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How to change your Minecraft name, step by step
Changing your Minecraft: Java Edition username is free and takes a minute. What takes longer is everything around it: the 30 days you then have to wait before changing again, and the 37 days your old name stays reserved. This article goes through the change itself and through what it sets in motion.
Before you start
- You need Java Edition. The name belongs to the Java profile of your Microsoft account. Bedrock Edition shows your Xbox gamertag instead, which is changed elsewhere (see Java and Bedrock names).
- Your account must be allowed to change. If you changed your name in the last 30 days, the page will tell you when you can do it again.
- The new name must be free and allowed. Check it first with the name checker, and read the username rules if you are not sure it is valid.
Changing the name
- Go to minecraft.net and sign in with the Microsoft account that owns Java Edition. Type the address yourself rather than following a link someone sent you.
- Open your profile and find the Java Edition profile name.
- Choose to change it and type the new name. The page tells you right away whether that name is available.
- Confirm. The change is immediate: the next time you start the game, and on any server you join, you have the new name.
Nobody else needs to be involved. No website, bot or person has to sign in to your account to change your name, and anyone asking for your password to do it for you should be treated as a scam. Name scams lists the usual ones.
The 30 days between changes
Once you change your name you cannot change it again for 30 days. Pick carefully: a typo or a name you regret stays with you for a month. The same wait matters if you want to claim a name that is about to drop. If your last change was less than 30 days before that drop, your account cannot take it, however fast you are. Plan the change you make today with the drops you want next month in mind.
What happens to your old name
Your old name does not become free at once. It stays reserved for 37 days, and during the last week of that time, after your own 30 days have passed, you are the only one who can take it back. If you do not, it is released on day 37 and the first player to ask for it gets it. That release is a name drop, and for short or wanted names many people are waiting for it: the guide to name drops explains how it is timed.
If you are leaving a name you may want back, the safe course is simple: do not let the 37 days run out. Once it drops, it is no longer yours to decide.
Friends, servers and worlds
Your account keeps its UUID, the identifier that never changes, and that is what the game and most servers use to know who you are. Your single-player worlds, your skin and your capes stay as they were. On most servers your progress, ranks and items follow you to the new name, because they are tied to the UUID.
A few things can still go by name: an old plugin, a whitelist written by hand, a list of friends on a site outside the game. If you play on a server you care about, tell its staff about the change. And tell your friends: the name they search for is no longer yours.
Changing only the capitals
Capitals are part of how a name is shown, not of which name it is. Changing steve to Steve is done on the same page as any other change. Since it is still the same name, it does not release anything for someone else to take.
After the change
Your rename becomes part of your account's history. Mojang no longer shows that history publicly, but sites that watch names, this one included, record the renames they see: you can look at what we have with the name history tool. If you left a name you might regret, follow it and we tell you before it drops.
