A legacy contact is a person you designate through Apple, Facebook, or Google to access parts of your account after you die. Each platform runs its own version of the feature with its own rules, and setup takes only a few minutes in your account settings. Skip it, and your family may need a court order and months of waiting to retrieve your photos, email, or files.
What a Legacy Contact Can Access
Permissions depend on the platform. An Apple legacy contact can access photos, messages, notes, files, downloaded apps, and device backups stored in iCloud.1Apple Support. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account A Facebook legacy contact can view posts (including those originally set to “Only Me”), manage the memorialized profile, and download photos, videos, profile information, and friend lists, though the download option has to be enabled in advance by the account holder. A Google trusted contact receives whichever services you select for them: Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Blogger, and others.2Google Account Help. About Inactive Account Manager
Every platform draws hard lines. Apple’s legacy contact cannot access movies, music, books, or subscriptions bought through the Apple Account, and nothing in Keychain opens up: payment information, passwords, and passkeys stay locked.1Apple Support. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account No platform hands over your login credentials. Your legacy contact never learns your password and cannot sign in as you or post as you. A Facebook legacy contact, specifically, cannot read your private messages or delete existing content.
Setting Up a Legacy Contact on Apple
Your Apple legacy contact can be anyone of any age, and they do not need an Apple device or Apple Account.1Apple Support. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account You can name more than one person.
On an iPhone or iPad, open Settings, tap your name, tap Sign-In & Security, and select Legacy Contact.1Apple Support. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account On a Mac, open System Settings, click your name, then click Sign-In & Security and select Legacy Contact. Add the contact by entering their name, then choose how to share the access key: send it through iMessage or print a PDF.
Hold onto that access key. After your death, your contact needs both the key and your death certificate to request access. If the key is lost, there is no recovery process. Only the account owner can generate a new one, so a lost key after you’re gone is a dead end.1Apple Support. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account Print a copy and store it with your other estate documents.
Setting Up a Legacy Contact on Facebook
You must be at least 18 to designate a Facebook legacy contact. Click the menu in the top right of Facebook, go to Settings & Privacy, then Settings, then Memorialization Settings. Type a friend’s name in the search field and click Add. You can send them a message letting them know.
Facebook offers a choice Apple doesn’t: instead of memorializing your account, you can request permanent deletion after your death. That option sits in the same Memorialization menu. A legacy contact can write a pinned post on the memorialized profile, respond to friend requests, and update the profile photo.
Setting Up Google’s Inactive Account Manager
Google doesn’t use the phrase “legacy contact.” Its tool is called Inactive Account Manager, and it triggers on inactivity rather than on a death certificate. You pick the waiting period: anywhere from 3 to 18 months, in three-month increments. You can designate up to 10 trusted contacts and give each one access to a different set of services.2Google Account Help. About Inactive Account Manager
When the timer runs out, Google emails your contacts a message you wrote during setup along with a link to download the data you chose for them. Each contact verifies their identity through a phone number you provide during configuration. The tool lives in your Google Account settings under Data & Privacy.
One warning: if you never set this up and your Google Account sits idle for two years, Google reserves the right to delete the account and everything in it.2Google Account Help. About Inactive Account Manager That applies even if your family would have wanted to keep the data.
What Happens If You Don’t Set One Up
This is where families get stuck. Without an Apple legacy contact, the only route to the account is a court order that names the specific Apple Account, identifies the requester as a legal representative or heir, and directs Apple to provide access.3Apple Support. How to Request Access to a Deceased Family Member’s Apple Account That means hiring a lawyer, filing a petition, and waiting on a judge. It takes months and costs money.
Without Google’s Inactive Account Manager, the account eventually gets deleted after two years of inactivity. Without a Facebook legacy contact, the account can still be memorialized at anyone’s request, but no one gets the administrative tools or download access a designated contact would have.
How Your Will Interacts With Your Designation
Nearly every state has adopted some version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, known as RUFADAA. One rule in that law matters directly here: directions you give through a platform’s own tool take priority over your will, trust, or power of attorney.
If you name your sister as your Apple legacy contact and your will names your brother as executor of your digital assets, your sister gets the access and your brother does not. The platform tool wins. Coordinate your designations with your estate plan so the right people hold the right access, and tell your executor who the legacy contacts actually are.
Changing or Removing a Legacy Contact
On Apple, open Settings, tap your name, tap Sign-In & Security, and select Legacy Contact. Tap the person you want to remove and follow the prompts.4Apple Support. Remove a Legacy Contact from Your Apple Account On a Mac, the same option sits in System Settings under your name and Sign-In & Security. On Facebook, return to Memorialization Settings, click Remove on the current contact, and add a new one.
If you change your Apple legacy contact, the old access key becomes invalid and a new one is generated for the replacement. Make sure the new person actually receives and stores it. Review all your designations after any major life change, and check once a year that everything still matches who you trust today.