That was easier than I thought it would be…

First, some background.

There once was a time when every time I walked into an Apple Store they asked me for an email address. At the time I was trying every free email provider on the planet, so I’d give the Apple folks whichever email address I was using at that particular moment.

What I didn’t know is that Apple was creating Apple IDs with all these weird email addresses. I didn’t find this out until years later when I was talking with Apple Tech support about some purchased music that I couldn’t locate in my iTunes library.

When the representative asked me which Apple ID I’d purchased the music under, I was taken aback. To my knowledge I had a primary Apple ID and a secondary Apple ID that was used exclusively for purchases.

The Representative told me I had 15 Apple IDs that had become associated with my name over the years. How he knew this, had something to do with them all being associated with my phone number or other identifying stuff.

Needless to say, I asked that he delete all but the primary and move my purchases to the primary account. I was trying to implement Highlander rules and make it so “there can be only one!”

Alas, that wasn’t possible. So I stuck with the two Apple IDs and in fact it was a security feature because if someone got my primary Apple ID, they wouldn’t have access to my credit card information stored with the secondary ID. A pitiful security feature but that was the best I could do at the time.

Apple has since strengthened their security and I began to wish that I only had one Apple ID. 

Within the past month or so, Apple rolled out the ability to merge IDs.

I gave it a shot yesterday. I’d seen that other people were having problems with the process and since I had a large library of music and video I called Apple Support.

I wanted them to be there watching on their end in case everything blew up. At least they’d leave fingerprints on the process.

The Representative was very helpful and we walked through the process together. Much to my surprise, (because when it comes to software, if it’s gonna break, it’s gonna break on me,) the process worked like a champ. Everything from the secondary and primary accounts moved/merged within just a few minutes. Apple warns that it could take hours. 

The Apple Representative waited patiently as I made appropriate changes to My computer, iPad, Watch, Apple TVs, HomePods, and HomePod Minis.

Everything worked as advertised and now

There is Only One!

It’s a simple thing, but it will make maintenance and replacing devices in the future much simpler.

So good job Apple!

And thank you.