From the course: macOS Big Sur Essential Training

Set up an Apple ID or iCloud account - macOS Tutorial

From the course: macOS Big Sur Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Set up an Apple ID or iCloud account

“

- [Instructor] If you've decided to set up an Apple ID or iCloud account, this video will show you how to do it. Just remember, it is possible to set up two separate accounts, but I strongly encourage new users to set up one account that will be used for both Apple ID and iCloud. Now, one option is you could go to the Apple ID website, which is appleid.apple.com and there's an option up here at the top to create your Apple ID. So, you can make your Apple ID here on this webpage, but I do want to caution you. If you set up your account on the web, it's possible that you could miss out on one of the core features of the iCloud service. The feature where you get a free email account. So, I think it's better to set up your new account in the settings in Mac OS itself. So, let's see two options for how to do that. One place you may encounter this is when you set up a new computer for the first time. During one step of that process, you'll see a screen like this prompting you to sign into your Apple ID account. So, if you do already have an account, you can just sign in, but if you do not want to set up an account, that's perfectly fine. You can click down here where it says set up later. If you do want to set up a new account, you can click where it says, create new Apple ID and you can go through the setup process there, but let's pause here and go to another scenario for setting up a new account. What if you have already gone through the first time set up of your Mac computer and you skipped this Apple ID set up at that time. In Mac OS, at any time you can go to system preferences. To do that, we'll go to the Apple logo in the top left corner, click on that to open this menu, then click system preferences. Now, I will introduce system preferences later in this course and really explain what it's all about, but from here, your Apple ID options will be up at the top of this window. If you're already signed in, you'll see your name there. If you're not already signed into an account, you can click sign in here and of course, if you already have that account information, you can plug that in and sign in, but if you're here to make a new account, you can click create Apple ID. And from here the steps are the same if you're in either of the two scenarios that I just showed. I'm just going to go through the first few steps, so we can see one important thing that I want to talk about. So naturally, I'm going to set a birth date. I'll just plug something in here, so we can go through the steps. I'll click next. Naturally, you'll need to put in your first name and your last name. Then you get to the step where you need to provide your email address and this is that one important step I wanted to talk about. You get an option here that you do not get when you set up your Apple ID account on the web. So, you can provide an email address that you already have if you prefer, then you will use that email address every time you sign into your Apple ID account, but there's another option here. If you click where it says, get free iCloud email address, then you do not have to provide an existing email account. Instead, you're able to set up a new email address which is one of the free services in iCloud and if you want an iCloud email address, then you need to do this. All you need to do is provide the first part of the email address here and of course the rest of it is already in there. It will be @icloud.com. So, whatever name you want @icloud.com will be your new email address. So, go ahead and choose whether you want to use an existing email address or if you want a new iCloud email address. Then of course, you can set your password and go through the rest of this process to create your account. Then in the future, your Apple ID will be signed in here in system preferences and later when you use the app store, the music application, the Apple TV application or any other place that requires you to sign into an Apple ID account, which are things we'll talk about in this course, then you'll have that account ready to sign in.

Contents