You Might Soon Be Able to Change Your Gmail Address

One of the most annoying restrictions in Gmail is that, once you've picked an email address, you're stuck with it. There are exceptions for third-party addresses, like work emails tied to a company's domain, but for the typical @gmail.com account, no dice. Personally, I've had a number of loyalty programs and store accounts tied to an embarrassingly edgy email from high school for decades now, but finally, it seems like I'll be able to change it.

A recently updated Google support page says the company is now "gradually rolling out" the ability to change your Gmail address, with some limitations. Oddly, the page is only available in Hindi for the moment, so I've reached out to Google for clarification about where and when the feature will be available and will update when I hear back. Still, the support page does say (through a machine translation) that the feature's coming "to all users," which implies it'll see a global release at some point.

For good measure, I checked if I could change any of my personal gmail addresses, but no luck. But once the feature rolls out to you, here's how you'll be able to do it.

1. On a computer or mobile device, navigate to myaccount.google.com/google-account-email.

2. At the top of the page, click or tap "Personal Information." On mobile, this may show up as "Personal Info."

3. Click or Tap on "Google Account Email."

4. From there, click or tap on "Change Your Google Account Email Address" and enter your updated email address.

Note that these instructions were filtered through a machine translation, so exact wording may differ depending on region. I'll update with official English instructions when available, but the process does seem simple enough.

There are a couple of wrinkles, however. The big one is that emails sent to your old address will still be sent to your new one, and that your old email may still show up instead of your new one in some cases, like on Calendar events created before you changed your address. That's because your former name will be listed as an alias for the account, rather than deleted. That could be a pain if you're trying to leave old contacts behind, but it'll also ensure important contacts don't get lost in the shuffle, and it'll keep anyone else from registering a new account with that email address. You'll also still be able to use your old gmail address to sign into any accounts associated with it, and regardless of which name you sign in with, you'll still have access to all of your messages, photos, and other files.

You can also revert to your old address at any time, but as for changing it to a new address, you can only do it once a year, and only three times total. So no changing it to a wacky new address every Halloween and then back to normal come November.

Still, it should be a major quality-of-life upgrade, and should help Google's email service better catch up to more permissive email providers like Proton. No more sounding like an edgelord every time I talk to the checkout clerk at Sephora.

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