You Might Soon Be Able to Change Your Gmail Address

One of Gmail’s most annoying restrictions is that once you choose an email address, you’re stuck with it. There are exceptions for third-party addresses, like business emails related 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 embarrassing, angry high school email for decades now, but finally it looks like I’ll be able to change it.

A recently updated Google support page says the company is “gradually rolling out” the ability to change your Gmail address, with some limitations. Oddly, the page is only available in Hindi at the moment, so I’ve reached out to Google for clarification on where and when the feature will be available and will be updated when I hear back. Nonetheless, the support page states (via machine translation) that the feature will be available “to all users”, implying that it will see a global release at some point.

For good measure, I checked to see if I could change one of my personal Gmail addresses, but to no avail. But once the feature is deployed, here’s how you can proceed.

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

2. At the top of the page, click or tap “Personal Information”. On mobile, this may appear as “Personal Information”.

3. Click or tap “Google Account Email”.

4. From there, click or tap “Change your Google account email address” and enter your updated email address.

Note that these instructions have been filtered through machine translation, so the exact wording may differ by region. I’ll update with official English instructions when they become available, but the process seems simple enough.

There are a few wrinkles, however. The most important thing is that emails sent to your old address will still be sent to your new one, and your old email may still appear in place of your new one in some cases, such as on calendar events created before you changed your address. This is because your old name will be listed as the account alias, rather than removed. This could be a pain if you’re trying to leave old contacts behind, but it will also ensure that important contacts don’t get lost in the shuffle, and it will prevent anyone from registering a new account with that email address. You’ll also still be able to use your old Gmail address to sign in to any accounts associated with it, and no matter what name you sign in with, you’ll still have access to all your messages, photos, and other files.

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

Still, it should be a major quality of life improvement and should help Google’s email service better catch up with more permissive email providers like Proton. No more looking like an Edgelord every time I talk to the cashier at Sephora.