Say "Hello" to Display Names!

be_nj · February 9, 2021, 10:36pm

Hey there, developers!

We’re excited to introduce a new feature that will help you express yourself - Display Names!

We will be rolling this feature out slowly over the next few months and will update this post once the feature is turned on for everyone.

April 14 Update: We have begun another limited test rollout of the feature. As mentioned above, we will update this thread once the feature is ready to become available for everyone. Thank you!

June 8 Update: We have released the feature worldwide to 99% of users!

Display Names vs. Usernames

Usernames are globally unique names that can be used to precisely identify an account. They’re what you use to log in, and they’re used to identify the “real” you. After Display Names are rolled out, your username will be prefixed with an ‘@’.

Display Names are not unique. With the introduction of this feature, your Display Name is what will appear in places such as chat, player lists, or over your in-game character’s head.
Gone are the days of being CoolRobloxFan43732 - now, you can simply be CoolRobloxFan!

You will still use your unique username to log in, and users will still be able to see your current username, but you will now be able to choose a Display Name that you prefer to be shown to everyone, without the limitations of needing it be something unique (like your username)!

Most places around Roblox will start to show Display Name, although your unique username will still be visible on your profile.

How to set Display Names + Limitations

Once Display Names are rolled out, you may set your Display Name by navigating to your account details page.

Updating your Display Name will not cost any Robux, and will be available to all users
Display Names will still need to be verified by our filters
If you choose not to set a Display Name, it will default to match your username.
Currently, you are limited to changing Display Names once every 7 days.
The length of your Display Name must be between 3-20 characters.

Develop with Display Names

We encourage you to use the player-chosen identity as much as possible in your games.
We suggest using Player.DisplayName where you would normally use Player.Name when it comes to front-facing content (custom chat, player lists, menus, etc). UserIds can still be used anywhere that you need a unique identifier, such as data saving or as a unique key within tables.

You may have noticed that Humanoid has had a property named DisplayName as well. When the engine loads a character for a Player, it will automatically set the Humanoid.DisplayName field to match the Player.DisplayName field (unless a StarterHumanoid or StarterCharacter’s Humanoid is present to override this property).

You may write to Humanoid.DisplayName as needed to set custom text for names over the heads of characters.

Resources

Additional documentation on how to use this new feature is available on the following pages:

coefficients · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

This topic was automatically opened after 14 minutes.

sjr04 · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

Was this feature made with the risk for impersonation in mind? I can imagine malicious users using this to impersonate reputable community members or Roblox staff if display names will and should have priority over usernames…and it will be confusing when multiple people in the same server have the same display names.

And display names follow the same rules as usernames, making this kind of useless. We can’t have emojis, spaces, hyphens, etc…

Cool idea in theory, the ux just seems confusing

Daw588 · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

It’s nice to see this be implemented into Roblox. This feature will be good for people who roleplay. However, I have concerns about people abusing it to impersonate other people by making it less obvious using display names.

demofocus · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

This is a very intriguing update.

Will users be able to search you using the term from your display name or will this still be limited to username only?

EDIT: I do think that there needs to be some sort of system to prevent impersonation, as this could cause some serious issues with some developers reputations and such.

Maybe a verified developer system?

arcisbored · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this considering this gives players the chance to impersonate others. Along with this, it will be hard to keep track of users within the game if they are exploiting, abusing glitches, etc. I can definitely see the benefits of allowing users to use display-names without them being taken by others but there’s definitely quite a few downsides as well. Nonetheless, it’s a great concept and I’d love to see what happens in order to prevent these issues!

local_ip · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

After months of waiting, it’s here!

What are you doing to stop misuse of this feature? Given these will be shown in chat, what will you do to prevent people registering display names as other users to mislead others in the game? We still don’t know how these will look in chat.

Another possible issue would be two users with the same display name in the same game. How would this be handled?

Either way, this is a very exciting new feature! Very excited to see how display names will be implemented in game.

static2240 · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

would display names be available on devforum?

TheCarbyneUniverse · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

This is great, an amazing step towards eliminating random numbers and characters from representing players in games.

With the non-uniqueness aspect of DisplayNames, the only possibility that alarms me is impersonation in-game. It’s already easy to copy an avatar, and usernames were the only unique identifier, but with DisplayNames, I can’t image the abuse. How do you plan on preventing this? Is the username at least going to be shown in the in-game menu? There should be at least one place in-game where the unique username appears to everyone.

Anyways this is a great feature. With the relatively simple and free price for changing DisplayNames, I can already see users having a weekly rotation of different names (like how it happens in Discord), which’d be cool to see.

Sentross · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

I am interested to see how this feature will change the platform. I have a few questions though:

Will the username be easily visible, or do you have to look for it?
I am concerned that if the username is not easily visible (even if it’s in smaller text, impersonation problems can increase.)
Considering the new Roblox desktop app, will there be a feature to easily change your display name in the app in the future, and if so, will you be able to change it in a game?
If a display name does not pass the filter, will it be replaced by hashtags, or will it error? (In other words, can you keep choosing display names until one is verified by the filter)
Will the cost of changing your username remain the same?
Will you introduce any features in the future for well known Roblox users to get their username added to the display name filter to keep their brand protected and consistent from those intending to harm it?
Will a reporting option be added for inappropriate display names? I feel like since display names can be easily and quickly changed, people can bully other users using the feature.

rek_kie · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

This seems like a really cool feature, but I feel like it will cause some problems as well - the main one I can think of off the top of my head (and what I think everyone is thinking of as well) are people impersonating other people.

This might not seem like a small problem but the majority of Roblox’s playerbase is made up of kids and the truth is that a lot of them are really gullible. If you used this feature you could probably have hundreds of people impersonating you without even knowing.

Then again this is inevitable and the exact same thing happens on twitter so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Overall, idk about this one. Might be just me tho

p0s_0 · February 9, 2021, 10:50pm

Great update! One of my friends is gonna love this, she changes her username literally every 5 picoseconds.

Jokes aside, I have a few questions about this update.

What will Roblox do to prevent impersonation of other users (i.e NewFissy, badimo, etc.)?
Does this mean you can use spaces in your username again? If so, nice!
Is Roblox going to try to prevent users bypassing the filter via Unicode characters?
Speaking of unicode characters, can we put them in our usernames?
Considering your prefix is @, will we be able to mention users in group walls, comments, etc. in the future?
Will the overhead name now use DisplayNames?
Will users with usernames such as “aaa” that have been terminated be cleared up for use with Display Names?

Although, there are a couple of concerns I have about this update too:

Players may be able to use unicode characters (if they’re allowed) to bypass the filter. There’s a few unicode characters out there that can be combined to form swears. You can also use certain unicode characters to create emoji, and spaces. Will Roblox factor for this?

Overall, pretty cool update to see. I’ve been waiting for this update for quite some time.

TheSuzerain · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

Now, THIS is going to be revolutionary!!

I’ve been thinking about this feature in the back of my mind but never really paid much attention to it.

However, how will users be able to see their actual username in the game? This doesn’t seem to be expressed in the article.

Also, for games like Robloxian High School, where your roleplay name shows in the chat, how exactly will that work. Will games with that feature have to re-script the chat so that it won’t show a display name when you hover over their roleplay name?

Once again, a great update, looking forward to its release!

SoCalifornian · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

This is an extremely useful update for those who want to use taken Usernames already but NOTHING in this post covers the risk of Impersonation and neither does it go into how it’s prevented.

It would be extremely useful for us Developers to see how Impersonation of ourselves and others is prevented - was risk accounted for with DisplaysNames or was it simply an after thought (or not a thought at all)?

TigerValdos · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

This sounds awesome! Quick question though, what’s stopping someone from running around impersonating another person? I wouldn’t like someone going by the name TigerValdos running around insulting people.

NKM9 · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

Is it possible for us to see a feature so developers can opt-in to disable people using their usernames? Without this, small developers and even staff for popular games could be impersonated and cause many issues.

M_caw · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

Thank you so much! I can finally be called Macaw instead of M_caw. The username pool has shrunken considerably, and most favorably names have been taken. I’m so glad that this long-needed feature has been introduced- gone are the days of name sniping when you can call yourself whatever you want!

As a question, will our display name be required to be alphanumeric like our username, and will emojis be allowed? You mention unicode characters.

Say I want to call myself 金刚鹦鹉 or მაკაო or الببغاء. Will I have the ability to do so? This would ensure Roblox becomes even more international, and would make non-English speakers more comfortable on the site. Would love to see this.

Regardless, I cannot wait to be called Macaw in-game. Say goodbye to hacky username snipes and whatnot or paying Robux- your imagination is limitless!

Astra_X2 · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

Thank you Roblox! I have been waiting to use AstraX2 but some random account that’s inactive uses it. This system will allow me to use it properly! Thanks!

Also, will the player search window be able to go by display name or account name?

TayIorRobinson · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

What’s to stop me from impersonating others with my display name, for example, setting it to builderman or Shedletsky, etc. Will display names always show up as for example builderman@TayIorRobinson?

Plus, will we ever be able to change our display color, for example allowing me to choose red for my name to be displayed rather than yellow?

Edit: after some digging it seems that using display names in chat is a setting in the client’s ChatSettings, and then enable it seperately for private messages.

I hardcoded my DisplayName in the chat scripts and it just, uses your display name.

Also, if your playername is ambiguous, and you try to message, you get an error message.

The colour is based on both your username and your display name.

Baileyeatspizza · February 9, 2021, 10:51pm

Are there any plans on updating the filter to allow more names after this is released?

for example, my first name Bailey is almost always filtered