As promised in our last blog post in November, details of Apple’s new digital legacy feature would be provided as soon as we had them!
Apple’s ios15.2 is available for you to download now, and included in the update is the long-awaited digital legacy setting, that will allow a trusted contact access to your account after you have died.
Here is what you need to do. In the Apple ID section of settings, you will need to select ‘Password and Security’ and towards the bottom of the list is an option that says Legacy Contact. Select this option and you will see this:
You need to choose someone whom you trust! Your chosen contact will be able to use an access key that they can submit to Apple, along with your death certificate. (Obviously, you have to set this up whilst you are alive!)
This might be important to you if you store all of your photos digitally, or keep important family information in your iCloud account. It is important to note that this new feature does not give you access to the iCloud Keychain, such as passwords, so we would advise using a password manager that has a legacy facility.
Once you have done this you will have the option to share the access key provided by Apple, which is a very long code of letters and numbers. It does, however, come with an associated QR code which might be easier!
You can print out a paper copy of the access code, and store it inside your Digital Legacy Planning, such as The Life File.
You can remove the contact at any point and change it to someone else if you need to.
You can remove the contact at any point and change it to someone else if you need to.
So what are you waiting for!
Let me know if you have any questions, I will always do my best to answer them.