Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: a Legacy Contact is the only supported way to give someone access to your Apple Account data after you die, it takes about two minutes to set up, and the thing to understand before you rely on it is what it excludes — purchased media, subscriptions, and everything in iCloud Keychain, which is to say your passwords and passkeys.
What Apple says it is
From Apple’s own support page: “A Legacy Contact is someone you choose to have access to certain data in your Apple Account after your death”, and adding one is “the easiest, most secure way to give someone you trust access to the data stored in your Apple Account after your death.” The data “might include photos, messages, notes, files, device backups, and more.”
Your Legacy Contact does not need an Apple Account or an Apple device — Apple says so in terms, which matters when the person you trust most is the one family member on Android.
What it does not cover, in Apple’s words
“Inaccessible data includes movies, music, books, or subscriptions you purchased with your Apple Account, and data stored in your iCloud Keychain (payment information, passwords, and passkeys).”
Read that twice, because it is the whole planning problem in one sentence. The Legacy Contact does not inherit your passwords. Every account whose recovery runs through Keychain — which for most Apple users is nearly everything — stays locked. Purchased media does not pass either: a lifetime of bought films and books is licensed to you, not owned by you, and the licence ends with you.
So a Legacy Contact solves the Apple data problem and not the digital life problem. The second one needs a written inventory and a password strategy that does not depend on any single vendor’s feature.
What the heir actually needs
Apple states the requirement plainly. To file an access request after your death, they need “The access key that you generate when you choose them as your Legacy Contact” and “Your death certificate”.
The access key is generated at setup, and this is the step people get wrong: a Legacy Contact who does not have the access key has nothing. Print it, put it with the will, and tell them it exists. A key that only exists on your locked phone is a key nobody can reach.
Apple also notes that “Documentation requirements might vary by country or region” — its own example is Japan, where a family certificate is used instead of a death certificate.
What to do with this, in order
Set the Legacy Contact up, and hand over the key. The setup is worthless without the second half.
Do not put passwords in your will. A will becomes a public court record in probate. Whatever your platform features do, that rule does not move — and it is why the inventory belongs somewhere else entirely.
Write down what exists. Not the passwords: the list. Which accounts, which provider, which are paid, which hold money. An executor who knows what to look for can find a way in; one who does not know the account exists cannot.
The planning frame this sits inside is at digital assets in estate planning, and the other major platform’s version is at Google’s Inactive Account Manager.
Sources
Every quotation above is from Apple’s own support article How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account (support.apple.com), read 2026-08-06. Platform features change without notice and this page carries its read date for that reason — if Apple’s page and this one disagree, Apple’s is right and we want to know. See also methodology.
We are not affiliated with Apple, we earn nothing from this page, and there are no affiliate links on it.
Why this setting outranks your will. Nearly every state has adopted a law that puts the platform’s own tool at the top of the priority order and your will second — the statutory hierarchy, quoted.