It’s over 20 years since Gmail launched, so if you signed up early, there’s a good chance you might be a bit sick of your email address by now.
Whether it’s a cringy reference like @[email protected], or you simply got married (or divorced) since then and have a new surname, there are many reasons your online presence could do with a refresh.
Until now, however, if you wanted a new gmail address, you had to set up a new one.
An update to the service looks to be coming, however, which would allow people to change their address but keep using their old account, meaning any links to YouTube, Google Photos, Maps etc would also be unaffected.
The chance has so far only been seen on a Hindi language version of Google’s Help Centre.
A translation of it says: ‘If you’d like, you can change your Google Account email address that ends in gmail.com to a new email address that ends in gmail.com.
‘Important: The ability to change your Google Account email address is gradually rolling out to all users, so this option may not be available to you right now.’
The page gives a lot of information about how this will work, saying you will still be able to use your old email address too, as it will be set as an ‘alias’. So anyone who didn’t realise you had changed your address will still be able to contact you on the old one.
The help page says: ‘Data saved in your account, including photos, messages, and emails sent to your old email address, will not be affected.’
However, there will be some restrictions to those chopping and changing, as you won’t be able to create a new Google Account email address ending with gmail.com for the next 12 months. You will not be able to delete your new email address either.
Other online email services do let you update your address already, but given Gmail is the most widely used in the world, the change is likely to affect a lot of people. Up until now, it was only easy to change the name associated with the account, rather than the address itself.
The change, first spotted in the ‘Google Pixel Hub’ group on Telegram and reported by 9to5 Google, has not yet been announced on an English language version of the Help Centre, leading to speculation it could have been mistakenly announced earlier than planned.
Metro has contacted Google for comment.
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