How to Change a Game Center Nickname from the iPhone & iPad

How to Change a Game Center Nickname from the iPhone & iPad

Game Center is the online gaming basis for many games in iOS and OS X, letting users play online, track scores, play against friends, it’s also generally required to use for almost every game played on an iPhone or iPad. When signing up for Game Center for the first time, plenty of us chose a nickname or username that was either our real names, an online nickname, or perhaps some oddball nickname, not really thinking much of the naming choice.

Well, it turns out the Game Center nickname is entirely public, and it shows in games and in leaderboards, so once you realize that your fellow gamer friends, family, and coworkers can see that nickname too, you may decide “DrunkGuy69” or “IHateMyBoss420” wasn’t the best choice of usernames after all. But don’t freak out too bad, you can switch it out with something else!
All iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch users can change the nickname that is shown through Game Center rather easily, the process is handled directly on their iOS devices and can be repeated as many times as necessary. Yes, that means if decide your new name isn’t that great either you can keep changing it until you’re happy.

Changing Game Center Profile Names in iOS

1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone or iPad
2. Go to “Game Center” and scroll down, then tap on your current username shown under ‘GAME CENTER PROFILE’
3. Sign into the Apple ID associated with the Game Center account (yes this is the same as the iTunes and App Store login)
4. Tap your current nickname to bring about the keyboard, delete the existing name, and enter your new name
5. Choose “Done” when satisfied to set the Game Center name as your new nickname
6. Exit out of Settings

The change is immediate for unopened apps, but if you have an active online game open like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans and you just switched over to Settings through multitasking, you’ll probably want to quit out of it and re-open the app again to be certain the nickname change carries over. This basically forces the game in question to re-login to the Game Center servers where the change will be appear.

Somewhat related, an optional setting for those who like a bit more privacy is to toggle the “Public Profile” setting to OFF while in that same Profile menu. This just prevents the profile (and nickname) from being visible to everyone, and instead only those in your Game Center friends list can see what games you’re playing and the scores.