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Change/rename login name #5488
Description
Hi,
I would like to rename/change my login name and we can't do that for now on Nextcloud.
Can you support it?
Each Nextcloud user has two names: a unique Login Name used for authentication, and a Full Name, which is their display name. You can edit the display name of a user, but you cannot change the login name of any user.
Thanks,
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MorrisJobke commentedon Jul 18, 2017
No - the login name for now is our internal ID. We will not support this. You could also login via your email address (if it is only used once in the instance)
sscholl commentedon Mar 22, 2018
This is bad... Really bad.
rysiekpl commentedon Jun 21, 2018
Yeah, an ability to rename users would be very useful.
amjad commentedon May 2, 2020
This is a useful feature.
t1mothy666 commentedon Aug 31, 2020
Quite sad.
caugner commentedon Jun 9, 2021
I would like to raise this issue again, because it is a very important Nextcloud limitation, especially for the following cases:
Other popular software like GitLab and Mattermost support changing the username without any problems.
If it's really not possible to change the "userid" at all for technical limitiations, it would be nice if it could still be overwritten virtually, so that the "userid" doesn't appear anywhere (except internally).
/cc @schiessle @rullzer @MorrisJobke
bpcurse commentedon Jun 9, 2021
Depending on the case it is even a legal obligation. see https://gdpr-info.eu/art-16-gdpr/ (right to rectification)
adroslice commentedon Jul 28, 2021
Usernames almost never stick around for the entirety of someones life. Some are young and choose dumb, embarrassing names like xXNoobKiller69Xx, and some may regret using their real name as their username. Of course it's their own fault, and they could always create new accounts, but the more services support a simple means to rename your account, or migrate everything to a new account under a different username, the many more hours are saved for many people.
That's what I think, anyway. Obviously the trans stuff is also quite relevant right now, but that was already mentioned.
P.S., is it fair to call and flag this as "technological debt"? I believe the current best practice is not to let users choose their uniquely identifying name, but rather assign each a random numeric value. Then there's also what I'd call the "Discord approach", where users choose only a display name, and get a randomly assigned, smaller numeric value, however still with a unique number it maps to under the hood.
pjrobertson commentedon Aug 3, 2021
Also facing this question/issue.
Could a workaround be to have a function or feature that transfers ownership of all files/folders/tasks etc. from one user to another? That way, the workaround could be:
Not ideal, but might be easier from a technical standpoint?
gabevenberg commentedon Aug 18, 2021
@pjrobertson do you know if there is any way to do this? Esp. with things like calanders, export/import is difficult.
pjrobertson commentedon Aug 19, 2021
I don't know. The above suggested workflow was hypothetical. I see
occhasfiles:transfer-ownershipanddav:move-calendar. Those may workErikUden commentedon Oct 22, 2021
Any updates on the issue? I do not think this has been resolved.
Verhoeckx commentedon Oct 27, 2021
I believe this is important too!
felix-berlin commentedon Nov 28, 2021
For me, this would also be a very important function. Especially now that there are problems with the current Android version --> "Server not available" occurs when the username contains a space.
Edit: I know i can login with my e-mail address but than i have to reconfigure my account and syncs 😞
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w-shackleton commentedon Oct 6, 2026
For anyone looking to change their username in the meantime: I conjured a Nextcloud app into existence using an LLM, to perform Nextcloud user name changes: https://github.com/w-shackleton/nextcloud-user-rename
The technique used by this LLM-generated app probably isn't suitable for inclusion in Nextcloud (it scans all tables to find things that look like user ID columns / JSON paths).
It worked on my instance: it does mess a lot of things up (eg. I had to completely wipe the Android app and set it up from scratch, the full text search app needed a complete reset) but it did work! Make a full backup etc beforehand. Only tested against MariaDB with a local account and local file storage.
burdoto commentedon Oct 12, 2026
This is needed for several systems that I manage. Usernames follow a scheme for first- and lastname, and in accordance to our countries recent jurisdiction in relation to first names we need to be able to adjust names.
Right now, this is impossible and to my experience particularly dangerous if the account in question is the first account created - as deleting it had caused the entire Nextcloud instance to break in my past attempts.
Sprinterfreak commentedon Oct 27, 2026
I would like to make another argument why this feature is required for technical reasons.
Since Nextcloud killed off the imap auth backend, users are forced to be moved. Their email address of course stays the same.
Now Nextcloud creates a sha1 random string for the same user on the new auth backend, basically render federation with this user completely unusable.
I'am fine with the 'username' being some kind of unintelligible garbage if it is just and only used as an internal unique identifier, never to be displayed to the user and not used for external communication. This isn't the case of course.
Just imagine telling someone Your federated id on the phone. Just utterly broken.