I’ve been one of those people with one account for media, purchases and subscriptions and another one for iCloud. The purchases account, referred to as secondary in this document, is shared with family members (i.e., they use this same account and credentials for purchases too). Family members in turn have their own individual iCloud accounts.
I’ve never tried doing Family Sharing with this setup because it seemed confusing — it wants to use the iCloud account as the primary one whereas I’ve always added credit to the purchases account (taking advantage of some Apple Store Code discount offers).
Now, I have some credit balance on my purchases account, but I do see the “Migrate Purchases” option in settings even though this document says it won’t be available until I:
> Spend any balance remaining on your secondary Apple Account.
If this is enforced during migration or prevents me from migrating, I’d have to wait for a year or so to use up that balance. Apple really should’ve included account balance transfer as part of the migration.
To add to this mess, I actually have two purchases accounts across two different countries (i.e., one purchases account for one country and another one for a different country). I’ve only purchased free items in one of those accounts. This works, with some inconvenience, while I don’t touch my iCloud account at all.
I’m really interested in getting this sorted out (using one account per family member and using Family Sharing), but it looks like I may run into more problems.
If anyone here did read all the way till here, I’m open to suggestions on simplifying this as well as warnings and gotchas.
Ditto. I used a Coinstar machine earlier this year to convert a few years worth of coins to Apple gift cards, but I accidentally redeemed the cards to my Apple "Media & Subscriptions" account. Now I've got about $140 there. My Apple One family subscription will use it up soon enough so I set a reminder to migrate purchases in a few months.
> I’ve never tried doing Family Sharing with this setup because it seemed confusing — it wants to use the iCloud account as the primary one whereas I’ve always added credit to the purchases account (taking advantage of some Apple Store Code discount offers).
I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem and yet this - what you speak of - is precisely why I will never try to really exercise any Apple software.
The company finds it impossible to do anything as simple and helpful as draw a system diagram of (say) laptop, phone, cloud, and their mirrorings, and their backups one to another, and their basic interactions.
To take the most obvious example, the precise workings of iTunes - even at the level of user visibility - were always a mystery, and shall always remain so, even in their subsequent reincarnations.
It seems pretty likely that they block transfer of accounts with a balance to reduce the likelihood of fraud from account reselling. There may also be tax implications.
Yes, they could find ways to mitigate that and could even transfer purchases without balance. But it is worth considering the anti-fraud angle.
Now it would be great if Apple allowed associating more than one country for my purchases to my apple id, i.e. based on having credit cards issued by banks in different countries.
Seems that for Apple does not exist the concept of living between to countries (expats, dual citizens, etc)
Belgian born and raised. I had 3 keyboards on my phone, all QWERTY (I can't stand AZERTY) but with different spell checks (Dutch, French & English)
When iOS 18 came out with this feature I turned it off, because it's not smart enough to infer context (at least when I used it, maybe it got better?), and messed up autocorrects.
Media (music, film, TV, app) content licenses are country specific. Apple is relatively good about providing global access to purchased content. Amazon alters the list of available titles based on client IP/VPN geolocation. Some streaming vendors entirely block client devices based on IP/VPN geolocation.
To nuance, the Kindle store is more open than any of the stores I know of. As long as the account is created on the right country store, Amazon won't care about a real address or the credit card's country and will allow for digital purchases of any content available.
Streaming goes through the Prime portal so it's more tricky, but getting access to foreign ebooks without trouble is to me a pretty big deal.
You can log out of your US account in App Store, login with your other country account, download the app, then log out and log back in to your US account.
It will maintain authentication for some time and let you update the app, but eventually it expires. Then you get the sketchiest dialog box ever randomly when doing anything on your phone:
“If you have an Apple ID, enter the password”
What it actually means to say is, “I know you have another Apple ID that’s not currently logged in as primary, and I’m trying to background update apps owned by that account but the authentication expired. Please enter the password for [other Apple ID].”
Depends on what it is. Apps absolutely shouldn't be geo-blocked. While I agree that other media shouldn't be geo-blocked, it's more to do with distribution rights and licensing deals and isn't really something Apple can solve for directly, save to support banning the practice in the EU. The EU needs to focus on Hollywood for movies and the music industry to deal with that.
I think I have 4-5 accounts (including one using a friend's old Californian street address so I could access US-only apps that weren't available in Australia at the time), so I'm very keen to try this.
Edit: "Make sure both accounts are set to the same country and region for purchases." Arghh!
I imagine cross country purchase transfer would be a nightmare to implement or the purchases would be multi-region to start with. My ideal world would be if region locks were just banned, but instead each country/media outlet is just adding restrictions to what citizens can access.
Owned purchases may have some sort of import fee to account for lost tax revenue to make sure not purchased in country with lower tax then transferred which may be very complex to calculate.
Media/music especially is often edited/licensed for a specific country and only offered in a specific language per country. I’d prefer if Apple owned up to being a premier media outlet by providing every cut, sub and dub offered in every country for a single purchase in any country, but I am sure it saves Apple a few pennies on network transport and translator fees to restrict the options. If they could get a music contract allowing for original songs any director used originally that would be cake. Just imagine learning a languages by watching the original cut of your favorite movies in other languages. If Eddy Cue wanted to leave a memorable legacy it would be remove as many region restrictions as possible creating a class of global citizens.
Be warned: I migrated an old Apple account to my main Apple account and my “Continue Watching”/Watchlist in the TV App got totally cleared. It also forgot every Apple TV episode I have ever watched.
Super frustrating and it won’t let me undo the migration right now either.
An update on this: I tried undoing the migration the next day, and it worked! Everything on my main account was restored, including the TV app’s 'Continue Watching' and Watchlist feeds. Kudos to Apple—the undo function actually worked, which was a pleasant surprise.
Finally! No more going to the ancient account to restore some really old purchases. Now, not sure if I should keep separate accounts still for different countries. I know you can access the store from another country, but the switching is cumbersome compared to just logging in with it; some apps like one of my banks, just don't publish their app on countries where they don't operate, and when the autoupdate fails with the default login, I just use input the other one and it gets the update from the correct store.
On a related note, something interesting, but not sure if it can be reproduced anymore: there are universal ones like this Huawei smart app back in 2019, for the smart band and bathroom scale I had at the time. I had to download it from my country's store for a simple signup/login process, because if I did it from the US store, it always needed a phone number. They worked the same, and I'm pretty sure it was the same app (as in the ID, app bundle, and all that... not a different app for the other market) Could that have been possible?
If only Google would follow suit. As it is, you can't even change your Google Account's main email address if it's Gmail. "The address used to identify your Google Account to you and others. You can’t change this address."
Readit News
I’ve never tried doing Family Sharing with this setup because it seemed confusing — it wants to use the iCloud account as the primary one whereas I’ve always added credit to the purchases account (taking advantage of some Apple Store Code discount offers).
Now, I have some credit balance on my purchases account, but I do see the “Migrate Purchases” option in settings even though this document says it won’t be available until I:
> Spend any balance remaining on your secondary Apple Account.
If this is enforced during migration or prevents me from migrating, I’d have to wait for a year or so to use up that balance. Apple really should’ve included account balance transfer as part of the migration.
To add to this mess, I actually have two purchases accounts across two different countries (i.e., one purchases account for one country and another one for a different country). I’ve only purchased free items in one of those accounts. This works, with some inconvenience, while I don’t touch my iCloud account at all.
I’m really interested in getting this sorted out (using one account per family member and using Family Sharing), but it looks like I may run into more problems.
If anyone here did read all the way till here, I’m open to suggestions on simplifying this as well as warnings and gotchas.
I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem and yet this - what you speak of - is precisely why I will never try to really exercise any Apple software.
The company finds it impossible to do anything as simple and helpful as draw a system diagram of (say) laptop, phone, cloud, and their mirrorings, and their backups one to another, and their basic interactions.
To take the most obvious example, the precise workings of iTunes - even at the level of user visibility - were always a mystery, and shall always remain so, even in their subsequent reincarnations.
Yes, they could find ways to mitigate that and could even transfer purchases without balance. But it is worth considering the anti-fraud angle.
Sony, I'm looking at you...
Hey, did you know that Apple discovered that they can allow you to select multiple languages simultaneously for the spell checker? When? In iOS 18...
Like, for example, Belgium hasn't existed since iOS 1 (they use at least 3 languages currently there, as far as I know).
When iOS 18 came out with this feature I turned it off, because it's not smart enough to infer context (at least when I used it, maybe it got better?), and messed up autocorrects.
Streaming goes through the Prime portal so it's more tricky, but getting access to foreign ebooks without trouble is to me a pretty big deal.
Some apps are country specific. My banking app wasn't available in the USA app store, so that alone meant I had to keep a separate iPhone.
It will maintain authentication for some time and let you update the app, but eventually it expires. Then you get the sketchiest dialog box ever randomly when doing anything on your phone:
“If you have an Apple ID, enter the password”
What it actually means to say is, “I know you have another Apple ID that’s not currently logged in as primary, and I’m trying to background update apps owned by that account but the authentication expired. Please enter the password for [other Apple ID].”
Apple could do the same, with sufficient internal or external motivation.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_24_...
But really, OMG, finally. I tried the process and it worked. Goodbye, legacy account I've been dragging along with me for the last decade!
Edit: "Make sure both accounts are set to the same country and region for purchases." Arghh!
Owned purchases may have some sort of import fee to account for lost tax revenue to make sure not purchased in country with lower tax then transferred which may be very complex to calculate.
Media/music especially is often edited/licensed for a specific country and only offered in a specific language per country. I’d prefer if Apple owned up to being a premier media outlet by providing every cut, sub and dub offered in every country for a single purchase in any country, but I am sure it saves Apple a few pennies on network transport and translator fees to restrict the options. If they could get a music contract allowing for original songs any director used originally that would be cake. Just imagine learning a languages by watching the original cut of your favorite movies in other languages. If Eddy Cue wanted to leave a memorable legacy it would be remove as many region restrictions as possible creating a class of global citizens.
This is a setting nowadays, meaning that you can now change that for any account now. I have done that a few times already.
Super frustrating and it won’t let me undo the migration right now either.
On a related note, something interesting, but not sure if it can be reproduced anymore: there are universal ones like this Huawei smart app back in 2019, for the smart band and bathroom scale I had at the time. I had to download it from my country's store for a simple signup/login process, because if I did it from the US store, it always needed a phone number. They worked the same, and I'm pretty sure it was the same app (as in the ID, app bundle, and all that... not a different app for the other market) Could that have been possible?
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/11/about-migrating...
I submitted a blog post on how to merge manually about 4 years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27797535
https://brianstucki.com/how-to-manually-merge-two-apple-ids-...
I'm sure glad I procrastinated on that.