Google has announced one of the most requested features in Gmail’s 22-year history: the ability to change your email address without losing a single piece of data. Rolling out to all United States Google Account holders, users can now change the username portion of their Gmail address, the part before @gmail.com, without creating a new account or losing any existing data. It is the first time since the service launched in 2004 that this has been possible. For millions of users who created their accounts as teenagers and have been professionally embarrassed by their address ever since, or who share a name with countless others and have spent years receiving their emails by mistake, the update marks a long-overdue change.
To make the switch, users can go to their Google Account settings, navigate to Personal info, then Email, then Google Account email, and tap the Change Google Account email button, where they can enter any available @gmail.com username they want. There are guardrails in place: users can only change their address once every 12 months, cannot delete the new address during that period, and have a lifetime limit of three changes total. When a switch is made, the old address automatically converts into an alternate email address, meaning emails sent to the previous address will still arrive in the same inbox, and both old and new addresses can be used to sign in to all Google services including Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Photos, and Maps.
All existing emails, contacts, calendar entries, files, and other account data are fully preserved through the change, and users who decide they made a mistake can revert to their old address at any time. The feature was first spotted in late 2025 when users noticed updated Google support documentation describing the process, and Google began quietly testing it in some regions before the official United States launch. There is one notable limitation for Chromebook users, who may need to remove their local account before making the change and sign back in afterward to avoid their home directory appearing empty post-switch. Google has indicated it is working on expanding the feature to other countries, though no specific timeline has been provided for international rollout.
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