Discord users must change their usernames by March 4, 2024
As expected, from March 4, 2024, the Discord messaging service will automatically assign usernames to those "who have not chosen one themselves", the company announced in an email. This move is in line with the company's revised policy on usernames and pseudonyms, announced last May.
Until now, Discord had distinguished itself by adopting a singular structure for usernames. These were made up of the username followed by a series of numbers (or discriminators), for example, pseudo#7513, and were case-sensitive, allowing "you to have the same username as someone else, provided you have different discriminators or different uppercase letters", as the messaging service points out. But this original configuration also complicated the user's task, since it was necessary to know precisely the structure of a contact's pseudonym to find it and add it to the platform.
So, to make it "easier to identify and add your friends, while preserving your ability to use your preferred name", the messaging service is now opting for a more common structure, namely pseudo. This new username must be in lowercase, composed of Latin characters, numbers, and certain special characters, namely the underscore and the dot. However, these new restrictions only apply to your username and not to your display name, which can be modified individually on each server, as well as being composed of special characters, spaces, or emojis.
How to change your Discord username
If you haven't yet changed your username, you can do so as follows:
On the desktop or browser application
- Go to User Settings by clicking on the cogwheel in the bottom left-hand corner of the interface,
- Select My Account,
- In the Username section, click on Modify,
- Enter a username consisting of letters, numbers, and possibly a dot and a hyphen.
On the mobile application (iOS and Android)
- Press the You tab, bottom right,
- Click on the notched road at the top right to access User Settings,
- Select Account, then Username,
- Choose a username consisting of letters, numbers, and possibly a dot and a hyphen.
Please note: for users who fail to meet the deadline, Discord assures you that the name assigned automatically will be based on the one used previously and that it will always be possible to change it later.