overview titleIn September, there had been some hope that Apple was working on a solution to allow users to merge multiple Apple IDs into one. The news came from an encouraging phone call from Apple's executive relations team saying that they were aware of the issue and seemingly working on it.

Now that iCloud has launched, many have been wondering if anything had come of the previous discussion. One reader emailed Tim Cook and received an official response. Apple is simply pointing users to a support document outlining your options for managing multiple Apple IDs. Unfortunately, merging is not one of the options.

Their recommended solution is, of course, to use the same Apple ID for both store purchases and iCloud. They also explicitly state that merging simply isn't an option:

Can I merge multiple Apple IDs into one?

You cannot merge two or more Apple IDs into a single one. You can, however, use one Apple ID for iCloud services and another Apple ID for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). See “Using one Apple ID for iCloud and a different Apple ID for Store Purchases” above for details.

The document does outline the possibility to use one Apple ID for store purchases and another for iCloud, but that's as far as it goes.

Top Rated Comments

EricNau Avatar
179 months ago
Unacceptable. It's Apple's flawed system that lead individuals to adopt multiple Apple IDs in the first place. Any MobileMe customer of 3 years has at least two: email@mac.com and email@me.com. Three if they had an Apple ID prior to joining (most probably did).

Apple employees, therefore, have at least four (their company email address). In addition to that, I had one given to me by iTunes Store support for iTunes, and one prior to the usage of email addresses (if I recall correctly, back then it was just a username, but later they required an email address which became your Apple ID).

At last count I have 6 Apple IDs. It's ridiculous. It's probably only a matter of time before Apple gives me another.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mak47 Avatar
179 months ago
My issue is simply that I'd like my @me.com email address to be my single Apple ID, instead of an old gmail account that I really no longer use.

Mail, contacts, calendars etc. all use that address as my iCloud account as of today. All the other one is for is for iTunes purchases.

While the current solution technically works fine, it just seems silly that Apple can't find a way to make this work. I can change my Apple ID in iTunes to a new email address if I want to with no trouble, why not my @me.com address?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pancakedrawer Avatar
179 months ago
I'm sure Apple will allow this in the future.
There are many people who signed up today and there will be more in the future now that we're over the disaster that was MobileMe.
Insisting that people keep their old gmail accounts going doesn't sound like it would fit well with Apple's idea of enhancing their ecosystem.
:apple:
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ryan.stewie Avatar
179 months ago
I activated iCloud on my current gMail Apple ID but they won't let me change my primary login email to the new iCloud @me.com address, even though they are the same Apple ID! Ridiculous!
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
levifig Avatar
179 months ago
That's a really "old" article and no update has been made recently. That is the exact wording since I saw it the first time a couple of months ago, before rumors of merging were surfaced.

I don't care if Apple allows merging publicly but we testers had to create new IDs for iCloud pre-migration and are now stuck with two, unnecessary, IDs and some of us already paid for iTunes Match and storage upgrades… :\
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cindyhy Avatar
179 months ago
Why do Apple refuse to do that? This problem has been bugging people (me included) for years. It certainly isn't a technical problem. So is it legal? Do they want to discourage people from getting multiple accounts? Why?:confused:
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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