0

I changed my username on GitHub a few months ago (I'm a self-taught student dev and I wanted to use my real name instead of a nickname, in order for my profile to look more professional). I've just realised I'm still using my old username's @users.noreply.github.com email to commit.

Does this matter, and if so, what's the best way to change it without causing issues?

I saw a similar question from 6 years ago: GitHub username change (with noreply as email for commits)

However, my question is a little different:

  • I'm not concerned about amending the commit email for existing repos, as they are all currently just student/practice projects with only myself as the contributor.

  • I'm more concerned that repos which I've created since I changed my GH username are still using the old-user-name@users.noreply.github.com email. It would be good for future repos to have the correct email.

I'm new to using Git and GH, so I want to check the following:

  • Should I use git config --global user.email "MY_EMAIL@SOME_DOMAIN.com" and just use my normal email? The current one is a GitHub noreply email, so I'm concerned about resetting this and ending up with a ton of commit messages sent to my email, or messing up something in my GH settings that I don't yet know about.
  • Alternatively, is there a way to set up an @users.noreply.github.com email for my current GH username, and would this be a better option than the above?

Many thanks.

Cate
  • 1
  • 1
  • Individual commits have your user name, but the repository as such does not. If I understand your question correctly, you just want your future commits to use your new address. Configuring `user.email` will do that; of course, the commits will only be visible on Github once you push them there. – tripleee Apr 06 '22 at 11:47
  • However, please understand that exposing your real email address in commit messages is effectively making it public. Github takes some precautions to prevent spammers from scraping it, but someone who is determined or just sloppy could take it from there. – tripleee Apr 06 '22 at 11:49
  • In principle, your user name should already be connected to that name @users.noreply.github.com but I have no idea how that works across account renames. – tripleee Apr 06 '22 at 11:50
  • Thanks @tripleee - it's useful to know about the issue with making my real email address public. I've just used git config --global user.email to change to my current GH username with a noreply address and it all seems to be working correctly! I noticed that the username has an 8-digit ID attached to it in the noreply email and this remained the same across the username change, so perhaps this ID is more important than the actual display name in this situation. – Cate Apr 06 '22 at 12:21

0 Answers0