One of the best reasons to stroll through Apple’s walled garden over the years has nearly always been its content management tools – iPod, iTunes, iPhone, AppleTV (hardware), Apple Music, and Apple TV+ (software). However – and thankfully, due to some dev(s) with just a little bit of vision and direction from one or two forward-seeing senior leaders – Apple also decided to produce iTunes and iCloud for Windows. This also eventually led to Apple Music and Apple TV+ for Windows. Thank you, Phil Schiller…
Recently, I’ve been having trouble with playing video content on a Windows PC. I was able to play content on one particular PC a week or so ago (as of this writing) and then, I wasn’t. I kept getting an authorization error and I found that I was out of available authorizations. I was also about 3 months out from being able deauthorize all computers at once. I found myself in quite the pickle. I had to call Apple Tech Support to resolve my issue. However, if you manage things right, you may save yourself my headache.
Sign Out All of the Devices Using Apple Music or Apple TV+
Signing out of all devices via Apple Music or Apple TV+ is straightforward, provided you know where to look. However, you can only do this from your PC or Mac computer. To deauthorize your devices, follow the steps below.
- Launch the Apple Music app on your computer.
- Click the account icon in the lower-left corner of the app
- When the menu appears, you can sign out of the device you’re using. However, to sign out of all of them, you want to click View My Account.
- Type in your Apple ID password and click the Sign In button to continue.
- Now, find the Computer Authorizations section and click the Deauthorize All button to continue.
- When the verification message appears, click the Deauthorize All button.
- Once you deauthorize all devices, you will receive a confirmation message that everything was unauthorized successfully. Click OK to close out of the message.
Use iTunes to Deauthorize Devices
This one may get a little tricky. You can still use iTunes to deauthorize all devices, provided it is installed on your computer and still works. Please note that Apple is soon pulling support for the aging music manager for Windows. The Apple Music app will take over for iTunes as your music manager.
Luckily, iTunes is still working on my Windows 10 machine. If you can get iTunes going, here are the steps to deauthorize your devices.
- Open iTunes and click Account > View My Account from the toolbar.
- Type in your Apple ID and password, and click the Sign In button.
- Next, on the Account Settings screen, click the Deauthorize All button.
- When the verification message appears, click the Deauthorize All button to confirm.
There are a couple of caveats however. You’ll need to take notice here, as making the mistakes I did will cause a few headaches… and a call to Apple Tech Support to resolve the issues, as they are the ONLY ones that can.
- You (STILL!!) only get 5 PC authorizations – including Macs – to consume iTunes/Apple Music/AppleTV content on. iOS and iPadOS devices don’t count against your PC authorization count. You can only deauthorize all of your authorized computers every 6 months. Be discerning of which computers you authorize.
- If you access content on a Windows PC, and are having issues with it, make certain you deauthorize your computer BEFORE you reset it. I’m not certain how Apple marks a PC as authorized or not, but it doesn’t survive resetting your Windows PC. It will show as an UNauthorized computer, post reset. If you haven’t reclaimed the authorization you’ll lose it for the aforementioned 6 months.
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