Unique Device Identifier

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What Does Unique Device Identifier Mean?

A unique device identifier (UDID) is a unique serial number assigned to each Apple manufactured device. UDID enables the identification, tracking and recording of Apple’s suite of iDevices.

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A UDID cannot be allocated to more than one Apple device.

Techopedia Explains Unique Device Identifier

UDID is 40-character alphanumeric string of code for each iOS powered device. This includes iPhone, iPad and iPod devices. UDID has many applications, the most important being the ability to identify each device and segregate users according to their demographics, activity within the App Store, etc. Moreover, some applications depend on UDID to operate, such as Apple’s native device syncing feature, which uses UDID to store and manage synced devices. UDIDs are also retrieved by developers for building apps that use user-related data, but this use is limited due to security and privacy concerns.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.