Creating a YouTube channel: personal channels, Brand Accounts and handles (October 2026)

YouTube’s instructions are the same on a computer and the mobile site. Sign in to YouTube, click your profile picture and open Settings, then under Account choose Add or manage your channel(s). Click Create a channel, pick a profile picture, enter a name and a handle, and click Create a channel again.

Sometimes a channel is created on mobile when you post a comment. In that case YouTube may assign a handle based on the channel name you chose, or a random one if the name cannot become a handle. You can check and change it any time in YouTube Studio or at youtube.com/handle.

1. Sign in to YouTube and open your profile picture → Settings.
2. Under Account, choose Add or manage your channel(s).
3. Click Create a channel and choose a picture, name and handle.
4. Click Create a channel to finish.

To create another channel under the same Google Account, or to run a channel under a different name (a shop, a team, a stage name), connect the channel to a Brand Account. From the channel list, click Create a new channel and choose a picture, name and handle; a new Brand Account is created with it. Brand Account channels can have several owners and managers.

If you already manage a Brand Account without a channel, you can pick it from the list and create its channel. If the Brand Account already has a channel, you cannot create another one — selecting it simply switches you to that channel. In other words, one Brand Account holds one channel. If you use YouTube in a supervised experience, you may not be able to create a channel.

The minimum age to manage your own Google Account depends on the country. Where no specific age is listed it is 13; for example, it is 14 in South Korea and 16 in Germany. Younger children can have a parent create and manage an account with Family Link until they reach the minimum age.

Getting paid later has its own age rule: AdSense requires users to be 18 or older (19 in South Korea, according to Google). Accounts found to be under the minimum age must be updated within 14 days or they are disabled.

A handle is a short, unique channel identifier that starts with @ (for example @youtubecreators). Channel names can repeat across channels, but a handle cannot, and each channel has exactly one. Handles appear in comments, mentions, live chat and Shorts, and become your channel URL in the form youtube.com/@handle. Typing @handle into YouTube search takes people straight to your channel.

Handles can be 3–30 characters (1–10 for Hangul or Chinese characters), using letters or numbers from 75 supported languages, and they are not case-sensitive. Underscores, hyphens, periods and Latin middle dots are allowed but not at the start or end. A handle cannot look like a URL or phone number, be taken already or break the Community Guidelines; handles that do are revoked and replaced by YouTube.

In YouTube Studio, go to Customization → Profile in the left menu, change the name or handle and click Publish. Each can be changed twice within 14 days, and a new name can take a few days to update across YouTube. If your channel has a verification badge, changing the name removes it.

Your channel name and picture change only on YouTube; your Google Account name stays the same. The same Profile page lets you edit the description, add up to 14 links shown on your channel home and a contact email for business inquiries. If the name will not update, check that no channel name translations are still in place.

A new channel has no subscribers yet, so early reach leans heavily on the Shorts feed. Decide your channel topic in one sentence and post on that topic steadily. If you already have long videos, splitting their best moments into Shorts is the quickest start.

Shortsmith takes a long video link or file, reads the whole thing, researches the background and pitches three different story angles first. Pick one and it cuts the scenes, reframes to 9:16 and adds captions and voice-over. Connect your YouTube channel to post or schedule the finished Short directly.