- In this video, I am going to show you
how to change your YouTube channel name.
And it's as simple as this.
(snap)
From any YouTube page,
click on your profile image
in the top right hand corner.
And then go to the YouTube Studio.
From this screen, you'll see several options
down the left-hand navigation bar.
One of them is labeled as Customization.
Click on there to show this screen
From here, you want to go to the Basic Info tab
at the top of the screen,
and then you should see your current channel name
at the top.
Click the pencil icon,
and this should now allow you to edit your channel name.
Now, this next bit is important.
If you see your channel name displayed
as first name and last name,
changing this will also change the name
of your Google account.
And that's because currently
your YouTube channel is a personal account.
We'll come back to why that is important in a moment.
Now, let's say you go through exactly the same process
to change your YouTube channel name,
and the screen looks like this.
With a single channel name field,
as opposed to first name and last name.
This is because your YouTube channel
is part of a brand account,
and changing this name
will not impact the name of your Google account.
You may not have realize this at the time,
but when you first created your YouTube channel,
you will have chosen either a personal
or brand account for your YouTube channel.
There are several advantages of having a brand account
over a personal YouTube account.
The first one being,
when you change your channel name,
it doesn't impact your Google account name.
On top of that, it allows you,
as the brand account owner,
to give access to other people to the YouTube channel,
but not your Google account.
You can also use whatever email you want
on your brand account,
rather than having it attached to your Google account email.
And you can manage multiple YouTube brand accounts
on one Google account,
as opposed to having one personal YouTube channel
attached to one personal Google account.
So the next question you may be asking is,
if I have a personal YouTube account,
can I convert it to a brand account?
The answer is yes,
but it can be a little scary to do.
So full disclaimer, you do all of this at your own risk.
Secondly, this still looks to be an old YouTube screen,
so this process may change in the future.
Point your web browser to youtube.com/channel_switcher
to display this screen.
Next, you need to create a new channel.
When you do it through this screen,
it will automatically create
a Brand Account YouTube channel.
Now then, this is the point at which you need to know
exactly what you're going to do.
You want to move your existing YouTube channel
to the new Brand Account.
So let's be clear on YouTube's wording for this.
"It's important that you're signed
in to the Google Account associated with the channel
you want to move.
For example, if you want to move the channel associated
with your Google Account to a Brand Account,
make sure you're signed into your Google Account
for this step.
Similarly, if you want to move via channel associated
with your Brand Account to your Google Account,
make sure you're signed into your Brand Account.
This will ensure that your channel
is not unintentionally deleted during the move".
So then, having created the brand account,
you will now need to switch back
to your main YouTube channel account
as displayed on screen now.
Once in that account, again, go to your profile image,
and this time go to Settings.
Next up, on this screen, go to Advanced Settings
from the navigation bar on the left-hand side.
And you should now see an option in the middle
of the screen that says Move channel to a brand account.
The next screen will confirm
that you are moving your personal YouTube channel
to the brand account.
Click the Replace button
and this will then confirm
that by moving the personal channel into your brand account
the YouTube channel already in the brand account
will be deleted.
You will need to confirm that you understand this
with the check box, then click on Delete Channel,
which will then offer you one last confirmation
before you click Move Channel.
At this point,
you should now see a message
saying the channel has been successfully moved
into the brand account,
but it may take 10 minutes to complete the changes.
Now then, when you go back to your profile image
and switch accounts,
the personal account
should no longer have a channel attached to it
because it was transferred to the brand account.
So when we switch to the brand account
and go into the YouTube Studio,
Customization screen and go to the Basic Info tab,
when we go to change the YouTube channel name,
it should now look like this without a first name,
or a surname, which successfully confirms
you have switched to a brand account.
That is really complicated and really scary.
YouTube, why did you this so difficult?
Hopefully for most of you,
all you need to do is watch the first minute of this video
to change your YouTube channel name.
But I did say it was a complete guide,
so if you do need to know
how to change a personal account to a brand account,
there you have it.
Believe it or not, this was a beginner's guide.
Fortunately, for most of the things you need to do
on YouTube, they are relatively straightforward.
And we have a huge playlist over here
that's going to help you get started
with your YouTube journey.
Thank you very much for watching,
and enjoy the rest of your video-making day.