Digital Legacy Planning: How to Organise Your Online Life for Your Family

Here is something nobody wants to think about, but everyone should: if you died tomorrow, could your family access your photos? Could they find your accounts? Would they know which subscriptions to cancel, which passwords unlock what, or even which email address half your online life is attached to?

For most people, the honest answer is no.

We spend years accumulating digital lives, spreading our photos across three cloud services, our money across multiple banks and apps, our memories across a dozen social platforms. But almost nobody leaves a map. When someone dies without one, the people left behind face months of detective work, locked screens, automated password resets to email accounts they can't get into, and the quiet grief of knowing that thousands of family photos might be gone forever.

It doesn't have to be this way. Organising your digital life for your family is not complicated, it doesn't require a solicitor, and you can do most of it in a single afternoon.

What counts as a digital asset

Before you start making a list, it helps to understand just how much of your life exists online. Digital assets fall into a few broad categories.

Accounts with money. Online banking, savings accounts, investment platforms, PayPal, Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets, pension portals, premium bonds. These have direct financial value and are often the most urgent for families to access.

Accounts with memories. Your photo libraries (iCloud, Google Photos, Amazon Photos), social media profiles, messaging apps with years of conversation history, cloud storage with documents and videos. These may not have monetary value, but they're often the most emotionally important.

Accounts with obligations. Subscriptions that will keep charging a card: streaming services, software, app subscriptions, gym memberships, insurance renewals, domain name registrations. These need to be found and cancelled.

Accounts with access. Email is the big one. Almost every other account on this list uses an email address for password resets. If your family can't access your primary email, they'll struggle to access almost everything else.

Devices. Your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop. The passcodes or passwords that unlock these are the front door to everything.

Step 1: Make the list

This is the core of the whole exercise. Sit down and write out every account you can think of. You don't need to include passwords at this stage, just the account, the platform, and which email address it's registered to.

A good way to start is to work through your phone. Open your settings and look at which accounts are signed in. Check your email inbox for any recent receipts, subscription confirmations, or login notifications. Look at your browser's saved passwords, most browsers will show you a list of every site you've ever saved a login for.

Some categories to prompt your memory:

Email: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, work email, any older accounts you still use for logins.

Social media: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky.

Financial: Every bank, credit card provider, investment platform, pension portal, tax account (HMRC Self Assessment, IRS account), PayPal, Stripe, cryptocurrency exchange or wallet.

Shopping: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, any retailer where your card details are saved.

Subscriptions: Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, Apple Music, YouTube Premium, Adobe, Microsoft 365, newspapers, magazines, meal kits, gym apps.

Cloud storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, Amazon Drive.

Communication: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Discord.

Utilities and services: Energy providers, council tax, water, broadband, mobile phone contract, insurance (home, car, life, health).

Domains and hosting: If you own any websites or domain names, note the registrar and hosting provider.

Loyalty and rewards: Airline miles, hotel points, supermarket loyalty points, credit card rewards. These can sometimes be worth hundreds or thousands of pounds.

Don't worry about being completely comprehensive on the first pass. You'll remember more over the following days. Keep the list somewhere you can update easily.

Step 2: Secure the list

This is where most guides tell you to write your passwords on a piece of paper and put it in a safe. That works, but there's a better option.

Use a password manager. Tools like 1Password, Bitwarden, or Dashlane store all your login credentials in one encrypted vault, protected by a single master password. If your family has the master password (or you set up their emergency access feature), they can access everything.

Most major password managers now include emergency access or sharing features specifically designed for this scenario. 1Password allows you to create a shared vault or print an emergency kit. Bitwarden has an emergency access feature where a trusted contact can request access after a waiting period you define. These tools are purpose-built for exactly this problem.

If you prefer pen and paper, write your key passwords (email, phone passcode, password manager master password) and store them in a sealed envelope with your will or in a home safe. Tell your executor or a trusted family member where to find it. Keep the list updated, passwords change.

The minimum your family needs: Your phone passcode, your primary email password, and your password manager master password (if you use one). With these three things, they can unlock almost everything else.

Step 3: Set up the built-in tools

Several major platforms now offer free tools specifically designed to handle your accounts after death. These are genuinely useful and take just a few minutes each.

Apple Legacy Contact. Lets you designate up to five people who can access your iCloud data (photos, messages, notes, files) after your death. They'll need the access key Apple generates and a copy of your death certificate. Set it up in Settings > [Your Name] > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact.

Google Inactive Account Manager. Lets you choose what happens to your Google data (Gmail, Google Photos, Drive, YouTube) after a period of inactivity. You can designate up to 10 trusted contacts to receive specific data, write them a message, and choose whether the account should be deleted. Set it up at myaccount.google.com/inactive.

Facebook Legacy Contact. Lets you choose someone to manage limited aspects of your memorialised profile after your death (pinning a tribute, updating your profile photo, responding to friend requests). You can also choose to have your account deleted instead. Set it up in Settings > Accounts Centre > Personal Details > Account Ownership and Control > Memorialisation.

Instagram does not currently offer a Legacy Contact or pre-planning tool. Your family can request memorialisation or deletion after your death, but there is no way to designate someone in advance.

TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and Snapchat also lack pre-planning tools. For these platforms, your family will need to contact each one individually after your death with appropriate documentation.

Setting up Apple, Google, and Facebook alone covers the majority of most people's digital lives. Do these three today and you'll have handled the biggest pieces.

Step 4: Handle your photos

For many families, photos are the single most important digital asset. They're also one of the easiest to lose.

Know where your photos actually are. They might be on your phone, backed up to iCloud or Google Photos, copied to a laptop, stored in a shared family album, posted on Facebook or Instagram, or scattered across all of these. Work out which locations contain the definitive copies of your most important photos.

Make sure at least one backup exists that your family can access. If all your photos are in iCloud and nobody has your Apple password or Legacy Contact access, those photos could be lost. Consider creating a backup on a shared family cloud account, an external hard drive stored somewhere accessible, or a service like Google Photos where you've set up Inactive Account Manager.

Organise what you can. You don't need to sort thirty years of photos perfectly. But labelling a few key albums ("Wedding," "Kids growing up," "Mum and Dad's house") makes it enormously easier for someone else to navigate them later.

Step 5: Write down your wishes

This doesn't need to be a legal document. A simple note that says what you'd like to happen is enough. Your family may not follow every detail, but having your preferences written down removes the guesswork.

Things worth addressing:

Social media: Do you want your accounts memorialised (preserved as a tribute) or deleted? This is entirely personal. Some people find comfort in a memorialised profile that friends and family can visit. Others prefer everything removed. Neither choice is wrong, but making it saves your family from agonising over the decision themselves.

Photos and videos: Are there specific photos or albums you'd want shared with specific people? Is there anything on your devices that you'd prefer to be deleted rather than seen? Being honest about this is a kindness.

Email and messages: Would you want a family member to have access to your email and messages, or would you prefer they remain private? This is one of the more sensitive decisions, and there's no right answer.

Subscriptions and financial accounts: Who should handle cancelling subscriptions and managing financial accounts? If you have a will, your executor is the natural person. If not, name someone.

Your memorial: How would you like to be remembered online? Would you want a dedicated memorial page, or would you prefer your family to handle things privately? If the idea of a digital memorial appeals to you, you might consider creating one in advance that your family can add to after your death.

Step 6: Tell someone

This is the step most people skip, and it's the most important one.

You can set up every legacy tool, organise every password, and write the most detailed instructions in the world, but if nobody knows any of it exists, it's all useless.

You don't need to have an awkward sit-down conversation about death over Sunday lunch. You can simply say: "I've put together some notes about my online accounts and passwords. They're in [location]. If anything ever happens to me, that's where you'll find everything you need."

That one sentence could save your family weeks of stress, thousands of pounds in lost assets, and the heartbreak of losing irreplaceable memories.

A weekend project, not a life's work

The whole thing sounds like a lot when you read it as a list, but in practice, most people can get through the essentials in a few hours. Make the list, set up a password manager (or update the one you already have), configure Apple, Google, and Facebook's legacy tools, and write a short note about your wishes. Then tell one person where to find it all.

Review it once a year, the same way you'd check your smoke alarms or renew your insurance. Accounts change, passwords change, and new services appear. A quick annual update keeps everything current.

The people who will benefit from this work are the people you love most. They'll never have to use it if everything goes well. But if the day comes when they do need it, you will have given them an extraordinary gift: the ability to grieve without also having to solve a puzzle.

Left This World helps families create lasting digital memorials, a dedicated space to bring together photos, stories, and tributes from everyone who loved them. If planning your digital legacy has you thinking about how you'd like to be remembered, you can start a memorial today. Create a memorial →