Why You Shouldn’t Configure Smart Devices With Multiple Email Addresses
When you live with someone, you share your things. Both of you use a smart speaker to listen to music in your home, and you both use smart lighting to show off to your friends (“look, I can make them blue!”). The point is, you are all using the same smart devices, and it’s time to bind these devices to the same email address.
Smart devices need an email address to work
Smart devices, including smart speakers, smart lights, and smart locks, to name just a few, often need to be connected to an account to function. Sometimes they fit into the collective “Home” application, but other times they need a separate account. This usually doesn’t matter much; you set up the device, enter your email and password and boom, your lights are now controlled by your voice and your light switches will never be used again.
But, inevitably, you have to tinker with this smart device. You may need to use an app to change the setting; you may need to perform a new system update; or maybe you need to control the device from a new phone. And what happens when you try to do this for a smart device? It asks for your email address and password.
If you are setting up these things in a hurry – and we often do – you may have just walked back and forth with your partner setting up systems. Maybe one device is under your account, another under their account, and so on. Accumulate enough devices and trying to remember which device is under which account becomes an exercise in frustration: “Is Sonos under your email or mine?” “I have four different email addresses; it could have been under any of them. ” “Do you have four different email addresses?”
Why make a generic email address for smart devices
Avoid the headaches, the feeling of having to create a general list of all your devices and their accounts, and not answering questions about your many email addresses. Just do yourself and your family a favor and make yourself a shared email account.
Think about it: smart lighting under one email, your smart doorbell under one email, your TV and all its apps and services under one email. No more guesswork, no more waiting for someone to leave the meeting to ask which smart speaker email address – all in the same simple system.
This tip works for almost any type of account that you and your partner can use together. Never again wonder whose email is tied to your streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max; have access to one calendar that you both can view and edit together; Subscribe to the cloud app to keep track of your shopping lists. It just makes collaborative tasks a lot easier.
A shared email address isn’t everything
Of course, this does not mean that individual email addresses are excluded. Keep a personal account for your correspondence, independent accounts, and the like. There is no need to clutter up your partner’s mailbox with your own messages (junk mail is enough for that). Keep a joint account for things that benefit both of you.
A shared email address isn’t the only solution. You can achieve a similar result using a password manager, as you can consolidate all of your different accounts into one family vault that you both are working on. The best password managers, however, are paid subscriptions. Email is free.