Google Inactive Account Manager: What It Does and How to Set It Up
The one tool Google gives you to decide, in advance, who gets your Gmail, Photos and Drive after you are gone. Exact setup steps, what it covers, and the gaps it leaves.
Google Inactive Account Manager is a free setting that tells Google what to do with your account after a period of inactivity you choose: 3, 6, 12 or 18 months. It can notify up to 10 trusted contacts, share the data you select with them, and optionally delete the account. Set it up at myaccount.google.com/inactive.
It is the only tool Google offers that lets you decide these things in advance. Without it, your family faces a case-by-case review process that Google itself describes as offering no guaranteed outcome. With it, the people you choose get the data you choose, on terms you set while you are alive and thinking clearly.
This guide walks through exactly what Inactive Account Manager does, the setup steps with the actual menu paths, what your family experiences after the timeout, what the tool does not cover, and how it compares with Apple and Facebook's equivalents. One thing to hold in mind throughout: Inactive Account Manager protects your Google data. It does not preserve you. That second job belongs to a digital legacy app, where you build a Persona from your memories, voice and story. Start free: 50 memories, no card.
In this guide:
What is Google Inactive Account Manager?
How to set it up, step by step
What happens after the timeout
What it does not cover
Google vs Apple vs Facebook: legacy tools compared
The inactivity trigger problem
If someone has already died without setting it up
Where it fits in a full digital legacy plan
Frequently asked questions
What is Google Inactive Account Manager?
Inactive Account Manager launched in April 2013, which made Google the first major technology company to offer formal after-death controls. It is free, and it is available on every personal Google Account. It covers the data behind that account: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, YouTube, Contacts, Calendar, Keep, Maps Timeline and more than a dozen other products, each of which you can allocate separately.
The core idea is simple. You tell Google how long a silence should last before it treats your account as abandoned. When that timer runs out, Google carries out the plan you wrote: it notifies the people you named, gives them the data you allocated, and, if you asked it to, deletes the account.
It is worth separating this from a different policy with a similar name. Since December 2023, Google has had a general inactive account policy under which personal accounts unused for two years can be deleted entirely, though Google has said accounts with YouTube videos are not being deleted under it. That policy happens to you. Inactive Account Manager is the version you control: same trigger, your rules.
How to set it up, step by step
Setup takes about ten minutes. You will want your trusted contacts' email addresses and mobile numbers to hand.
Open the tool. Go directly to myaccount.google.com/inactive, or navigate there: Google Account, then Data & privacy in the left menu, scroll to More options, choose Make a plan for your digital legacy, then select Start.
Choose your waiting period. Pick 3, 6, 12 or 18 months of inactivity. Google alerts you by email and text message about a month before the deadline, so confirm the recovery email and phone number on this screen are current.
Add trusted contacts. You can name up to 10 people. For each one, decide whether they are simply notified that the account is inactive or also receive data. If they receive data, tick exactly which products they get: Gmail but not Photos, Drive but not Maps Timeline, whatever split fits. Add each contact's mobile number, because Google will text them a verification code before any download is allowed.
Write the personal message. This text goes inside the notification email your contacts receive. A sentence or two explaining what the email is and why you set it up saves your family confusion at a hard moment.
Set the Gmail auto-reply if you want one. You can write a subject line and message that Gmail sends automatically to anyone who emails you after the account goes inactive, and you can restrict it to people in your contacts.
Decide about deletion. The final toggle, Yes, delete my inactive Google Account, wipes the account three months after it becomes inactive, including public content such as YouTube videos and Blogger posts. Your trusted contacts get that three-month window to download what you allocated. Deleted Gmail addresses are not reissued to anyone else.
Save the plan, and put a note in your calendar to review it once a year. Contacts move, phone numbers change, and a plan pointing at a dead email address is no plan at all.
Who should get what: allocation choices that work
The per-contact, per-product control is the most underused part of the tool, because the defaults nudge you toward giving one person everything. A more considered split usually serves a family better. A pattern that works for many people: a spouse or partner receives Photos, Drive and Gmail; adult children receive Photos and YouTube; whoever handles your affairs receives Gmail and Drive, since email is where statements, renewals and account recovery live; and a lawyer or accountant receives Drive only, if that is where your documents sit.
Two allocation decisions deserve a moment's thought. Gmail is the most sensitive product on the list, because an inbox is a diary nobody meant to write; give it to the person who needs it for practical matters, not to everyone. And Maps Timeline, Search history and similar activity data are separately allocable, which means you can simply leave them off every list. Nothing obliges you to pass on data your family has no use for.
What happens after the timeout
Here is the sequence from your family's side, because that is the side that matters.
About a month before the timer expires, Google tries to reach you on your recovery email and phone. If you respond, the clock resets and nothing else happens. If you do not, the account is declared inactive and the plan fires.
Each trusted contact receives an email that includes the personal message you wrote. If you shared data with them, the email lists exactly which products you allocated and includes a download link. Before anything opens, Google texts a verification code to the phone number you supplied for that person, so a forwarded email alone is not enough to reach your data.
The download arrives as archive files, in the same style as a Google Takeout export: mailbox files for Gmail, folders of images for Photos, documents for Drive. It is a snapshot, not a login. Your contacts never see your password and cannot send email as you, and once their download window ends there is no ongoing access.
If you enabled the auto-reply, Gmail begins answering incoming mail with your message. And if you chose deletion, the account and its public content are removed three months after the inactivity date.
What it does not cover
Inactive Account Manager does one job well. It is worth being precise about the jobs it does not do.
It does not transfer the account. Nobody inherits the login. Contacts get a one-time data download, not access, so anything that requires the living account, such as a subscription or a linked service, ends.
It does not trigger on death. The trigger is silence. If your family needs access two weeks after a funeral and your timeout is 12 months, the tool cannot be hurried, and they are back to Google's standard review process in the meantime.
It does not cover Google Workspace. Work and custom-domain accounts belong to the organisation, and the organisation's administrator decides what happens to them. Inactive Account Manager applies to personal accounts only.
It does not pass on a YouTube channel. A trusted contact can download videos and metadata, but channel ownership, subscribers and monetisation do not transfer to anyone.
It does not preserve purchases. Movies, books and apps bought through Google are licences tied to the account, and storage plans such as Google One simply end.
It only covers Google. Your Apple data, Facebook profile, banking logins and everything guarded by your password manager need their own plans.
Google vs Apple vs Facebook: legacy tools compared
The three big consumer platforms each built a different answer to the same question. The differences matter when you are deciding what to set up and what to tell your executor.
Feature | Google Inactive Account Manager | Apple Legacy Contact | Facebook Legacy Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
Trigger | Inactivity timer you set: 3 to 18 months | Death: contact presents an access key plus a death certificate | Death: someone reports it with proof and the profile is memorialised |
Must be set up in advance | Yes | Yes, on iOS 15.2 or later | Yes for a legacy contact; memorialisation itself can happen without one |
Number of people | Up to 10 trusted contacts | Up to 5 legacy contacts | 1 legacy contact |
What they get | One-time download of exactly the data you allocated to each person | About 3 years of access to most iCloud data, then the account is deleted | Management of the memorialised profile: tribute posts, profile photo, removal requests |
What stays off limits | Passwords, account login, purchases, YouTube channel ownership | Keychain passwords, payment details, licensed media purchases | Logging in and reading private messages |
Deletion option | Optional, 3 months after the account goes inactive | Account is deleted after legacy access ends | You can choose permanent deletion instead of memorialisation |
The practical takeaway: Google's tool is the most granular and the only one driven by a timer rather than paperwork, Apple's gives the longest access window, and Facebook's is about stewardship of a public profile rather than data handover. They do not overlap, so set up each one you use. For the Google side in more depth, see what happens to Gmail when you die and what happens to Google Photos when you die.
The inactivity trigger problem
Google decides you are inactive by watching for signs of life: sign-ins, Gmail activity, Android device check-ins and activity recorded in My Activity. That design has two edge cases worth planning around.
The first: a phone that outlives you can keep the account looking alive. Background syncing and automatic check-ins from a device that stays powered on may read as activity, which delays the trigger. The fix is a shorter timeout, three or six months rather than eighteen, and a family that knows the plan exists, so someone powers down or wipes your devices when the time comes.
The second is the reverse: a long hospital stay or any extended period offline could start the countdown while you are very much alive. This is why Google warns you a month out on your recovery email and phone, and why those details need to stay current. Answer one message and the clock resets.
Neither edge case is a reason to skip the tool. They are reasons to set a sensible timeout and to tell at least one person it exists. A plan nobody knows about arrives as a mystery email from Google, months after the funeral.
If someone has already died without setting it up
If you are reading this after losing someone, the tool above is not available to you, but there is still a path. Google's Help Center has a process for submitting a request about a deceased user's account. Through it, an immediate family member or legal representative can ask Google to close the account, request funds from the account, or request its data.
Be prepared for the review to take time. Google evaluates each request individually, usually asking for a death certificate and proof of identity, and it is candid that data access is granted only in some cases and may require a court order. Closing an account is generally straightforward. Getting into one is not, because Google weighs the privacy of the person who died alongside the request.
There is no need to rush any of this. Accounts do not vanish the day someone dies, and the two-year general inactivity policy leaves a long window. Our guide to what happens to Gmail when you die covers the family-side process in more detail.
Where it fits in a full digital legacy plan
Inactive Account Manager is one layer of a complete plan, not the plan. A useful way to think about it is four layers, from data to identity.
Platform tools. Free, built in, and specific to each service: Inactive Account Manager for Google, Legacy Contact for Apple, a legacy contact or deletion choice for Facebook. Set up every one that applies to you.
The access layer. Most of your digital life sits behind one password manager, and the good ones have emergency access features built for exactly this. Our guide to password managers after death compares how 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass and others handle it.
The legal layer. A will that covers digital assets, and in the United States the RUFADAA framework that lets you authorise an executor to deal with your accounts. Our digital will guide for the USA explains what to put in writing.
The human layer. Everything above hands your family files and access. None of it answers the question they will actually ask, which is some version of: what would they say? A digital legacy app is built for that layer. With Afterlife AI™ you build a Persona from your memories and voice while you are alive, and Executor Lock™ seals what your family can reach afterwards, on terms you chose. Plans and the free build are on the pricing page.
Ten minutes on myaccount.google.com/inactive sorts the first layer for the biggest account most people own. The other three layers are where the rest of this site can help.
Frequently asked questions
What is Google Inactive Account Manager?
It is a free Google Account setting that lets you decide in advance what happens to your account after a period of inactivity you choose. When the timer you set runs out, Google notifies up to 10 trusted contacts, shares the specific data you allocated to each of them, and can delete the account if you asked it to. You set it up at myaccount.google.com/inactive.
How long before Google considers my account inactive?
You choose the waiting period yourself: 3, 6, 12 or 18 months without activity. Google looks at sign-ins, Gmail use, Android device check-ins and My Activity to judge whether the account is in use, and it contacts your recovery email and phone about a month before the deadline so an active user is never caught by surprise.
Does it give my family my password or account access?
No. Trusted contacts never receive your password and cannot log in as you. What they get is a one-time download of the data you allocated to them, delivered as archive files after Google verifies their identity with a text-message code. Once the download window closes, there is no ongoing access.
Will it still work if my phone keeps syncing after I die?
This is the tool's main blind spot. A powered-on phone that keeps checking in with Google can make the account look active and delay the trigger. Choosing a shorter timeout, such as 3 or 6 months, and making sure your family knows to power down your devices keeps the plan reliable.
Does it cover Google Workspace accounts or my YouTube channel?
Neither, in the way people hope. Workspace accounts belong to the organisation and are handled by its administrator, not by Inactive Account Manager. For YouTube, a trusted contact can download your videos and metadata, but the channel itself, its subscribers and its monetisation do not transfer to anyone.
What can my family do if someone died without setting it up?
Google's Help Center has a process for requests about a deceased user's account, through which immediate family or a legal representative can ask to close the account, request funds, or request data. Google reviews each case individually, usually against a death certificate and proof of identity, and full data access may require a court order. Closure is usually granted; access is not guaranteed.
Is Inactive Account Manager enough as a digital legacy plan?
It is a strong start for one company's services, and everyone with a Google account should switch it on. But it hands your family files, not you. Pair it with emergency access on your password manager, a will that covers digital assets, and a Persona your family can actually talk with. Afterlife AI™ lets you start free: 50 memories, no card.