Google is finally letting users change their Gmail addresses, ending a long-standing frustration for anyone stuck with an embarrassing or outdated email handle. The feature has been spotted in an official support document, though it’s rolling out slowly and currently limited to India. I’ve tried it, and no luck for me or my Irish Google account.
Why This Actually Matters
If you created your Gmail account in secondary school or university, there’s a decent chance you’re still logging into Google services with something like “coolboy2007” or “partygirl_dublin”. I used to work in a phone shop and taking in repairs meant asking for your email and I know a lot of you not only have these emails but have been too lazy to get a new one.
For years, that address has been permanent. You could create a new Google Account, sure, but then you’d lose access to years of YouTube subscriptions, Google Drive files, and Photos libraries. The migration headache meant most of us just lived with it.
I’ve seen this play out countless times. A friend recently had to explain to a potential employer why his professional correspondence came from an address referencing a football team and a year that definitely wasn’t his birth year. It’s awkward, and until now, unavoidable.
What Google Is Offering
According to the support documentation discovered by the Google Pixel Hub Telegram group, you’ll be able to keep your old address whilst switching to a new one. Both will work simultaneously for receiving emails, which is genuinely useful. Your existing data, subscriptions, and services all stay intact. You’re essentially getting two Gmail addresses attached to one account.
It’s wild to me this took so long, given Gmail has had some pretty neat tricks for a long time.
The catch? You can only change your address once every 12 months. That seems reasonable, preventing abuse whilst giving people flexibility.
How It Compares to Alternatives
Microsoft Outlook has offered address changes and proper aliases for years. If you’re on a Google Workspace account (the paid, managed version), you’ve had workarounds through alternate addresses. But for standard Gmail users, this functionality simply didn’t exist. You had to create entirely separate accounts and manually set up forwarding, which breaks the single sign-on convenience that makes Google accounts useful in the first place.
The Rollout Reality
Here’s the less exciting bit: the support page is currently only available in Hindi, suggesting India is the testing ground. Google explicitly states the feature will roll out gradually, so global availability isn’t imminent. This is official documentation, not a leak, which means it’s definitely happening. But “definitely happening” and “available next week” are very different things in Google’s world.
To check if you have access now, visit my.account.google.com/google-account-email on your phone or computer. Navigate to “Personal Information,” then look under “Email” for an option to “Change email address for your Google Account.” If you don’t see it, you’re waiting like the rest of us.
Worth the Wait?
For most people, this removes a genuine pain point. Email addresses have become core identifiers across the web, and being stuck with a decade-old choice feels increasingly outdated. The ability to evolve your digital identity without fragmenting your accounts is long overdue.
That said, if you’re desperate for a professional address right now, don’t wait indefinitely. Setting up a custom domain through Google Workspace or using Outlook’s existing features might be more practical than hoping for a gradual rollout to reach Ireland this year. Sometimes the workaround you can implement today beats the perfect solution arriving eventually.
Google hasn’t officially announced this feature, so specifics could still change. But after years of requests, it’s encouraging to see movement. Even if that movement is currently limited to one region and rolling out at Google’s famously glacial pace.
