Second iCloud email address?

Is it possible to have a second iCloud email address? If so, how?

I would like a second email address to separate personal and financial correspondence. Is this reasonable? Possible?

If possible, I would like the second address to be unable to download apps.

Itā€™s absolutely possible to add a secondary iCloud email address to macOS or iOS (or iPadOS). I have a second and third one myself.

In macOS, itā€™s usually in System Preferences, in the Internet Accounts pane. There should be an iCloud selection to the right.

On iOS / iPadOS, itā€™s in the Settings / Password & Accounts.

For both, I believe that there is a button to create an Apple ID on those pages, which is where you would start to create a new iCloud account.

iOS and MacOS will always use your primary iCloud account for app downloads and purchases.

Thanks, Doug, for the response and the instructions.

First, I should have been more clear that part of my question was whether having the second email address is kosher. In other words, does Apple frown on having multiple email addresses?

In Internet Accounts on my Mac, clicking on iCloud does offer me the opportunity to create a new Apple ID. Maybe the nomenclature is confusing me, but I would like the email address without the new Apple ID. Since the email address is the Apple ID, I assume that creating a new Apple ID is an essential step in getting the new email address. Are they inextricably bound together?

Once I create the new Apple ID (and therefore email address), how do I designate my old Apple ID as primary? Do I simply not use the new Apple ID for logging into anything? Since I only want email, is it as simple as ensuring all other check boxes associated with the new Apple ID in Internet Accounts are unchecked?

Sorry for all the silly questions. Iā€™d rather get it right the first time than try to clean up some mess later. Thanks for any help.

As far as Apple is concerned, an iCloud email address is an Apple ID. So, that is how you create a new one - create a new Apple ID.

Your primary Apple ID is the one that is signed in when you set up the phone or log in to your Mac account for the first time. In the Settings app of iOS, your primary Apple ID for the phone is the one at the top of settings. On Mac, iirc itā€™s the one in the iCloud pane of system preferences.

Not to confuse you more, and just to be complete, but it is possible to log out of your primary ID in the App Store or the iTunes Store and log in with another Apple ID just for those apps, which would allow somebody with two Apple IDs who bought apps or movies with a second Apple ID to access them. (Probably the eBook Store as well, but Iā€™ve never used that myself. Or the Game Center - but I think you get the idea). But, if you do nothing, by default those are logged in with your primary Apple ID.

Doug Miller wrote: ā€œit is possible to log out of your primary ID in the App Store or the iTunes Store and log in with another Apple ID just for those apps, which would allow somebody with two Apple IDs who bought apps or movies with a second Apple ID to access them.ā€

Aside from the little problem that if you switch Apple store (apps, music subscription, etc) Apple IDs on a device, you canā€™t switch it back again for 90 days. I think you can switch IDs used only for iCloud more often, but I wouldnā€™t swear to it since I havenā€™t tried that.

Still waiting for my work test Apple ID to ā€˜expireā€™ on my iPhone 4s so I can reclaim it for my own use again, sigh.

An iCloud account can have up to three email aliases:

An earlier version of Appleā€™s services, .Mac or MobileMe, allowed 5 aliases, and legacy users with more than 3 are grandfathered. I just checked, and was surprised to see that I have 6 iCloud email addresses ā€” my ā€œmainā€ address plus 5 aliases. Apparently, the main address doesnā€™t count as one of the aliases, so maybe you can have 4 total? (My 6 are grandfathered back to .Mac.)

Apple does not generally recommend using multiple AppleIDā€™s as it can get confusing and cause conflicts.

I think what the OP is looking for is a way to use alias e-mail addresses and have them delivered to his iCloud account.

Hereā€™s an iMore article on how to accomplish that:

<https://www.imore.com/how-to-create-icloud-email-alias>

Sent from my iPad

-Al-

I happen to have two aliases due to changes implemented by Apple over the years. They are xx@mac.com and xx@me.com. These work for receiving emails straight into my icloud mail account although, for some reason, I can no longer send emails as xx@me.com.
Try sending an email to and from yourappleid@mac.com. If it works then you could use that for business/private emails. Otherwise, as Jeffery suggests, you can manually set up icloud aliases that work in a similar way.
The other option is to create another non-Apple email account such as Gmail and set up Apple/iOS mail to access that account. I have a Bigpond account that I use in this way. I would avoid setting up a second AppleID.

The way that I read it was the OP wanted a second email account in order to separate personal and business email messages, into two separate mailboxes. Having an alias of an account just has all of the email deliver to the same in box.

Forget all I said about logging in to a second Apple ID for App Store, etc., content; you can certainly create a second Apple ID iCloud email addres just for email purposes on an iOS ot MacOS device and not worry about it being used for content purchases. Your primary Apple iCloud account will be used for all of that, and that account is the one that is set up originally with the phone and is the one that you see in the Apple ID section at the top of the Settings app.

Not if you impose a rule to have it routed to a separate mailbox. I do exactly that when I feel the need.

Sure, you can create a rule, but you canā€™t do so from any settings on an iOS device, and itā€™s a lot easier to use two separate email accounts. You always have the All Inboxes view if you want to see it all of the messages together. And having it each go to their own separate mailboxes makes notifications much more reliable.

Thereā€™s also a ā€œmirror imageā€ problem. As far as Apple is concerned, the email addresses someone@mac.com, someone@me.com, and someone@iCloud.com are the same, but I donā€™t think theyā€™re interchangeable as Apple ID is concerned. Also, most receiving email servers donā€™t consider someone@mac.com to be the same person as someone@me.com, which can create issues when one subscribes to listservs or websites where one uses oneā€™s email address for authentication.

Thank you to everyone who responded, and I apologize for not being more clear on my goal. Doug Miller is correct; I was asking how to create a second email account to separate personal and business email messages. I was asking that because I had assumed, in Dougā€™s words, ā€œitā€™s a lot easier to use two separate email accounts.ā€

In retrospect, I should have asked myself if thatā€™s true. Is it better to have separate email accounts rather than separate folders in one email account? If it is, then how much granularity is appropriate? Do I have one account for friends and family, another for banks and credit cards, another for rewards programs, another for government interactions, and so on? What is the stopping point?

It seems that the main advantage to an alias would be to see who is sharing my email address, but that works best if I have as many aliases as contacts. Am I missing something? Michael Paine, how would I send email from appleid@mac.com if Iā€™ve never had a mac.com address? Sorry for the ignorant question.

I was asking about getting another iCloud email address because I thought that made more sense than a Google email address based on privacy issues. Once upon a time, I investigated getting a commercial email address (like at pobox.com) but I never did anything. Would there be some reason, if I wanted multiple addresses, not to get multiple addresses with Apple? Michael, you said you would avoid setting up a second Apple ID.

FWIW, almost all my email is sent from Mail on a Mac; I hardly ever send using an iPad. I believe I have never sent email from an iPhone. I do read email on iOS devices.

Thanks again for the responses, and thank you for your thoughts on organizing my electronic life.

This is really more of a question than an answer. Gmail, and some other email systems, allows you to include a ā€œtagā€ in the email address. For example, email sent to me+tag@gmail.com is delivered to me@gmail.com. This tag is visible in the message in the inbox so it can be used to filter messages or to identify the sender.

I tried this in Apple mail and it appears to work. I created a rule to put emails sent to me+archive@mac.com into my iCloud archive folder.

My question: Is this a supported feature of Apple mail?

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To answer this, you cannot for a new iCloud account. All the information about this is here: About your @icloud.com, @me.com, and @mac.com email addresses - Apple Support

Quoting the important bit:

  • If you created an iCloud account on or after September 19, 2012, your email address ends with @icloud.com. Learn more about @icloud.com mail addresses.
  • If you created an iCloud account before September 19, 2012, or moved to iCloud with an active MobileMe account before August 1, 2012, you have both @me.com and @icloud.com email addresses.
  • If you had a working @mac.com email address as of July 9, 2008, kept your MobileMe account active, and moved to iCloud before August 1, 2012, you can use @icloud.com, @me.com, and @mac.com email addresses with your iCloud account.

A good bit of research there - thank you. So the only option along these lines is to create icloud aliases.
Regarding setting up a second AppleID, it is all too easy to use the wrong account when dealing with Apple - your AppleID is used for a range of things. I prefer to have a separate, non-Apple account which I can still access from Mail on a Mac or iPhone.

Having a separate email address for every business and website is quite useful. In addition to making it even harder for an attacker to reuse credentials, if any one address is involved in a breach or starts getting spam, itā€™s easy to change just that one and not have to change everything everywhere. For in-real-life friends and coworkers I use two addresses, for work and home, with some people using both. Those addresses are spam magnets, but so far not beyond what filters can cope with.

Itā€™s definitely worth trying out the excellent fastmail.com. Not free, but worth every penny because you get to be a customer instead of a product. In addition to about 500 aliases, they provide some file and web space which is adequate for small static web sites. The web interface is good enough that Iā€™ve stopped using a dedicated mail client on the desktops. Thereā€™s server-side filtering (sieve), though anything more complex than say sorting mailing lists into their own folder might need a bit of a learning curve, but since sieve is a standard, tutorials abound.

Fastmail spam filtering isnā€™t as good as spamsieve, so I have my account set up in apple mail on my server. Fastmail gets the most obvious of the spam, then spamsieve does a great job on whatā€™s left over. I almost never have good mail going to spam anymore and I almost never get spam in the inbox.

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Yes. Gmail. I have several gmail addresses for different ventures. This has worked fine for the last 11 years. I canā€™t say the same for some of my Apple mail accounts, like iWeb and earlier addresses before iCloud. I donā€™t think I trust Apple for my email anymore after seeing how sloppy they have gotten with updates and upgrades where services get lost or broken. Having said that, I still have an iCloud email address that I havenā€™t used.
I recommend Gmail for all the extras, or Proton mail if you like serious encryption.

Here is the issue I ran into. I had an Apple ID: myname@icloud.com, which I had used for many years. I went thru a divorce and legally changed my name back to my maiden name. Apple does not allow you to change your Apple ID but you can create an alias. So for email, I now use mymaidenname@icloud.com. However, email addressed to either of the above mentioned email addresses arrives in Mail the same way; I can not separate emails addressed to myname (Apple ID) from those addressed to mymaidenname (alias Apple ID; most email that comes in w/the original myname Apple ID is generally spam, anyone who knows me uses the alias w/my legal name.) To add insult to injury, if I want to sign in to anything w/my Apple ID, such as icloud.com on the web, anything on the Apple site that requires signing in w/an Apple ID, logging into iTunes (when it was still iTunes), etc, I MUST sign in using the original Apple ID, the alias is not recognized as a valid Apple ID; the alias only functions for email. So everytime I need to sign in to anything w/my Apple ID, I am forced to use the original Apple ID which had my married name, I can not use the alias that contains my current legal name. In my opinion, Apple really needs to think long and hard about how the Apple ID functions and should allow changes to the Apple ID, not merely the use of aliases.

I think that Apple email is more secure than Gmail. Can an expert here tell me what the facts are? I have 4 Apple Idā€™s - one is for buying apps on my IOS devices, one is used for my primary email, another for another endeavor I have, another which I do not use. No problem so long as you keep them straight.