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How to sort or find apps that have been purchased with two apple IDs?

So I have "legacy" apps purchased or downloaded with another apple ID. I don't want any of them now, but I'm not hunting them down individually. Is there a way to sort them by ID purchased and then delete? Thx!

Mac mini, macOS 13.0

Posted on Oct 12, 2022 5:32 PM

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9 replies

Oct 12, 2022 8:50 PM in response to Michael Black

Ha, only if I had known I was making such a mistake back in the day. I know I'm not alone. So I say to apple, how can u let the same (fixable) mistake of new users fester for well over a decade? For years I've read requests to have the function to combine accounts, no matter where they originated, and as a retired developer, I know it can be done. :)

Oct 12, 2022 7:12 PM in response to jigsfrom washington

I see, but you could have simply made your MobileMe account at the time with your existing AppleID. That’s what I did. So when the shutdown of MobileMe was announced I moved my account to a iCloud account so I could keep my @me.com email address. But my original AppleID is still the primary login ID for all of it.


So my AppleID still uses my personal email as my primary login ID (which since about 2005/6 has been one of my own domain emails so it never changes again no matter what my ISP is) but my @icloud.com and my @me.com email addresses are simply alias login IDs to that same, single AppleID. I can login to my one and only AppleID with any of those three email addresses as they are all aliases to the same AppleID account.


I know none of that helps sort your situation now, but just pointing out that in the history of AppleIDs, it has never been necessary to create a new AppleID whenever Apple has introduced some new online service, or retired an existing service. Although I’ll acknowledge its not always been clear how to just keep one AppleID and use new services, or move on from old services when they’ve been retired (like MobileMe).

Oct 12, 2022 6:06 PM in response to Michael Black

Wow, that's my option? I can't even print the entire list of both accounts to do a comparison! So in short, the answer is that I can't...I have to hunt each one. I sure wish on day one (and it was day one when I first purchased an app in iTunes), Apple had told me NEVER to change my apple ID, thus helping create this ridiculous situation. And then not to provide some tool to correct... even worse.

Oct 12, 2022 6:28 PM in response to Michael Black

Yes, I did the same but later switched my focus to a new .me account when they came out. That was automatically converted to .iCloud (great), but the original remained. I'd now only like one account, the .iCloud. I'm thinking I could delete the first account, but then I have a large percentage of apps tethered to a dead account. I don't think the apps are deleted from a machine when the account is deleted, or are they?

How to sort or find apps that have been purchased with two apple IDs?

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