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Methods to use digital IDs in Apple Pockets & the place they’re supported


In a rising variety of states, now together with Montana, you may add your ID to Apple Pockets. This is easy methods to add them, how they work, what the constraints are, and what they will do.

We’re transferring nearer and nearer to a world the place you may ditch your bodily pockets. You possibly can already add your bank cards, debit playing cards, loyalty playing cards, tickets and boarding passes, and most just lately — your driver’s license to Apple Pockets.

However the license rollout will not be in every single place. This has elevated the uncertainty on whether or not or not your ID could be added and if it may be, the place it may be accepted.

Methods to add your ID to Apple Pockets

Including your driver’s license to Apple Pockets is straightforward.

  • Open the Pockets app in your iPhone
  • Faucet the + button within the top-right nook
  • Faucet Driver’s License and ID Playing cards
  • Stroll by the verification course of

The verification course of will embrace methods to make sure you’re the similar one that is including the ID. You may should scan the back and front of your ID in addition to take a sequence of selfies to match your picture on file with the division of motor automobiles in your state.

IDs can solely be added to at least one telephone at a time. If you’re establishing a brand new gadget earlier than wiping your outdated one, your ID could fail so as to add till the erase is full and the servers catch up.

Which states help digital IDs

One of many larger issues with digital IDs is the place they’re supported. As every digital ID is managed by the issuing state, each state has to implement its personal program to help them.

Hands holding a smartphone displaying an Ohio Driver's License app interface with user options and menu buttons; background shows blurred greenery.

Ohio is certainly one of 10 states and provinces that help digital IDs in Apple Pockets as of mid-2025

As of August 8, 2025, there are 10 states and territories that help Driver’s licenses in Apple Pockets.

  • Arizona
  • California
  • Colorado
  • Georgia
  • Hawaii
  • Iowa
  • Maryland
  • Montana, added August 19, 2025
  • New Mexico
  • Ohio
  • Puerto Rico

Increasingly are including help, although. Different states, like Utah, have pledged help however haven’t carried out it but. To maintain updated, maintain a watch right here at AppleInsider, the TSA website, or Apple’s official record.

Methods to use digital IDs in Apple Pockets

In an excellent world, a digital ID can be accepted in anywhere your bodily ID is accepted. It is not that easy.

Sign promoting digital ID acceptance for TSA PreCheck members, featuring a hand holding a smartphone, ID icon, and text about opting out of facial recognition.

TSA is certainly one of few that frequently helps digital IDs

The commonest use for these digital licenses is in airports for TSA. Right here in Ohio, we have tried it in any respect the most important airports, together with Columbus John Glenn Worldwide, CAK, and Cleveland Hopkins.

It is really easy to stroll by the TSA line, faucet your telephone to confirm, and maintain strolling. After all, in the event you fly to a state that does not help digital IDs, you may nonetheless want your bodily ID for the return journey.

Outdoors of airports, there’s not a lot else you need to use it for. Locations like bars, liquor shops, physician’s places of work, do not settle for it. There are only a handful of police districts that do, so even in the event you dwell in a state that it is supported, you continue to want to hold your ID card round.

Smartphone screen with a notification from Starship Concert Hall requesting proof of age, featuring a red dot and tap-to-present instructions at the top.

The free ID verification app can be utilized in Ohio to verify digital IDs, just like the age at a live performance venue

The Ohio BMV provides a free iOS verification app that companies can join and use to confirm any identities with a faucet.

That sounds ultimate, however in our expertise, it is vitally restricted. We have discovered just one enterprise that had the app to confirm our age.

A person holds a smartphone displaying a digital wallet with several cards visible, including American Express, Apple Cash, and Costco, on a textured gray background.

A few of the completely different playing cards being saved within the Pockets app

Most retailers nonetheless requested our bodily card to scan the code on the again or swipe it into their legacy level of sale system. That makes it tough and nonetheless vital to hold round your bodily license.

Utilizing digital IDs in apps

After all, there are different makes use of for digital IDs slightly than simply within the bodily world. Your ID may also be utilized in apps.

Apps that help Apple Pockets ID can equally confirm issues like your age or identification. Apple says Clear, MyChart, UberEats, and others can be including help, although it would not appear to be any of them have as of August 8, 2025.

Beginning this fall with iOS 26, Apple seems to be to spur adoption by additionally supporting passports in Apple Pockets, alongside IDs. Which means extra folks will have the ability to add their identification to Apple Pockets.

It is all about privateness

Among the best elements of digital IDs is the privateness. You solely share very restricted data.

Whenever you give somebody your precise ID, they’ve all of that data displayed there. With a digital ID, you’re solely sharing what you’re required to share.

A screenshot showing different personal info to be transmitted

You explicitly get proven data to be shared, earlier than it’s transmitted

The way it works is that when your ID is requested by both a faucet or an app, a card seems with the data that must be shared. Earlier than you approve the request, the iPhone will explicitly record what’s being requested for, earlier than you settle for the request.

Some could solely want your title, whereas others could solely must request your age. That knowledge is then encrypted, transmitted, and by no means saved.

Digital IDs could not attraction to everybody, however adoption has began to extend. Hopefully, we’ll see extra states, police departments, apps, and companies begin supporting it as extra states and customers add it too.

Replace August 19, 2025: Added Montana to the record of supported states

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