Think about your Gmail and the photos and files you keep with Google. After you pass away, nobody will sign in to your Google Account. Google has a setting called Inactive Account Manager that lets you choose who may download your Gmail, your photos and your files. Your Google Account is the account you sign in to for Gmail. Inactive means not being used. With Inactive Account Manager, you make a plan now for a time when your Google Account has gone unused. You choose how long the account must go unused. You choose which people Google should contact once the account has gone unused that long. And you choose what each of those people may download. A download is a copy saved onto the person's own computer. The things a person may download are your Gmail, your Google Photos and your Google Drive files. Google Photos is where Google keeps your photos, and Google Drive is where Google keeps your files.
Google watches for a stretch of time in which nobody uses the account at all. When that stretch reaches the length you chose, Google carries out the plan. Before Google carries out the plan, Google warns you at a phone number and an email address that you confirm during the setup.
Without a plan, Google may delete an account that has gone unused in every Google product for two years.
Before you start
- About fifteen minutes.
- A computer signed in to your Google Account.
- The names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of up to ten people you trust.
- A short message in your own words for Google to send to the people you choose.
- Page 5 of the workshop worksheet. If you do not have the worksheet, use a sheet of paper that you keep with your important papers.
Set up the plan
Google's help page describes the choices but not the exact buttons, so expect the screens to lead you through the same choices in about this order.
- Open the setting. On the computer, go to myaccount.google.com/inactive. Start the setup from that page.
- Choose the waiting time. Google asks how long the account must go unused before the plan runs; that length of time is the waiting time. Google offers a short list of waiting times measured in months. Google counts every sign-in and everything you do in any Google product as using the account, so a phone that checks your Gmail keeps the account active. The waiting time you choose is how long your family waits after you pass away. If you are alive but stop using the account for the whole waiting time, for example during a long stay in hospital, the plan runs just the same. Pick the shortest waiting time you are comfortable with.
- Confirm where Google warns you. Confirm the phone number and the email address that Google will use to warn you before the plan runs.
- Add the people. Google calls the people you choose trusted contacts. You can add up to ten people. For each person, choose whether Google only tells that person or also gives that person data. Data means your Gmail, your Google Photos or your Google Drive files. If the person gets data, choose which of your Gmail, your Google Photos and your Google Drive files that person may download. You can give different data to different people. Then enter a mobile phone number for each person who gets data; Google uses the number to confirm that it is really that person before the download.
- Write the message. Write a subject line and a message. The subject line is the title a person sees before opening an email. Google sends your message to the people you chose when the plan runs and adds a footer saying that you asked Google to send it. A footer is a few lines at the bottom of a message. In the message, say which data each person may download and where you keep your other written instructions.
- Save the plan and write down the waiting time. When every choice is made, save the plan. Then write the waiting time you chose on paper. If you have page 5 of the workshop worksheet, tick Google Inactive Account Manager set. Then write the waiting time next to the tick.
- Tell the people. Google tells the people nothing when you set the plan up. The people learn of the plan only when the plan runs, unless you tell them now. Tell each person that you have named them and what they will get.
- Check that it worked. Go to myaccount.google.com/inactive again. On this page you can also edit the choices, change the people or turn the plan off. Google's help page, as we read it, does not say what this page shows once a plan is saved, so we cannot say what you will see.
After you pass away, your family waits the whole waiting time you chose before the plan runs.
What this does not do
- Your family cannot start the plan by asking Google, and a death certificate does not start it either.
- Some information in your account cannot be shared through Inactive Account Manager.
- Setting up this plan is not a will. The people you name get no legal authority over your estate, which means everything you own.
- When the plan runs, the email Google sends to a person who gets data holds a link for the download, and that link is not permanent. The person downloads a copy of your data, not the account itself, so the person should keep the copy on their own computer.
- This plan covers your Google Account only. Your Apple Account has a separate setting called Legacy Contact.
If your screen looks different
If myaccount.google.com/inactive does not open the setting, sign in to your Google Account and search for the words Inactive Account Manager; the setting sits under Data & privacy.
Sources
- Google: About Inactive Account Manager, read on 18 October 2026.