{"id":48762,"date":"2025-08-04T15:57:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T19:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48762"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:10:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:10:36","slug":"device-added-to-your-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/04\/device-added-to-your-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Device Added to Your Account"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/morrick.me\/archives\/10006\">Riccardo Mori<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/morrick.me\/archives\/10006\">\n<p>Whenever I revive one of these devices, if it&rsquo;s still able to access iCloud and other Apple ID-related services, I get a notification on all my other Apple devices that a certain device has now access to FaceTime and iMessage.<\/p>\n<p>The wording in this notification has changed for the worse in more recent versions of Mac OS and iOS\/iPadOS.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[With the previous wording] I can immediately recognise which Mac (or iOS device) it is because the notification itself is telling me its name. And yes, to be perfectly pedant, this should generally be a non-issue because such notification is expected after signing in on a recently-revived Mac. But the notification doesn&rsquo;t appear <em>immediately afterwards;<\/em> there is always some delay, and there have been times in the past where I saw this warning pop up on my iPhone while I was out and about, and caught me slightly unawares. Given the vagueness of the new wording, I did stop in my tracks and &mdash; since it wasn&rsquo;t a good time to fiddle with my phone &mdash; I rushed to find a quiet spot to enter Settings and check my devices. The device list took a long time to finally load, and while I waited I recalled I had recharged my 11-inch 2013 MacBook Air the previous evening, so the warning was probably about that sign-in.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Some may argue that the fact that the new wording for such warning &lsquo;makes you look&rsquo; and check is a sign of better security and better UI. But I don&rsquo;t agree, and the reason is that people very quickly learn to dismiss any warning that has become predictable and annoying.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>To me the worst parts are:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Even if you go to Settings it doesn&rsquo;t show you which device is the new one.<\/li>\n<li>The alert doesn&rsquo;t actually mean that the the device was <em>added<\/em> in the user sense. Most of the time the device was already in my account, but a software update or something meant that Apple needed to do some kind of key refresh. It feels like I&rsquo;m being interrupted for an implementation detail.<\/li>\n<li>The alert often arrives very late or only on a device that I rarely use, rather than on the one I was actively using at the time the other device was &ldquo;added.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@grishka\/114609328244934944\">Gregory<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@grishka\/114609328244934944\"><p>the problem is deeper. It&rsquo;s that this is a modal. It demands your attention right this moment. It stands in your way when you&rsquo;re clearly in the middle of something else.<\/p><p>These kinds of in-your-face attention-diverting modals are a pet peeve of mine. And I absolutely don&rsquo;t understand how Apple &mdash; the company that always prides itself on its UX prowess, and that is endlessly imitated &mdash; could be fine with this for as long as iOS has existed.<\/p><p>it could&rsquo;ve been a notification. It could&rsquo;ve been an email. It could&rsquo;ve been any number of things that allow the user to deal with it on their own time[&#8230;]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Doesn&rsquo;t the transient interruption make it more likely to be ignored?<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/martianbase.net\/@mackuba\/114954306540758689\">Kuba Suder<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/mackuba.eu\/post\/3lvdyxub6ck2u\">Bluesky<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/martianbase.net\/@mackuba\/114954306540758689\"><p>No Apple, I had this device for <em>9 years<\/em>, I just turned it on first time in a couple of months, come on, you surely recognize it? &#x1F644;<\/p><p>Every fucking time I turn on any device I don&rsquo;t use everyday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@lapcatsoftware\/114937763696165525\">Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@lapcatsoftware\/114937763696165525\">\n<p>I got this after updating to macOS 15.6, but I didn&rsquo;t update Xcode.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/07\/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa\/#:~:text=Would%20iOS%20ever%20look%20up%20Goldberg's%20name,get%20these%20all%20the%20time%2C%20and%20they\">The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/13\/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-permissions-requests\/\">A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Permissions Requests<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/28\/ventura-notifies-user-of-new-login-items\/\">Ventura Notifies User of New Login Items<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/31\/the-alert-hammer\/\">The Alert Hammer<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"device-added-to-your-account-update-2025-08-06\">Update (<a href=\"#device-added-to-your-account-update-2025-08-06\">2025-08-06<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/device-added\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/device-added\/\"><p>It is usually because of, as Tsai writes, a software update or perhaps adding a travel SIM, so it is poorly confirming something I already know in an interruptive and ambiguous way.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>What do I do now? That is rhetorical; I understand I would search it. (I also asked Siri on iOS 26 &mdash; you know, <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/10\/siri-product-knowledge\/\">the one with the product knowledge<\/a> &mdash; and it, too, searched Google.) But what does a normal person do now? This is scary and unhelpful, yet the user interface says in the same breath it might be irrelevant.<\/p><p>It reminds me a little of the <a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/two-factor-authentication-location\/\">often-wrong map<\/a> in the dialog box for two-factor authentication. These are features ostensibly to promote greater security but they only erode users&rsquo; awareness if they are not designed with more precision and care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"device-added-to-your-account-update-2026-03-19\">Update (<a href=\"#device-added-to-your-account-update-2026-03-19\">2026-03-19<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davemark\/116250540240890873\">Dave Mark<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davemark\/116250540240890873\">\n<p>Just got a series of &ldquo;Device Added to Your Account&rdquo; alerts on my iPhone and Mac. <\/p>\n<p>No new devices, no major updates.<\/p>\n<p>Checked device lists, all recognized.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this has to do with the &ldquo;Background Security Improvements&rdquo; update Apple just dropped?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote><p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/17\/macos-26-3-1-a\/\">macOS 26.3.1 (a)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Riccardo Mori: Whenever I revive one of these devices, if it&rsquo;s still able to access iCloud and other Apple ID-related services, I get a notification on all my other Apple devices that a certain device has now access to FaceTime and iMessage. The wording in this notification has changed for the worse in more recent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-08-04T19:57:08Z","apple_news_api_id":"dbdbc628-dd5a-4a71-8fb9-17c6b8edccc0","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-19T20:10:40Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A29vGKN1aSnGPuRfGuO3MwA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[707,77,558,140,31,2586,30,2598,2087],"class_list":["post-48762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-id","tag-design","tag-facetime","tag-imessage","tag-ios","tag-ios-18","tag-mac","tag-macos-15-sequoia","tag-software-update"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48762"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51306,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48762\/revisions\/51306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}