How to cancel digital subscriptions on your Apple and Google accounts

These days, there are so many digital subscriptions (music, movies, fitness, cloud storage, software, podcasts, audiobooks, Patreon, security cameras, AI robots, etc.) that it’s completely understandable if you start to lose track of what exactly you signed up for.

To complicate matters further, you can pay for some subscriptions monthly and others annually. There are also those insidious free trials: you sign up to test something, completely forget about it after a few days, and then get an unexpected bill (this is an occupational hazard for tech journalists). And of course, Apple and Google make it extremely easy to sign up for various services almost instantly using their accounts.

Fortunately, both Apple and Google also offer ways to quickly check which apps and services you’re subscribed to. You can easily view your active subscriptions and cancel them if you want, and you can do this on your desktop or mobile device. It’s worth doing this regularly to make sure you’re not subscribing to (and paying for) something you don’t want. Here’s how to do it.

(Note: It’s worth keeping in mind the Apple tax: If you sign up through the iOS App Store for something like Netflix or Spotify, Apple takes a 30% cut each time, which is often passed on to users. You can sometimes get these subscriptions for less if you sign up on the web or on a non-Apple device.)

If you signed up for digital subscriptions through the App Store, using a saved payment method, Apple keeps track of those for you. If you’re using your iPhone:

• Open the App Store and tap your profile picture (top right).
• Choose Subscriptions to view active and recently canceled subscriptions.
• Faucet Sort to order the list by name, price or renewal date.
• Select a subscription to see more details and cancel it.

For each subscription, you’ll see which app it’s associated with, how much you pay, and how often you pay. In most cases, you just have the option to cancel, but if there are multiple plans available (like with Apple One, for example), you can also switch to a different plan and cancel.

On the same screen, you will also see the subscriptions you have canceled, up to one year after the subscription expires, and you cannot manually clear this history. If you select one of these subscriptions, you have the option to renew it again.

There is also a Renewal receipts Toggle switch on the Subscriptions page: Turn it on to receive email receipts every time you renew and another payment is made (this can be another helpful reminder of what you’re signed up for).

You can also access these subscriptions from macOS: everything you’ve subscribed to through an Apple App Store, whether on mobile or desktop, is displayed together.

• Open the Mac App Store and click on your profile picture (bottom left).
• Choose Account settings.
• Select Manage next to Subscriptions.
• Click on any subscription to see details.

You have the same options as on iOS: you can cancel active subscriptions or renew subscriptions that were canceled within the last year.

To use an Android device to find subscriptions for apps and services you’ve signed up for through your Google Account, start by opening the Play Store.

• Tap your account photo (top right).
• Choose Payments and Subscriptions > Subscriptions.
• Select one of the displayed subscriptions to see more details about it: the amount you pay, the next billing date, and the payment method used. You can also update your payment method (for example, if you want to use a different credit card).
• To cancel a subscription, select it, then choose Cancel subscription.
• Faucet Resubscribe to re-subscribe to a subscription you previously canceled.
• Choose Withdraw to remove a canceled subscription from the list.

You can access the same options on a desktop system by loading the Play Store on the web in your browser.

• Click on your account image (top right).
• Choose Payments and subscriptions.
• Open the Subscriptions Click the tab to see everything you’re signed up for.
• Click Resubscribe to renew a cancelled subscription or Manage for anything else.

The options are the same as on mobile: you can see the billing amount, the next billing date and the payment method used. Click on Cancel subscription Cancel.

If you haven’t signed up for any of your digital subscriptions directly through your Apple or Google account, they may not all appear in your account. To get a more complete picture of your subscriptions, some additional detective work may be required.

Checking your bank account and credit card balances regularly is a good start, if you don’t already. All subscriptions will be billed regularly on the same dates and the nature of the bill should be clearly stated. Remember that some may be annual rather than monthly, so you really need to check your statements for the last 12 months to be sure.

It can also be helpful to dig through your inbox: search for “subscribe” and see what comes up (you may also find a few newsletters you can unsubscribe from). If you use secondary email accounts to subscribe to, to avoid receiving too many promotional messages, be sure to check those too.