If you have had your Twitter account for years, you may not want to continue using the name you used as a teenager or you simply want to change it because you had created an account with a joke name or even with the company you work for, and now you have changed. In that case, we can change our Twitter username whenever we want and whenever the one we want to have is available.
Because you don’t like it or simply because you want to give your profile a more professional twist, we can change it from the mobile application or from the web page if we access it from the computer browser.
Username on Twitter, what is it?
Before changing the Twitter username, we should be clear about what it is, what it is for, and how it is used. This is the name that begins with the @ symbol and is unique to your account. Other users can mention you through this name, it is the one that appears in the URL of your profile and it is the one we use to log in to our Twitter profile. In addition, it is also the one that appears when you send or receive direct messages.
We should not confuse it with the display name or identifier, which is independent of your username. For example, your name on Twitter could be José Pérez but your username would be @pepe . In this case, from the social network they explain it like this: “Your visible name, which we call name, is a personal identifier on Twitter and is independent of your username. It can be something funny, a business name or a real name, and it appears next to your username.
Requirements and characters to change the name
We must take into account that the username has a series of requirements. If you decide to change it, you must first take into account a series of aspects. There are some requirements: it must not have many characters or few, for example.
- Username must be longer than four characters
- Username cannot be longer than fifteen characters
- Can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores
- Spaces are not allowed in the username
On the other hand, the visible name (which usually corresponds to our name and surname) can have a maximum of 50 characters.
In addition, there is another fundamental requirement to change the username on Twitter and that is that it is a unique name so you will not be able to modify it if the one you want to put is already in use, if another person is using it. You must first make sure that no one is using this nickname.
How to change username
We can change it from the application for Android mobile phones, the application for iOS mobile phones but also from the desktop version or the browser where we will have to go to our account.
From the computer
We can do it on Twitter from the browser regardless of the one you are using. We must go to the twitter.com website and log in with our email and password or with our username and password, as we usually do. Once inside the social network and in our profile, we must look for the “ More options ” button next to three points in the navigation bar. A menu with options will open and you should tap on “Settings and privacy” to open the settings menu.
Here we will have several options such as Your account, Twitter Blue, Security and access to the account, Privacy and security, Notifications… The one that interests us is the first: Tap on “ Your account ”. Once here, we will see five sections on Twitter:
- Account information
- change your password
- Download a file with your data
- TweetDeck Teams
- deactivate your account
And we must choose the first to manage everything related to our profile and our personal data. Of course, before entering this section we will have to enter our password once again. When we have accessed , we will see that the first section is: Username.
Tap on it and a box will appear where you can change it. Write what you want and confirm with the blue “Save” button so that it is stored. The change may take a few hours to take effect.
on mobile phone
From the phone we can also change the username we have on Twitter whether it is on iOS or Android. The steps are simple and we simply need to have the application installed.
From Android, we open the app and tap on our profile picture in the top left corner of the app. Here a side menu will open where we must scroll until we touch “Settings and privacy”. A series of sections will appear, as in the case of the browser. But the one that interests us is the first: “Your account”.
From here we must go to “Account information” and our data will appear: username, telephone, email… The first of them is the username and we must touch to open a new screen where we can choose the new name user on Twitter. When you are done, confirm with “done” and wait for it to be modified for everyone.
If you have an iPhone phone, the steps on Twitter are similar and we simply have to open the Twitter application for iOS, log in. Once we have logged in, we can go to the “Settings and privacy” section and from here we go to “Account”. Once we are inside this section, click on “Username” and choose another. We confirm in “Ready”.
What happens when we change the username?
Nothing happens in your profile except that from now on they will have to mention you with another @userdetwitter different from now. That is, nothing will be changed in your profile and you will keep the same answers, the same direct message conversations and the same followers. The profile photo will remain the same and users will simply see a new name. Of course, it is recommended that you notify as someone may think that they follow you by mistake and stop following you. To avoid confusion, advise of the change.
Nothing will happen except that a new name will appear, as they explain from the social network itself: “If you change your username, your current followers, your Direct Messages or your responses will not be modified. Your followers will simply see a new username next to your profile picture when you make an update. We suggest letting your followers know before you change your username, so they can send replies or Direct Messages to your new username. Also, keep in mind that once you change your username, the one you previously had will immediately be available for someone else to use.”
