Getting a handle on international Handles
Sep 12, 2024 – [[read-time]] minute read
Want to change your YouTube Handle to the language of your preference? You can now choose from 74 new languages (in addition to English). To learn more, we sat down with Deirdre Chen, Product Manager on YouTube’s Identity team.
Why is the expansion of Handles to 74 new languages so meaningful for our global YouTube community?
We want to empower self-expression on our platform, and this launch enables our users to develop richer identities and brands through their preferred languages. When we launched Handles in November 2022, we limited the character set in line with industry patterns, but since then, we’ve heard from creators that they wanted an expanded character set with additional languages so we worked to see how we could enable it. Handles also help newer creators grow their audiences and connect with their communities on YouTube.
Internationalized characters ... can be prone to abuse. To help, we limited Handles to only Latin alphabet letters and numbers, set character limits per script, and put some restrictions on the mixing of scripts.
Deirdre Chen Product Manager, YouTubeWhat were some challenges with adding new languages to Handles?
Working with internationalized characters can be difficult for a few different reasons. They can be prone to abuse, typing them requires specific keyboards, and sharing URLs that include internationalized characters to third-party apps can result in messages that are hard for users to comprehend. To help, we limited Handles to only Latin alphabet letters and numbers, set character limits per script, and put some restrictions on the mixing of scripts (e.g. Latin cannot mix with Cyrillic). And to reduce keyboard reliance, we implemented a copy-and-paste feature on the channel page and profile card.
The whole way through, we collaborated with the Google Internationalization team to develop novel industry principles and policies around unique identifiers. This includes things like limiting Handle characters to those with linguistic meanings, and requiring a minimum or maximum character count as needed for specific languages. For languages that are read right to left, we also made sure to put the @ sign at the end.
Left: Mock image of a YouTube user with an internationalized handle in Bengali, Right: Mock of comments in English and Japanese
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What has the reaction been from creators so far? How are people using it?
Creators have shared their excitement for internationalized handles and choosing a handle in their preferred language. Since our initial rollout, more than 19M creators now have an internationalized Handle!
We’re excited to expand Handles and empower more localized connections on YouTube. We hope this sets a new standard around unique identifiers and encourages more internationalization support across the industry.