Discord has announced the removal of its four-digit discriminator that was usually followed by a username to make the username stand out. Users will be allowed to pick their own unique username over the coming weeks.
Initially, when Discord was built, usernames were case-sensitive as Discord did not have a friend system and they wanted their users to have the freedom to pick any name of their choice without being told that any particular username was taken.
However, as Discord evolved, they built a friend system and to allow users to search for their friends, they introduced a feature called ‘discriminator’. This feature was a four-digit suffix (like #4563) added after every username to make every username unique. This way you were able to chat with someone or send a friend request.
Many users still faced problems and Discord found out that more than 40% of users don’t remember or know what a discriminator is, which leads to many people being unable to connect over Discord.
Hence, Discord is officially removing the discriminator to make room for a unique alphanumeric username that users will get to choose. It will have an ‘@’ symbol in front and you can choose from a number of emojis and characters, as well as incorporate spaces.
New usernames will be easier to read, type, and share between users and provide better statistics of sharing and actually connecting.
However, there are still some restrictions as the new usernames will not be allowed to have two consecutive period characters, special characters other than underscore and period. They should also have a minimum of two characters and a maximum of 32 characters.
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