Git FAQ: How to show or change your Git username or email address

Git user FAQ: How do I show or change my Git username or email address?

How to show your Git username

There are at least three ways to show your Git username:

1. The git config command
2. The git config --list command
3. Looking in your Git configuration file

The following sections describe each solution.

1) The `git config` command

Use the git config command like this to show your Git username:

git config user.name

In my case this returns:

Alvin Alexander

2) The `git config --list` command

Another way to show your Git username is with this git config command:

git config --list

which returns this output:

user.name=Alvin Alexander
user.email=[omitted]
merge.tool=vimdiff

3) Look in your Git configuration file

Finally, you can also see your Git username in the Git configuration file in your HOME directory on Unix systems, i.e., this file:

~/.gitconfig

My file on my current test system looks like this:

[user]
        name = Alvin J. Alexander
        email = [omitted]
[merge]
        tool = vimdiff

It’s important to note that this is your “global” Git username. You can also have a different username on a per-project basis (but I haven’t used that yet).

How to change your Git username

You can change your Git username like this:

git config --global user.name "Alvin J. Alexander"

Another way to change it is to edit the Git config file in your HOME directory and change it there:

vi ~/.gitconfig

I just did that on my MacOS system, and it seems to work fine.

Note: Per-project username

Again, it’s important to note that this is your “global” username. You can also have a different username on a per-project basis ... I just looked it up, and you should be able to change your Git username on a per-project basis like this, without the --global option:

git config user.name "Alvin J. Alexander"

How to view and change your Git email address

While I’m in the Git username neighborhood, I’ll also add that you can view your Git email address with this command:

git config user.email

And you can change your Git email address like this:

git config --global user.email [your email address here]

Finally, you can also see your password by viewing the Git config file in your HOME directory:

more ~/.gitconfig