You Apple ID password is a particularly important one, so it’s vital that you not only keep it very secret, but also change it from time to time–or at least as often as needed.
Think about it: your Apple ID password can let you buy virtually anything from the Apple ecosystem, whether it’s music, movies, apps, or subscriptions. It’s fantastically convenient to be able to have all that buying power at your fingertips, but it also implies a a lot of responsibility. As is true with any password, should it fall into the wrong hands, you could face some very costly damage control.
Today, we want to show you how to change your Apple ID password and point out a few other items you might want to know about.
Start by heading to appleid.apple.com. Go ahead and type in your Apple ID username and password.
If you have two-factor authentication set up on your account (hopefully you do), then you will need to verify your identity using a trusted device.
The Apple ID account page lets you change your name, address, birthday, email addresses, and see which devices are attached to your account. You can also change your billing and shipping information and sign for various Apple newsletters.
Feel free to peruse all these at your leisure, but what we’re here to do is change our password, which can be done under the Security heading.
There’s quite a bit going on here, but suffice to say the most important item is perched at the very top.
Make sure you try to use as strong a password, and ideally put it in a good password manager. Apple requires that it be at least eight characters, have upper and lowercase letters, and contain at least one number.
Remember, once your password is changed, all your attached devices will be affected, meaning that if you’re logged into your Apple account on your Mac or iPad, you will need to change the password there so you can use iCloud and make purchases.
You may also want to take a moment, if you have not already, to enable two-step verification, which is one of the most important security settings you can use.