Migrating Apple Account Purchases Between Accounts

Apple:

If an Apple Account is only used for making purchases, those purchases can be migrated to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them.

This feature isn’t available to users in the European Union, United Kingdom, or India.

[…]

You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you’ve purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account. The secondary Apple Account might be an account that’s used only for purchases. You’ll need access to the primary email address or phone number and password for both accounts, and neither account should be shared with anyone else.

Apple:

• Neither Apple Account can already be used for migrated purchases. Learn how to undo a migration of purchases. If you undo a migration of purchases from a secondary account, you won’t be able to migrate purchases again for 1 year.

• You can’t migrate purchases if both the primary Apple Account and the secondary Apple Account have music library data associated with each of them.

Via John Gruber:

This might be the “finally” to end all finallys. I really never thought I’d see this day where Apple finally made this possible. This document presents a solution to a situation I’ve been in (and with each subsequent media purchase, digging deeper into) for over 20 years.

[…]

So fast forward to today, and I’ve had two Apple Accounts on every device I use for the last 20-or-so years. One for “Media and Purchases” (my original iTunes account, using the @daringfireball.net address), and my primary Apple ID (the @mac.com address). All my purchases — all the music, books, apps, subscriptions, and thousands of dollars in movies that I’ve purchased with that iTunes account over the years — are using an Apple Account that’s not my iCloud account.

[…]

I’ll wait and let others try this before I do (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it), but if any of you try this, I’m curious how it goes — especially if you’re part of a family sharing group.

It really seems more like migrating purchases (as the title of Apple’s support document says) rather than merging accounts. iCloud data, account balances, and TestFlight betas don’t transfer.

Sean Heber:

It appears that Apple’s new account migration stuff does NOT work for TestFlight access.

That by itself is fine - whatever. The problem here is that it appears when someone does an account migration, it kind of half-migrates TestFlight somehow.

People are telling us their new email address to invite but TestFlight thinks they’re already a tester with that email address!

So you can’t just reinvite them. It seems we have to filter for the user, remove them, then add them as a new tester.

Craig Hockenberry:

If you’re hearing from testers about being kicked out of TestFlight because of the new account migration stuff, DO NOT update their email. It’s a lot of work and will not help them.

For now, you MUST give them a public link, even if it’s a private beta.

Adam Chandler:

Here’s why I can’t add my migrated AppleID to Messages or FaceTime or set it up as a custom domain in iCloud+ Mail….it’s not gone. Apple appears to let me “unmigrate” indefinitely back to having two IDs. I want Apple to release the old one so I can actually use it.

Also, it’s dumb that you have to migrate on iOS and not MacOS. The same panel in MacOS does not offer a migrate option but like usual, MacOS is a second class citizen in Apple’s eyes.

John Voorhees:

I started buying music from iTunes on a Windows PC for an iPod before I owned any other Apple products. Those purchases were linked to one email address. Later, when I got my first Mac, I got a .Mac email address, which became a MobileMe account and, finally, an iCloud account. That left me with an iCloud account for iCloud services and a different address for my music, movies, TV shows, apps, and other purchases.

I’ve gotten used to the process of signing in to different accounts for iCloud and my purchases, but every now and then, it causes some hard-to-troubleshoot conflict somewhere. That’s why I’m glad to see there’s now a process for moving everything to one account. However, having also lived through many iCloud headaches over the years, I think I’ll wait a while before attempting a migration.

See also: TidBITS-Talk and Mac Power Users Talk.

Previously:

• Secondary Apple ID Mess and Inadvertent Password Reset
• Multiple Apple ID Accounts
• iOS Betas Tied to Apple ID
• Developer Apple ID’s to Require Two-Factor Authentication

Update (2025-02-13): Adam Engst:

Ironically, when Tonya and I were testing Apple Invites last week (see “Streamline Event Planning with New Apple Invites Service,” 4 February 2025), she experienced some confusion because her everyday Apple Account is tied to a rarely used mac.com email address rather than her primary email address. Attempting to respond to an invitation with her primary email address led her down a rabbit hole when she discovered it was linked to another unused Apple Account, likely created decades ago for testing purposes. “If only you could merge the two,” I joked, never realizing it would become possible just days later.

[…]

Be sure to read everything carefully if you’re considering migration. In particular, be aware that after migration, the secondary account can no longer be used for Media & Purchases unless you explicitly undo the migration. And once you undo a migration, that account can’t be migrated again for a year, so you don’t want to goof around. I also recommend waiting a few weeks to increase the likelihood that Apple has fixed any bugs that might affect you.

Update (2025-02-14): John Gruber:

Apple has added a new requirement before proceeding with migration:

You can’t migrate purchases if your secondary Apple Account is used with TestFlight for testing beta versions of apps from a developer. Open TestFlight and select Stop Testing for each app to remove it from your account.

Update (2025-02-25): Jeff Carlson:

The process is complicated and includes several caveats, so let’s walk through it together.

Update (2025-02-27): Zac Hall:

The only problem is that there are also secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, and denary requirements as well. There were so many requirements that I had to learn what comes after tertiary!

Best of all is that the tool doesn’t explain what went wrong when your two Apple Accounts don’t meet the very strict criteria. It just fails.

[…]

But alas, two weeks later, I’m no closer to migrating purchases from my Apple Account used for iTunes and the App Store than I was 14 years ago.

Landen:

I have called in multiple times and spent over 8 hours with Apple support the last couple weeks because of the exact same scenario. The culprit seems to be that both accounts have a music library associated with them. Even though there is an Apple support article that says the secondary account music library will replace the first, the second level support agent was able to confirm that if both accounts have a music library, the migration will fail and cannot be completed. I don’t even get the migrate purchases option anymore. Hopefully Apple will fix this for those of us that are early adopters of iCloud!

App Store Apple ID FaceTime iCloud iMessage iOS iOS 18 iTunes Store Mac Mac App Store macOS 15 Sequoia TestFlight

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