How to Change Your Discord Name

Discord, the gaming-voice-chat-turned-general-communication platform, gives you a few ways to customize names. You choose your username when you sign up, and you can change your server nickname on any server that has the setting enabled. That means you can show up as HyruleCitizen in one server but JediKnight in another, even if your actual username is EldenRing#4545. 

However, user names are changing in a big way. Discord announced in May that everyone will have to choose new usernames -- the new ones will have to be unique and won't feature the discriminator (such as #0000) at the end. The change, according to a blog post from Discord's co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy, is coming because "current usernames can often be too complicated or obscure for people to remember and share easily." 

You can find the full list of name change requirements and information about the rollout in Discord's blog post, but there are two particularly noteworthy details. First, users can choose a display name separately from their username, and those display names will not need to be unique. This essentially means you can keep your current name as your display name without the discriminator. Second, users can still use server nicknames in servers where that feature is enabled, allowing further customization of your name across different servers. 

The advantage of server nicknames is that they allow you to present yourself however you'd like to be known, and the upcoming changes will bring a similar benefit across all servers in the form of display names.

The most common reason to use different nicknames in different servers is to make your Discord name match the name you use in different communities, especially if you have different usernames across different games. My name in Overwatch is different than my name in Pokemon Unite, so I change my nicknames in those servers to match my in-game name. And when I've played D&D over Discord, the other players and I changed our nicknames to match our character names, so it's easy to remember that someone's name isn't Greg, it's Sindol'thar the Persistent. 

When it's your turn to choose your new Discord name, you'll be prompted to do so when you open the app. Discord will suggest a unique username similar to your existing one, but you can customize it. If someone else has already claimed that name, Discord will tell you to try a different variation until you find one that another user hasn't already claimed. 

You'll also be able to choose a display name, which will be your default name in servers. Display names don't need to be unique, so you can make it whatever you want.

How to change your server nickname in Discord

No matter what you choose for your username and display name, you can still change your nickname in a specific server. Here's how to do that.

1. Go to the server where you want to change your name.

2. Click or press the three dots at the top of the channel menu.

3. Choose Edit Server Profile in the popup menu.

4. If the server has nicknames enabled, you can simply click into the Server Nickname box and type whatever you want to use as your new name. If nicknames are not enabled, you won't be able to type in the box.

You can also get an at-a-glance look at your nickname across all the servers you're in. Here's how to check.

1. Go to your Discord profile.

2. Choose Profiles.

3. Select Server Profiles at the top.

4. It will default to your most recently visited server. Select the > at the top of that menu to pull up the full menu of servers. If you're using a nickname in a server, it will display under the server name. If no name is displayed, that means you're using your normal username in that server.

5. If you want to change your nickname in any server, just select that server from the menu. If nicknames are enabled, you can type in your desired name under Server Nickname.

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