Issue 392  February 22nd 2019

The dust is settling on this 2FA change that I mentioned last week. So, now that everything is a little clearer here's a quick summary of what you need to be aware of:

• The requirement for 2FA to be switched on only applies to the Team Agent account.
• You can add multiple iCloud accounts to iOS so you can receive 2FA authentication codes for multiple accounts on the same device. This works in perfectly in conjunction with your primary iCloud account.
• This is a great time to audit who, and what has access to your developer account. Don't forget all of the other places that you may have given access to at some point. App Store sales reporting tools and your continuous integration setup are the most common culprits. There's more information on this change and CI here. You shouldn't be using your Team Agent account for any of these things anyway, multiple user accounts, roles and permissions exist for a reason!

I've had 2FA on my personal iCloud account for years now but I just went through and enabled it for my developer accounts (Yes, more than one and yes, it's a long and dull story 😂). I followed these instructions from Apple and they worked perfectly. The only thing I did differently was that instead of signing out of my main iCloud account on my phone, I used a new local user account on my Mac to do the initial 2FA set up on my developer accounts.

Finally, if there truly is some genuine reason you are unable to switch this on for your Team Agent account, there is a section titled "What if I can’t enable two-factor authentication for some other reason?" at the bottom of this article. I don't have any information about this at all, and I'd expect a tough conversation to get it done, but it sounds Apple may be able to relax the restriction on an account by account basis.

The new rule kicks in next Wednesday so make sure you're ready. 👍

Dave Verwer