Name, username and bio

Set the display name, optional username and short bio on your account, and see who receives them.

On this page

The Profile page holds the details that describe you on your account. The page is titled Profile and says it covers your name, picture, username and language. This page covers the text fields in the Your details section. The picture, language and time zone have their own pages.

The section says what the details are for: they are Shown to the applications you sign in to, where they ask for your profile.

Choose a picture, which has its own page: Picture.
Display name, the first field of Your details.
Save details, which sends every field at once, including the language and time zone.

Profile: the details that describe you to the applications you sign in to. Sample data./account/profile

The fields#

Field	Required	Rules
Display name	Yes	1 to 200 characters. Leading and trailing spaces are trimmed. Control characters, line separators and text-direction overrides are refused.
Username	No	3 to 32 letters, digits or underscores. The hint says Your sign-in name, shown to the apps you use. It starts as the part of your email before the @; change it any time.
About you	No	A short text of at most 280 characters. The hint says Optional. A line or two.

Your starting username#

When your account is created, it is given a username made from your email address: the part before the @, in lowercase, with any +tag removed and other symbols turned into underscores. Jane.Doe+news@example.com starts as jane_doe. If that name is already held, a number is added (jane_doe1), and a name that would read as the platform's own, such as admin or support, always gets a number. You can change it at any time below, or empty the field to have none. An account created before this existed may have no username until it is given one.

Your username can be seen by the people who administer the platform and by the applications you let see your profile (see below), so a starting username shows the part of your email address before the @. If you would rather not show it, choose a different username.

Rules for a username#

Your username is unique across the platform, and capital letters do not make a name different: Ada_L and ada_l count as the same username. The platform keeps the capitalisation you typed. If someone else holds the name, the page says That username is taken.

On a deployment set up for it, your username can also be typed on the sign-in page in place of an email address. See Signing in.

Who sees what#

An application receives profile details only when you sign in to it and it asks for the profile scope, which you approve on the consent screen. That scope releases your name, your username (as a display hint), your language, your time zone, your picture and the time the profile last changed. The text in About you is not part of what the standard scopes release. An application registered to see a per-application identifier for you (a pairwise identifier) receives that identifier instead of your account identifier, and no picture. Your email address is released by the separate email scope. See Connected applications for how to see what each application has been given and take it back.

A username is a display hint. An application should not use it as a stable identifier, because you can change it and someone else can then take the old one.

Change your details#

Open Profile in the account navigation. It is one page: Your details sits beside Email addresses.
In Your details, edit Display name, Username or About you.
Select Save details.
The page confirms with Details saved.

The form sends the whole set of fields at once, including the language and time zone described on Language and time zone. To remove a username or a bio, empty the field and save. An empty username means you have none.

Saving your details needs no extra confirmation. It does not sign other devices out and it does not send a security email.

What can go wrong#

What you see	What it means
That username is taken.	Another account holds the name. Choose a different one.
A message that a username is 3 to 32 letters, digits or underscores	The name has a space, a symbol or the wrong length.
A message that a name is at most 200 characters, or cannot contain control or invisible characters	The display name is too long or holds characters that cannot be shown. Retype it.
A message that a bio is at most 280 characters	Shorten the text.