You Might Soon Be Able To Change Your Gmail Address

A breath of fresh air for anyone stuck with a former, unprofessional, and / or embarrassing gmail.com address, Google may soon permit changing their gmail account addresses without losing their access to their messages, files, and Google services.

As per information initially found by the Google Pixel Hub community on the Telegram service and later confirmed by 9to5Google, the Hindi version of the Gmail support site indicates that Google is “beginning to roll out to all users” a service enabling them to change the email address associated with their Google account. It is worth noting that it is possible to change the Gmail address currently in use to a completely different email address with the @gmail.com suffix.

If users decide to update their Gmail address, their original address will not be deleted. The original Gmail address will rather become an alias, which means that emails sent to this address will still be delivered as they normally are. The users will be able to log in to Google services using either their new or original Gmail address.

There is, however, one condition. Once the switch is done, users shall not be able to create any new Gmail addresses connected to the account for the next 12 months. This is probably to ensure that the feature is not misused while the related testing by Google is done.

Though this update offers a glimmer of hope, it seems that the roll-out is, as yet, not global. As Sunday afternoon wore on, the English version of the Gmail help website still said, “If your account's email address ends with the @gmail.com suffix, you can't change it, usually.” It recommends either changing the display name for the Gmail address or making a brand new account and copying them manually into the new account.

If this functionality is rolled out officially by Google, it would mark a dramatic improvement for people who have accounts with Gmail and have been around for a number of years and are looking for a more ‘finished’ or ‘professional’ email address than the monikers originally used, but aren't looking to establish an entire new identity. At least for now, users are going to have to wait upon a follow-up from Google; however, all indicators are that a long-overdue change in a Gmail account name is headed in the right direction.