You Can Now Migrate Purchases Between Your Apple Accounts
Don’t miss the sight of pigs soaring majestically above the snow-covered peaks of Hades: Apple has published a support article explaining how to migrate apps, music, movies, TV shows, books, and other digital purchases from one of your Apple Accounts to another.
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 only used for purchases. You’ll need to know the primary email address or phone number and password for both accounts, and neither account should be shared with anyone else.
We’ve been asking for this capability for decades, as Glenn Fleishman did in “Apple ID Becomes Mac OS X and iCloud Glue” (8 September 2011). Put simply, it might be welcome if you have long used one Apple Account in Settings and System Settings for iCloud and other key features but another for Media & Purchases.
Purchase migration isn’t available to users in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or India, likely due to legal, financial, or data privacy regulations. However, for Apple users throughout the rest of the world, it’s an answer to “Why can’t I merge two Apple Accounts?” that we never thought we’d get.
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.
In reality, migrating purchases from one account to another is not the same as merging accounts. Apple specifies that iCloud data, account balances, and personalized recommendations in Apple’s media apps won’t transfer from the secondary account, and you won’t be able to edit any App Store reviews created with your secondary Apple Account. Other users have noted that TestFlight betas also don’t transfer. Apple doesn’t mention in-app purchases, so while it seems logical that they would transfer, if they’re important to you, perhaps hold off until more information becomes available.
Rather than detailing the migration process, I recommend that you read Apple’s documentation, which is highly detailed, extremely specific, and full of caveats. It explains why you might want to migrate purchases, who can migrate purchases, what to do before migrating purchases, how to perform the migration, what happens when you migrate, why migration might fail, how you can undo migration, and the consequences of undoing migration.
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.
It’s slightly odd that you can initiate migration only from an iPhone or iPad, but Apple is undoubtedly betting that almost everyone in this situation will have an iPhone or iPad along with a Mac. It makes sense to reduce the chance that the feature could cause problems on the Mac when relatively few will need it at all, and almost no one will use it more than once.
Well, this is a surprise. Finally I might be able to migrate all the purchases on my former work account to my private account. Sage advice to wait methinks - I’m not sure I want to be on the bleeding edge of this one.
As of today, you can now migrate purchases from one Apple account to another.
Very interesting.
I’ve been thinking of doing some major work on my iTunes collection, which includes purchases from two main iTunes Store accounts. (Confusingly, the two accounts show up as having four different purchasers for various historic reasons.) My plans would be greatly simplified if I can confidently migrate purchases from my original, 20+ year old, pre-Apple-ID iTunes Store account into my main Apple account.
I admit to some trepidation, especially around some of the discontinued, single source material, like certain iTune Essentials collections, but I guess that’s what backups are for.
Apple have just announced that (at last) you can “Migrate purchases from one Apple Account to another Apple Account”
This feature however isn’t available to users in the European Union, United Kingdom, or India. I can understand why the EU may be excluded, but not why the UK (where I am based). Is this a Donald Trump directive
Interesting! Why don’t you think the EU can have this? And maybe it’s not here in the UK (also where I am) because of recent demands by the Home Office for an end to Advanced Data Protection?
But wow, what a stupidly long list of caveats! This is definitely going to be inconvenient, and it’s hardly emancipatory in any case because the migration is recorded, reversible and not transferable or repeatable. It’s clearly designed to meet one very specific use case—great for those who need it, but not what I’d want from a feature that allowed you to move purchases between accounts, which is a big part of what makes disposing of an iCloud account so difficult. This has to be the work of rightsholders. And perhaps those same rightsholders also explain the difficulties in the UK and EU which harmonised their copyright legislation?
Maybe Apple is trying to even out the support load by not going worldwide immediately.
It does seem to be going worldwide apart from EU, UK and India.
I’m just guessing, but my guess is that, particularly for media purchases in the iTunes Store and the book store, transferring purchases is a complicated legal rights question. That was always the best supposition I’ve read why Apple didn’t make this possible before. So it may be that Apple is still negotiating rights agreements with publishers in the music, movie, and book publishing industry in the EU, UK, etc., that allows transferring of purchases while also allowing Apple to prevent the second account from ever purchasing anything again. (Perhaps that latter part interferes with laws in the EU?)
This is a common practice in rolling out cloud-based apps. Make it available to a small subset of your users. Then if it works well for them, expand the scope. Repeat a few times until everybody has the update. This way you don’t get (as) swamped with angry support calls, should there be a serious bug that you missed during internal testing.
The US market is a pretty big market to use as a staging/testing area, but presumably there have already been smaller-scale tests that haven’t made the press.
So I tried it, and it failed. The message I got was “Unable to Migrate Purchases. One or both accounts is not eligible for purchase migration.”
I chatted with first-line support, and then had a call from second-line support. The one suggestion that looked plausible was the requirement that I needed to turn off purchase sharing within family sharing on the account I was trying to migrate from. This was a little complex – apparently to do that you need a machine where the purchasing account is the primary iCloud login, so I had to create a secondary account on a laptop to be able to access that setting – but when I did that I got the same result. (And I can’t afford to spend more time today on the phone with Apple.)
The support person sounded like the next requirement I might run into problems with was " * 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."
Both the computers I have show my music library associated with the secondary account. And it’s consistent with the music library I have on my iPhone and iPad–although I don’t know a way to check which account the iOS/iPadOS music library is “associated with”. But I have no way to know whether there’s some “music library data” associated with the primary account that’s still lurking out there, or how to get rid of it if there is.
Any thoughts? Anyone run into this?
Dave
Does anyone know how this interacts with FaceTime or iMessage? I use a .mac account for primary use and a secondary account for apps/media, but I also use that second account for FaceTime and iMessage. Does the secondary account then become a synonym for the primary account, and do you get continuity with folks who were messaging you with your secondary account?
Maybe the Support article was intended for April First and leaked early!
I read through the Apple support page, and one item in particular is giving me pause:
I’m not at all sure what that means.
If you used iTunes to purchase songs from two accounts, wouldn’t that mean that “music library data” would exist for both accounts? Or is that a reference to cloud libraries via iTunes/Apple Match or an Apple Music subscription?
In my case, I have a very old Apple Account that started as an iTunes Store account before iTunes Store accounts had to be email addresses. The original account was a plain nickname, though it was later converted to an email address. I have a few hundred songs that show up in Apple Music as purchased by “nickname”. Those purchases formed my original music library.
I later switched to purchasing using my separate .Mac/MobileMe email account in the same library. I’ve since used iTunes Match on that same library. In other words, I have a single music library that includes songs purchased by two Apple accounts.
Now I’m just confused and a little too nervous to mess with my library until braver people test the waters. I’ve wasted too much time over the years cleaning up after iTunes/Music cloud/sync disasters.
My suspicion is that if something about your accounts prevents migration of purchases, the option won’t appear or you’ll be denied before it starts. But we won’t know until people start testing.
Per my experience above, the option appears–you can request it, enter the relevant Apple Account passwords, and then get a cryptic message that it is “Unable to Migrate Purchases. One or both accounts is not eligible for purchase migration.”
Dave
One user on Mastodon reported success, with a little fiddling beforehand:
I can also report a successful merge. I had an old Apple Account used only for apps and music purchases, nothing else. No iCloud data, no active subscriptions, no Apple Music library. My primary Apple Account doesn’t have an Apple Music library neither, but podcast data, and is part of a family setup. The migration, done on an iPhone, was quick and smooth. So far all seems working, old purchases visible in the purchases history list.
I’ve had 2 Apple accounts forever, ever since there was a time when that seemed like a sensible thing to do.
I guess that was from before family sharing was introduced in 2014, so even with separate login ID’s family members could purchase apps and music with the same purchasing ID.
That’s worked fine, and I don’t see a compelling reason to change. I’m 15 years older than my wife, and 45 years older than our daughter, so for future planning IDK if I can simply bequeath that account to one of them, or if I should find another route?
How do you see that? I have iTunes 12.8.3.1 on my iMac and in the Account menu I’m told I have 3 computers authorized to PLAY content purchased with the account and 2 devices that can DOWNLOAD purchases. The 3 computers aren’t listed but besides my iMac, probably refer to some of my previous Mac computers: Macintosh LC, iMacs G3, G4, & G5, my PowerBook 145b, etc.
BTW, what determines if an Apple ID account is “primary” or “secondary”? Date of creation? When Apple created iTunes in 2001, I created an iTunes account using my AOL address. Later when Apple released Dot Mac in 2002, I created an Apple ID using it but only used it for registering hardware purchases, leaving iTunes, and later App Store, and Mac App Store purchases with the AOL based Apple ID.
My assumption is that means if you have already tracks that were purchased with an old Apple Account in your Library, this won’t work. I have a couple due to them using old email addresses, in addition to one for Japan. Music and Apps from these accounts mix happily together, but you need to use the associated secondary id and password for those tracks/apps.
This is interesting news. I have had two accounts forever, originating in different Apple services. One is now my iCloud account and the other is for purchases. It is not really a big inconvenience, and even has some advantages.
One particular use is when travelling overseas. I still want my iCloud services, but sometimes there are location-restricted apps where you have to login to the local app store. You used to be able to switch stores in the App Store app, but I cannot find any way to do it now.
So I have a UK Apple ID which connects me to the UK App Store, and when I am travelling there, I can access UK-specific apps while still keeping my iCloud services. App updates are a pain though, but for a few weeks while travelling, they can wait.
Why is the UK not being allowed to do this?
I can understand the EU and India, as perhaps it’s their pushing of third-party app stores that has somehow fudged roll-out this feature in those two. But the UK hasn’t done that, so what’s the reason for us here?
(will we ever find out the actual answer? Or will Apple just leave all three of us in the lurch with no explanation as to why?)
Soooooo annoying, as I’ve had this problem since MobileMe forcing its users to set-up a new Apple ID, some 15+ years ago. Pffftft Apple!
UPDATE: UK and EU now have this, so only India remains without the feature.
Note the quotation marks around the word ‘works’. As seemingly migrations are often failing for reasons users cannot clarify during their investigations as to why it failed.
On the third of three long calls with Apple senior support to figure out why migration wasn’t working, I discovered that an old Test Flight item was the culprit. Even though that testing was finished, and I had deleted the TestFlight app from the devices a couple of years back, something was still “there.” Support had me re-download TestFlight, select every “stop” available, and that allowed the migration to proceed. Apple’s description says “if your account is used with TestFlight” which suggests presently - but actually it’s “has ever been used” with TestFlight.