Apple Support: ‘About Migrating Apple Account Purchases Between Accounts’

New Apple support document dropped today:

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. Learn more about how to migrate purchases.

  • At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in for use with iCloud and most features on your iPhone or iPad will be referred to as the primary Apple Account.

  • At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in just for use with Media & Purchases will be referred to as the secondary Apple Account.

This might be the “finally” to end all finallys. I really never thought I’d see this day when 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.

This whole thing started so long ago that I can’t even recall exactly how I got into this. As best I can recall it went something like this. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003, I created my store account using an @daringfireball.net email address. In some sense that seems like an odd choice in hindsight, insofar as that’s my “work” address, but at the time (even though Daring Fireball was less than a year old) it felt like my best “forever” email address. I felt very certain from the start I’d be doing this forever.

I chose to use my DF email address for the iTunes Store in 2003 despite the fact that I had created my @mac.com email address in the summer of 2002 when Apple launched .Mac — a few weeks before I launched Daring Fireball. I signed up for .Mac to get a good username, “just in case” (although I didn’t score “gruber” — someone beat me to it, despite the fact that I signed up during or soon after the end of the keynote in which .Mac was announced), but I never anticipated using it much. But .Mac became MobileMe, MobileMe became iCloud, and iCloud now is one’s primary Apple Account. 20 years ago it just wasn’t clear at all that the .Mac account I created would be so central to being an Apple platform user for decades to come.

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.

Apple has made this bifurcation work pretty well over the years, seemingly not just because many longstanding customers are in the same boat as me, but many Apple employees are themselves passengers on that boat. “Just make it so you can transfer purchases from a secondary old account to your primary one” sounds easy, conceptually, but apparently it was devilishly tricky under the hood.

But it seems Apple has figured it out and implemented a solution. 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.

(Via Chris Espinosa, who I suppose counts as both a longstanding employee and customer.)

★ Tuesday, 11 February 2025