Clarifying multiple accounts

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Clarifying multiple accounts

I have an iphone 11 and a macbook pro and I would like to use both to access photos via iCloud. My phone is signed in with a username@mac.com ID and my macbook with a username@gmail.com ID. both devices list the others (ie, the iphone lists both the iphone 11 and the macbook pro) under the settings-apple id info, so it would appear they are the same despite the difference in username. I would like to merge the two and end up with a single apple ID. Can I do this without losing my iTunes library and photos?

Thanks,

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15

Posted on Mar 23, 2020 5:38 PM

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Answer 1

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yojimboyo Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 23, 2020 7:50 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I was traveling down that road. Changed my apple id on macbook and icloud on macbook to username@mac.com (to match iphone). I also had to delete my icloud sign in and add again. This seemed to work. Now on to photo management. Thanks!

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Answer 2

Mar 23, 2020 6:02 PM in response to yojimboyo

What you have is your gmail address as your Apple ID, and you also have a mac.com address on the same account. These are called aliases. So you can use either to log in to your iCloud and Apple ID accounts. You can also access the account with username@icloud.com, which is an alias of username@mac.com. So all you have to do is to choose any one of the three and use it anywhere. You can also drop all but the iCloud.com as your Apple ID, but once you do that you can’t go back to a non-iCloud address as your Apple ID.

If I’ve confused you, here is Apple’s explanation—>Change your Apple ID - Apple Support Although it is a little confusing also.

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Answer 3

yojimboyo Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 23, 2020 7:13 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thank you. This makes sense and leads to my second question. How do I get the photos from my phone to my macbook - effectively syncing? I'm signed into each device (albeit under different aliases) and into iCloud but my library shows up empty on my macbook.

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Answer 4

Mar 23, 2020 7:37 PM in response to yojimboyo

If you turn on iCloud photos on both the iPhone and your Mac the photos should sync. If they don’t perhaps they are not the same Apple ID. Are you sure photos are enabled in Settings/{your name}/iCloud on the phone, and in System Preferences on the Mac?

Try logging in to https://iCloud.com with each of the two addresses and tap on photos. Do you see them with both?

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Clarifying multiple accounts

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