Digital legacy

Apple, Google and Facebook all let you name someone. Hardly anybody does.

Written by the Nestbound team

If you have an iPhone, Apple lets you name one person who can get into your photos, your notes and your files after you die. Google has had something similar since 2013. So has Facebook.

You’ve probably never switched any of them on. There’s a good chance nobody ever told you they were there.

All three are free, all three take about five minutes, and all three are worth doing. Below is what each one gives the person you name, and, more usefully, what each one leaves out.

What Apple lets you do

Since the end of 2021 an iPhone, iPad or Mac can hold the name of a Legacy Contact. The person you choose gets a key. It’s a short code, and they need to keep it somewhere they will still be able to find in ten years. When the time comes they take that key and a copy of the death certificate to Apple, and Apple gives them access.

They get photos, messages, notes, files and the backups of your devices. That covers most of what a family goes looking for.

Apple leaves two things out, and both surprise people. Your saved passwords aren’t included, and neither are the card details Apple keeps alongside them. Nor is anything you bought: the films, the music, the books, the subscriptions. Those end with the account.

What Google lets you do

Google has run its version since 2013 and calls it Inactive Account Manager. Google works on a timer rather than on a death certificate.

You choose how long the account has to sit unused before Google decides something has happened. The choices are three months, six, twelve or eighteen. When that time is up, Google emails as many as ten people you’ve named, and shares whichever parts of the account you picked for each of them. You can also tell it to delete the whole account instead.

The timer counts from the last time you signed in. That is worth a moment’s thought. A long illness starts it running. So does a phone that stopped working. Google sends reminders to you first, at the address and phone number it has, before it does anything.

What Facebook lets you do

Facebook has offered this since February 2015 and asks you to choose between two things. Either the account is memorialized when you die, or it is deleted entirely.

If you choose memorialized, you can name a legacy contact. They can write one post that sits at the top of the page, and that is what most families use it for. They can answer friend requests from people who were not connected before. They can change the profile picture. If you give permission in advance, they can download a copy of your photos and posts.

They can’t log in as you and they can’t read your messages. Facebook is explicit about that, and the account is locked, so nothing already on it can be changed or deleted, by them or by anybody holding your password.

Each one only knows about itself

Nobody mentions this part when they recommend setting these up.

The person you name at Apple can’t get anywhere near the Google account. Google’s ten people can’t get into Facebook. None of the three knows the other two exist, and not one of them has anything at all to do with the bank, the insurance company, the pension or the attorney.

Switching on all three is still worth an afternoon. It covers three accounts.

Somebody still has to know you did it

Apple’s person needs the key, and they need it beforehand, because it can’t be handed over afterwards. Google’s timer starts from a date nobody else can see. Facebook’s contact needs to know they have been named at all.

All three need one thing none of the three can arrange. Somebody has to know you set it up.

Where that gets written down is up to you. A note in the filing cabinet does it. So does a line on a page your family will find: Apple Legacy Contact is set up, it is Susan, and the key is in the gray box with the passports.

Sources

All three arrangements, written down where your family will actually find them. Here is a finished binder, every page, free to read: the example binder.