A generation ago, a family’s memories were mostly in shoeboxes and photo albums. Now they’re spread across phones, cloud storage, email and social media. That makes it easy to keep thousands of photos, but harder to make sure anyone can get to them later.
Your digital legacy is everything you leave behind online. That includes things your family will want to keep, like photos, videos and messages, and things that will need closing down, like accounts and subscriptions. A little planning now can save the people you love a lot of stress later.
Planning your own digital legacy
Make a list of your accounts. Include email, social media, cloud storage, online banking and subscriptions. You don’t need to write down passwords for the list to be useful. Just knowing what exists helps.
Use the tools that are already there. Several big services let you decide in advance what happens to your account:
- Facebook lets you choose a legacy contact to look after your profile once it’s memorialised. You can also ask for your account to be deleted after you die.
- Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you choose people to be notified, and to receive some of your data, if your account isn’t used for a set period.
- Apple lets you add a Legacy Contact who can request access to your iCloud data after your death.
Each takes a few minutes to set up. Settings change over time, so check each service’s own help pages for the current steps.
Think about how your family will get in. Some password managers have an emergency access feature for a trusted person. Avoid putting passwords in your will: in England and Wales, a will becomes a public document once probate is granted. You can still mention your digital accounts and wishes in your will, or in a letter kept with it. A solicitor can advise you.
Say what you’d like to happen. Do you want your social media memorialised or deleted? Are there photos you’d like particular people to have? Writing it down takes the guesswork away from the people left behind.
Leave something in your own words. Some people record a few voice notes or videos for their family, or write down the stories they want remembered. It doesn’t need to be polished. Hearing your voice may mean a great deal to someone one day.
Looking after a loved one’s digital legacy
If someone close to you has died, sorting out their digital life can feel overwhelming on top of everything else. There’s no rush with most of it, but a few things are worth doing early:
- Save photos, videos and voicemails before phones are reset, sold or upgraded. Keep copies in at least two places.
- Check with each service before closing an account. Facebook and Instagram, for example, can memorialise an account instead of deleting it, so friends can still visit. Most services have a process for next of kin, which usually needs a copy of the death certificate.
- Cancel subscriptions and anything else that takes regular payments.
- Gather stories while people still remember them. Ask family and friends to share memories, in writing or as voice notes. They’re easy to lose and impossible to replace.
Where online memorials fit in
Photos and accounts hold a lot of someone’s life, but they’re scattered and private, and often tied to logins only one person had. An online memorial is different. It’s one place, made on purpose, where anyone can go to remember them.
Some memorial websites hold a full life story, photo galleries and messages from friends. The Bridge of Lights is simpler. Each candle holds their name, their years and a short message of up to 70 characters, and it stays on the bridge permanently, with no subscription to renew. Anyone can find it by searching their name or candle number, and you can share it with family wherever they live. It isn’t an archive of their life. It’s a lasting place to remember them that anyone can visit.
Many families do both: they keep photos and stories safe privately, and have a candle as somewhere everyone can go.
Start small
You don’t need to sort everything out at once. Setting up one legacy contact, saving one folder of photos or writing down one story is a good start. It’s also one less thing for the people you love to worry about later.