of legal paperwork later, during the worst period of your family's life.
Legacy Contact and the rest of your digital plan
Apple Legacy Contact solves the Apple problem. It doesn't help with Google, Facebook, your bank, or the password manager that holds the keys to everything else.
If you've already set this up, the logical next step is doing the same for your Google account. Google Inactive Account Manager works on a different model (it triggers after a period of inactivity rather than after a death certificate is submitted), but the idea is similar: you decide in advance who gets what.
For everything that isn't Apple or Google, a digital estate plan is the way to organize it. That means documenting your accounts, credentials, and instructions in one place your family can actually find and use.
And if you're thinking about the bigger picture, not just accounts and passwords but the things you actually want to say to people, digital legacy planning covers how to think about your entire digital life as something worth organizing. Photos, messages, letters, documents, all of it.
A quick note on Apple's Digital Legacy vs. iCloud data sharing
People sometimes confuse Legacy Contact with Family Sharing or shared iCloud Photo Libraries. They're different things.
Family Sharing lets you share purchases and subscriptions while you're alive. Shared Photo Libraries let multiple people contribute to the same album in real time. Neither one gives anyone access to your full iCloud account after you die.
Legacy Contact is specifically for after death. It's the only Apple feature designed for that purpose. If you're already sharing a photo library with your spouse, that's great for everyday use, but it won't help them access your Notes, your Mail, or your iCloud Drive files after you're gone.
Forty-seven thousand photos. Or however many you have. The trips, the holidays, the random Tuesday mornings that turn out to be the ones you'd want someone to keep.
Two minutes in your Settings, one conversation with the person you trust, and those photos have somewhere to go.
When I Die Files gives you a single place to organize your digital accounts, access instructions, and personal letters, so the people you love aren't left guessing about any of it.