Just a few days ago, we told you that YouTube would finally introduce user identifiers. In a statement issued by the company at the time, it was stated that the feature will begin to be deployed in the coming days and that, in any case, those users who did not choose their identifier on November 14th will receive a temporary one that , they could modify if they wanted. As I said at the time, it clearly indicated this to us Google intended the change to happen quickly.

And so much because YouTube started communicating with some users who can now choose their YouTube user ID. In previous posts, we urged you to stay tuned for the next few weeks, but it ended up being just three days in many cases. To check if this is the case for you, check the email account associated with your YouTube account and if you can already select yours, you will receive a message like this:

I use it of course will remind you to check your email carefully, since it is public that YouTube is sending these messages, it is quite likely that phishing attempts are already taking place based on them. Also, if you received this message but there is something in it that you don’t trust, instead of starting the process from the message, you can do it directly from YouTube Studio.

Also note that if you already have a personalized URL for your channel, in almost all cases YouTube will use that name as your identifier, although you can also change it if you wish. I remember you, yes requirements set by YouTube to create identifiers:

• Must be between 3 and 30 characters
• be composed of alphanumeric characters (AZ, az, 1-9)
  • You can include underscores (_), hyphens (-), and periods (.)
• It doesn’t look like a URL or a phone number
• Currently not in use
• Follow YouTube Community Guidelines

In addition, there are two reasons why a username may be rejected by YouTube:

• Violent, offensive, sexualized or inappropriate usernames
• Sale and transfer of usernames

All ready? Have you received an email and are you already clear on what you want your username to be (at the cost of making it public, of course)? So there we go:

How to choose your YouTube ID

To get started, you can press the “Choose a username” button in the email or, if you prefer, you can go directly to this website. In both cases, you will be taken to a page where an identifier will be suggested based on your current username as well as your channel URL, for example:

If you like the default suggested identifier, you don’t need to do anything else because you already have it reserved, so you can start using it as soon as its features start rolling out. However, if you had something else in mind, you’ll need to click the “Change Username” button. At that moment, a box will appear in which you are offered several options, and at the bottom of it you will see a text field in which you can write the desired identifier.

Type it and wait a few seconds as the site will tell you if the name is not available, in which case it will suggest an alternative, although you can also type other

or if it’s free on the contrary, it will allow you to select it

When you finally find the desired identifier and confirm that it is available, click on «Confirm selection». You will then see a message confirming that everything went well and that you have already reserved an identifier:

By confirming it, you will return to the home page, where you will already see your new identifier and the URL of your channel. At this point, I also recommend that you read the rest of the content of said page because you’ll find useful usage information you can start providing to your new identifier from YouTube. Besides, who knows? Maybe now that you’ve made this change, it’s time to cheer up and finally upload that video you’ve been thinking about for a long time to the platform. What better way to inaugurate your identifier?