Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Last year, I told you about the grueling ordeal I went through to move everything from my old Google account to my new one. Although I did this for many reasons (a digital life reset, consolidating every digital asset under one account, etc.), one of those reasons was that I simply didn’t like my years-old Gmail address. I found the whole migration process to be an absolute nightmare, which you can read more about if you’re interested.
The fact that this was such a pain to do was infuriating, especially when you consider that other platforms make the process so much easier. For example, Microsoft allows you to have multiple email accounts connected to a single Microsoft account through an alias system. This made it incredibly simple to move all my existing Microsoft account information and history — including Windows licenses, paid Windows apps, my Microsoft 365 subscription, and more — to a new email account with just a few clicks. The idea that Microsoft has nailed this down but Google hasn’t is confounding.
Confusingly, Google does offer an alias system for Gmail — a fact that was pointed out to me repeatedly by commenters on my original article. However, this system is not nearly as robust as Microsoft’s and wouldn’t have solved my problem. Still, it is a useful tool that doesn’t get talked about enough, so I wanted to give it some love.
What is a Gmail alias, and how can it be helpful?
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
A Gmail alias allows you to send emails from an address different from your primary Gmail address. This is useful if you have different email accounts for different purposes — say, one for your personal life and another for your job. Instead of swapping between these two accounts, installing multiple apps, or using an email app that supports multiple account logins (Outlook, BlueMail, Thunderbird, etc.), you only need to use the Gmail app. You can have up to 99 aliases connected to any one Gmail address.
Note that this only allows you to send emails from other accounts. You will not receive emails in your primary Gmail inbox through any alias accounts, at least not automatically. To have emails addressed to other accounts sent to your primary Gmail inbox, you can use Gmailify, a tool built into the Gmail web app at mail.google.com. This requires that your secondary email account have POP access enabled. You can find complete instructions on doing this on Google’s support page. You can add up to five accounts with this system.
Gmail aliases allow you to send emails from multiple accounts from within a single Gmail account.
A more straightforward (although less elegant) system for doing this is to set up automatic forwarding in your alias accounts. Most major email providers offer this, including Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. The process for setting up an automatic forward differs for each platform, but Googling “automatic email forwarding (email platform goes here)” will likely get you what you need. You can do this with an unlimited number of accounts.
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
With Gmail aliasing and automatic forwarding setup in this fashion, all your emails from all your accounts can be funneled into one Gmail inbox. When you respond to an email, you can use a drop-down menu to pick the address you’d like that response to come from. Gmail thus becomes a one-stop shop for all your email needs, which is certainly convenient.
With an alias, a forwarding system, and filters, you could receive and send emails from any account within one Gmail account, keeping you streamlined and organized.
You can even make this more organized using Gmail’s filter system. For example, you could create a filter that automatically flags any email that was addressed to an account that isn’t your primary Gmail. That would allow you to easily see that an email in your inbox was not sent to your primary account and, thus, should likely see a response from an alias. You could even get more organized by automatically moving emails addressed to alias accounts into separate folders. The Gmail filter system is quite powerful, so there’s really no limit to what you can do here.
While this is a terrific way to keep all your email accounts in one spot, it also allows you to change your Gmail address without worrying about switching all your newsletter sign-ups, third-party account logins, or other systems to a new account. For example, if your primary Gmail account is “embarrassingname@gmail.com” and you’d like to stop using that and use “appropriatename@gmail.com” instead, you can create the new “appropriatename@gmail.com” account in the usual fashion and then connect it as an alias to “embarrassingname@gmail.com” (or vice versa). With the subsequent addition of automatic forwarding, you can use your new Gmail address while still seeing all your email sent to your old Gmail address. You can either continue with this system indefinitely or use it as a stop-gap while you slowly purge all associations to “embarrassingname@gmail.com.”
The alias system makes it easy to transition from one email name to another — or use multiple accounts for different purposes.
This could work for many situations, including when you legally change your name, leave a job, need a “burner” email account, or just desire something fresh. With 99 alias slots to fill, you could do this a whole lot with minimal effort. Do note, however, that you would need to go through the usual steps to create a new Gmail account each time — there is no way to set up a new account through the Gmail alias system.
But a Gmail alias has no effect on your broader Google account
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Now that you understand what a Gmail alias can do, let me explain what it can’t do and why the whole alias system would not have helped me during my digital life reset. The most significant (and somewhat confusing) thing to know about the Gmail alias system is that it has zero effect on your wider Google account.
As an example of what I mean, let’s take an app you purchased from the Google Play Store. When you bought that app, the purchase was logged as connected to your Google account name, meaning the email address you used for it. In order to continue using that app, you’ll need to stay signed into that Google account. If you sign out of that Google account, you’ll no longer have access to the app. Likewise, if you switch to another Google account, you’ll need to re-buy that app. This is also true for all other Google-owned products and services, including YouTube, Maps, Drive, Photos, and on and on.
Adding an alias, changing your Gmail address, or using mail forwarding within Gmail has no effect on your current Google account.
Erroneously, some might assume that a Gmail alias would solve this problem. In other words, one might think that if they use Google Account A and connect Google Account B to it through the Gmail alias system, the purchased Google Play app would then be available on both accounts. This is definitively not the case, though. There currently is no way to join multiple Google accounts, nor is there a way to transfer a Google Play purchase from one Google account to another.
If Google had an alias system for Google accounts themselves, not just Gmail, this problem would be mitigated. During my digital life reset, I could have connected my new Google account to my old one and then simply stopped using the old account outside of security checks and the like. This is what Microsoft has done, which I described earlier. For reasons I don’t comprehend, Google has no system in place for doing this.
The bottom line here is that the Gmail alias system is terrific for managing email across multiple accounts. That’s all it’s good for, though. It’s not a solution to help you completely ditch your old Google account and switch to a new one — unless you have nothing there that you care about.
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