This Is Not Your Gamertag
Your username is the name on your account here, and it has nothing to do with Xbox. It appears on skins you upload, servers you list and reviews you write, and it is the name somebody searches for when they hand you a server listing.
Changing it does not touch your gamertag, and changing your gamertag does not touch it. Gamertags and Minecraft Usernames covers how the two sit alongside each other.
What a Username Can Be
- Between 3 and 20 characters
- Letters, numbers, underscores and hyphens
- No spaces
- Cannot start or end with an underscore or a hyphen
Spaces are out because a name with one is hard to say out loud and easy to imitate with a lookalike, and these names are how people find each other when a server changes hands.
Names are unique whatever the capitals. Steve and steve read as the same name to everybody, so they count as the same name here and only one account can hold it.
Changing It
- Step 1. Sign in and open Settings
- Step 2. Find the Username section
- Step 3. Type the new name and save
You can do this once every 14 days. The name you picked when you signed up does not start that clock, so your first change is available immediately.
Why There Is a Wait
A freed name can be claimed by anybody, so an account able to cycle names quickly is an account able to impersonate somebody and hand the old name off before anyone notices. Fourteen days makes that not worth doing.
What Happens to the Old Name
It is released straight away and somebody else can take it. We do not hold it for you, and there is no way to get it back once it has gone.
Links to what you have published follow you across the change. Somebody opening an old link is sent on to your new name, and that keeps working until another account claims the name, at which point the live holder wins and the old link goes to them instead.
That is the practical reason not to rename often. Every change leaves older links depending on nobody else picking up the name you dropped.
Did this answer your question?