Most of us do not think twice about our digital lives.
We take photographs, send messages, manage our finances and store important documents without ever asking a simple question:
What happens to all of this when I am no longer here?
Previous generations left behind photo albums, paperwork and personal possessions. Today, much of our lives exists behind passwords.
Our memories, conversations, finances and important records are increasingly stored on phones, computers and online accounts. Together, they form our digital legacy.
Understanding it is no longer just about technology. It is about reducing uncertainty, protecting privacy and making life easier for the people we leave behind.
What Is a Digital Legacy?
Your digital legacy is everything connected to your life in the digital world.
It can include online accounts, photographs, videos, emails, documents, subscriptions, digital purchases, websites and information stored across devices and cloud services.
Some of it has financial or legal importance. Much of it has personal value. For many families, both matter equally.
The law is also beginning to recognise that some digital assets can be objects of personal property rights. The UK’s Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 confirms that a thing is not prevented from being personal property merely because it does not fit older categories of property. That does not mean every online account or file is automatically inheritable; contracts, intellectual-property rules and provider policies still matter.
A Digital Legacy by the Numbers
Planning remains unusual.
A 2024 survey of 14,631 Which? members found that 76% had no plan for their digital assets after death. Only 18% had left instructions explaining how someone could access their accounts, while 3% had included digital assets in a will.
The gap is clear: most adults now maintain a substantial digital life, but few leave a usable map of it.
Most People Already Have One
You do not need to be famous or highly technical to have a digital legacy.
If you own a smartphone, use email, store photographs, pay bills online or shop through an account, you have already created one. For most people it grows quietly over many years.
The problem is not that nothing has been preserved. It is that nobody else may know what exists, where it is or what should happen to it.
Your Digital Legacy Does Not Wait
Most physical possessions stay where you leave them. Your digital life does not.
Subscriptions expire. Storage limits are reached. Security settings change. Companies update their policies. Some services may eventually remove inactive accounts or stored content.
Google’s Inactive Account Policy reserves the right to delete a personal Google Account after two years of inactivity, although Google says it will send advance warnings before taking action.
Once you are no longer managing your digital life, the clock starts ticking. Important material can become harder to find or disappear, not because anyone chose to lose it, but because nobody was there to maintain it.
Keep a Safe Offline Map
A simple physical notebook can be one of the most useful parts of a digital legacy plan.
It should record:
- the devices, accounts and services you use;
- where important documents are kept;
- which person should be contacted;
- where secure recovery instructions can be found;
- whether an account or archive should be preserved, transferred or closed.
It should not contain plaintext passwords, security answers or recovery codes.
Think of the notebook as a map, not a key. Keep it with other important papers and make sure one trusted person knows where it is.
Begin With the Big Two
For many people, the most useful first step is already built into the phone they use every day.
Apple allows an account holder to nominate one or more Legacy Contacts. After the account holder’s death, a Legacy Contact can request access to certain Apple Account data using an access key and a death certificate. Apple does not provide access to everything: Keychain passwords, payment information and some licensed media are excluded.
Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets an account holder decide when an account should be treated as inactive, who should be notified, which selected data may be shared and whether the account should eventually be deleted.
These tools are free. Neither replaces a will, professional legal advice or a full estate plan, but both can remove a significant practical obstacle.
Practical, Personal and Private
A useful way to organise a digital legacy is to separate it into three parts.
Practical
The accounts and information someone may need to manage your affairs: banking, bills, insurance, pensions, subscriptions, domains and business services.
Personal
The material people may value: photographs, videos, voice recordings, family messages, emails and personal archives.
Private
The material that should remain restricted or be deleted: private conversations, personal files, confidential work and anything you do not want preserved.
This distinction matters because a digital legacy is not a demand to save everything.
Privacy or Preservation Is Your Choice
Most people have parts of their digital lives they would not want opened to everyone.
Planning should therefore answer three separate questions:
- What should be preserved?
- What should be shared, and with whom?
- What should be deleted?
The purpose is not to provide unrestricted access to an entire life. It is to make deliberate choices while those choices are still yours to make.
Access Is Not the Same as Understanding
Even perfect access does not preserve a complete story.
A folder may contain ten thousand photographs without explaining who appears in them. A video records a moment without showing why it mattered. An email preserves words without carrying the full meaning of a relationship.
Technology has become remarkably good at storing information. It is less effective at preserving context.
The next stage of digital legacy planning is therefore not simply to preserve more. It is to preserve the right material with enough explanation that the people who inherit it can understand its value.
A Simple Starting Checklist
- Identify your important digital accounts and devices.
- Create a safe offline map without plaintext passwords.
- Add an Apple Legacy Contact or configure Google Inactive Account Manager where relevant.
- Separate practical, personal and private material.
- Decide what should be preserved, shared or deleted.
- Make sure one trusted person knows that the plan exists.
- Review it when your circumstances or main services change.
Sources and Scope
This framework uses current official guidance from Apple, Google and UK legislation, together with consumer research from Which?. Platform features and policies change, so the practical Help Centre should be reviewed regularly.
Guidance last checked: 3 August 2026.
This is general information for readers in the UK. It is not legal, tax or financial advice. Complex estates, business assets, cryptocurrency and disputed access rights may require professional advice.