How to CHANGE my YouTube channel name 2021

How do I change my YouTube channel name?

What is a Google Brand Account, and how does it affect a YouTube brand channel?

If you rename your YouTube channel - leave the name in the comments below!

I rename my YouTube channel in real time, as a step-by-step tutorial - it's really easy...

And then I go on to change YouTube channel name so that the channel doesn't have a first name and last name. To do this, we need to create a Google brand account, sign out of that account, sign back into the YouTube channel we want to rename, and then move that channel to the renamed brand account.

How to CHANGE my YouTube channel name 2020

0:00 How to CHANGE my YouTube channel name 2020!

0:45 Go to YouTube Studio customization tab, choose BASIC INFO

1:38 Change YouTube channel name and channel description, click on the pen icon

2:50 How to change YouTube channel name to something other than first name and last name

3:30 How to create a YouTube channel name that's different from its Google account 

4:00 How to find your YouTube account advanced settings

4:30 How to move your YouTube channel to a brand account

7:00 What happens when you move your YouTube channel to a brand account channel - what happens to my comments?

TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Hello! 

How do I change-- I don't know why I'm shouting.

How do I change the name of my YouTube channel?

That is an excellent question and one that I hope to answer with you by actually changing the channel name of my channel right here in front of you before your very eyes in real time! 

My name is Neil Mossey, I'm a digital development producer helping high achieving creators and performers just like you.

There's a sound effect. 

A high five would be better than a dig wouldn't it? 

To get ideas out of your head and out onto here on YouTube.

We need your channel but first we need your channel name to be changed just like mine, so let's take a look at my YouTube studio.

The first thing we can do is click on the three lines here to expand our menu.

Now you should be familiar with this if you run a channel, but the section that you want is the tab down here.

It's called customization, so click on that and of course make sure that you are logged into the channel that you want to change.

You can do that up in the top right hand side here just by clicking switch accounts and then choosing the one that you want to change.

So we're in this channel here it's called "Neilnypops trains and stops" 

It seemed like an excellent name for a channel when I set this up, but we can see three tabs here under channel customization.

There's the "layout"...

There's a whole other video on this in the description: this is where you can change how your channel looks when someone goes to the home page of your channel.

The second tab is branding and this is where we can change our profile picture and select a banner image.

I've not done mine yet and that will be the subject of another video again that's down in the description.

The tab we want is basic information - "basic info", and I almost didn't find it but the place where we are going to change our channel name is here.

It's above the channel description.

Let's type something in now.

"My channel where I go for walks." 

Excellent prose, this is why I'm a development producer... 

But where do we change our channel name? 

I think it's quite hidden, even though it's really obvious and right at the top if you can see here there's a pen.

Little pen icon.

We can click on that pen or pencil, if I hover over it says "edit channel name". 

Click on that and there you go, here's the box where we put our channel name.

I'm just going to call it something slightly different.

I'm going to call it "Trains and stops with Neilnypops" and then we go up to the top right hand corner and hit publish.

And as you can see there's confirmation at the bottom: changes published.

Should we view the channel? 

Let's have a quick look at the channel.

I only have one video on here. 

I have quite a few videos to put up on this channel, but as you can see the channel name has changed so if you haven't got this box I think you'll have a box that looks like this.

Where you have two boxes.

There's a first name and a last name and that's because this YouTube channel is basically linked to the google account that created it, and the first name as you can see is great story team and I didn't put a last name in.

I didn't set it up properly.

I set it up like it's a person so it's a little bit more tricky to change this channel name.

All we can do is just change the first name and last name.

It's like a personal account and it's totally okay to change it here, so I could put "with Neil Mossey".

All that would happen here is if I save this, it would just change the name of the google account that this is linked to, so it's not quite the same as changing the channel name properly.

What we can do to help explain it better is if you click on the "learn more" there's a whole article here about managing your channel's basic information.

If I click on "change your channel name and description" you can see down here there's a basic explanation which is to use a different name on YouTube than your google account.

You can create a brand account and connect it to your channel.

So let's see if we can do that.

I'm going to do it in real time and we'll see what happens, so I'm going to click on "create a brand account" and there's an explanation here about how brand accounts work.

And I know all you wanted to do is just to change your YouTube channel name but let's go through this.

This is a good idea if you want to use a different name on YouTube and it also helps to manage multiple channels from the one google account: so there's a checklist here.

First check to see if you already have a brand account.

It takes you to this help article but that directs you to this url: YouTube.com/account_advanced and if you click "move channel to a brand account" I'll click on this. 

YouTube gives me a little map so it shows that my channel is actually connected to the same google account of the same name, and what we want to do is to move this channel to a brand channel.

But there's no brand channel for me to move it to, so the next task on the list is to go to your channel list.

There's my one channel, it's called great story team.

There are no other channels so we're gonna create a new channel and I'm gonna call this brand account name great story team then hit create.

This channel does not exist.

We know that because we have just created it.

Let's go back to the the help article.

Fill out the details to name the brand account and verify your account then click create.

Well it doesn't let me do that.

Let's go up to the top right hand corner and I've gone into studio, so this is the brand new channel.

This is my brand channel.

Okay so things went a bit weird when I hit create a new channel because it says the next step is to fill out the details to name the brand account and verify your account.

Well as you saw it just went straight to a page that said "channel does not exist" so I'm going to sign out and I'm going to sign back in as the channel that I wanted to move.

Click your profile picture and then we're going to click down here on settings, so in the left menu we're going to click on "advanced settings". 

Now we'll go down to here "move channel" 

We click to "move channel to a brand account" 

There we go.

When you create your brand account you are logged into that brand account.

You need to come out and go back to the channel that you want to move to the brand account that you've just created.

My channel now which is the great story team channel and then after the move so we're going to choose an account so I'm going to select great story team which is the brand account that we just created.

Now it's giving me a warning: Great story team is already connected to another YouTube channel.

Absolutely, do you remember it was the channel that they - that YouTube said doesn't exist.

So what it's saying is... if I move my channel to this brand account, the connected channel there will be deleted.

This must be absolutely terrifying for you if you're about to do this.

I know I'm going to be okay because it's confirming here this channel has zero subscribers no videos and no playlists.

It's just an empty shell of a channel that's just been created, so I'm going to hit delete channel and it shows you what's going to happen.

So my channel now is connected to my greatstoryteam personal account and after the move it's going to be connected to the brand account great story team.

Now the only reason I know it's different is because I have those spaces in the name for that brand account, so I'm going to hit move channel and it's asking you "are you sure you want to do this?" 

Your channel name and icon will be updated across YouTube, my channel url - because I have a personalized url - will not change.

That's good, but some content cannot be transferred.

Basically your comments cannot be moved.

I don't know what that means so I'm going to set up a little test.

I'm going to leave a comment on one of my other videos, on my other channel and we're going to see what happens to my comments... because you might have a lot of comments out there that you do not want to lose.

So I'm going to go into my own video on the Neil Mossey channel - this channel.

I'm gonna leave a comment: Do I still exist?

Wish me luck.

We'll see what happens to that comment after I've made the move.

Uh look what's happened! 

So the comment still exists but look - the avatar has completely disappeared! 

Let's click on the avatar, yeah look it's disappeared.

So I'm going to hit move channel.

Big moment.

My channel has been successfully moved, so my great story team channel that used to be the personal channel of the google account greatstoryteam has now been moved to a brand account that's called great space story space team.

It might take up to 10 minutes for updates on my account to be completed.

That's okay.

Now I would just step away from the computer for 10 minutes and let YouTube to do its thing because it is pretty terrifying when you get messages like this.

Don't create a new channel whatever you do. 

We'll just let it let it go through.

I was worried my great story team channel has one of my highest rated videos, it's this one here: how to set the clock on a Lamona oven.

As you can see I've had 223000 views, but excitingly look - that's the channel now! 

Instead of greatstoryteam, one word, it comes under great story team, three words.

I think the move has gone through successfully.

I'm just worried if I click this I'm worried it's gonna just completely wipe out my channel.

I think I've worked this out.

Because we have moved my channel greatstoryteam one word to the brand account great story team, three words, it's basically freed up a channel here.

Which we don't need.

So that this could be a brand new channel, so we don't need to "create channel" 

All we need to do is to sign in on our brand account, so I'm going to sign out.

We're going to sign back in and it asks "Do I want to use YouTube as my personal account greatstoryteam or my brand accounts great space story space team" 

Let's go for the brand account and now if I go to YouTube studio... oh there they are.

Oh my goodness that was terrifying! 

Close! 

So do you see what's happened?

Because we moved that channel to this brand account, it freed up some space for a brand new YouTube channel on the place that we've moved from.

So to go into your channel that you've moved, you've got to sign out and you've got to sign back in again and choose the brand account.

And I'm going to click on "customization" and then we'll go to "basic info" and then we'll click on the pencil.

There you go.

That was so difficult, so here we can see this is where you can change your channel name now.

And it's not as "first name" "last name" like we had before.

What we have now is a big long box where you can write a title.

I don't know how long this title can be?

There we go, right so the name has to be 50 characters or less.

And that is how you change your YouTube channel name.

If you hit the subscribe button, you'll be up to date with my new experiments online and let me wreck my little experimental channels before you damage your YouTube channel.

If you want to see more about how to set up a brand account, there's this video here. 

I do a complete walkthrough on the difference between a personal account on YouTube and a brand account.

And up here is what YouTube thinks you should be watching next.

Thanks for joining me and good luck with renaming your YouTube channel.

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