Google will finally allow you to change your embarrassing high school email address.
The tech giant announced the new policy in a YouTube video Tuesday.
“Tired of your old Gmail address? Well, good news. Google is rolling out a way to change your Google Account username without starting over,” a representative from Google said in the video.
Gmail launched in 2004, and a lot has changed in the past couple of decades. You may have picked a less-than-mature address when you first got your Gmail account, or maybe you just want to switch it up after so long.
Now you can change your Gmail address while keeping all your emails, data and account history.
The Google representative in the new video explained how U.S. users can make the switch.
First, go to your Google Account settings and tap “Personal info.” Tap “Email” and then “Google Account email.”
“If you see the ‘Change Google Account email’ option, tap it and pick a new and unique username,” the Google representative said. “Don’t worry about your old emails. Your original address will stay on your account as an alternate.”
Your old email address will remain active, and messages sent to that address can still reach you, the video explained.
The representative did caution that users can only create a new address once every year. But if you end up missing your cringeworthy high school address, you can always revert to it, Google said.
If you don’t see an option to change your Gmail, it could be that the update hasn’t reached your account yet.
Google said it was simply answering to a need among its users with the new policy.
“‘Can you change your Gmail address?’” is the top-searched ‘can you’ Gmail-related question over the past year in the U.S. Now the answer is yes,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement shared by New York’s Pix11 News.
Some Gmail users took to X to ask Google what took them so long.
“So you’re telling me ‘coolboy123@gmail’ trauma could’ve been avoided??” one user wrote.
Another said: “My 2009 Gmail address has been embarrassing me for 15 years and Google waited until NOW to tell me this.”
Others were wondering when Google would roll out the update for global users. For now, it is only available for those in the US.
