Minecraft names dropping soon

When a Minecraft: Java Edition player changes their username, the old one is not free straight away. It stays reserved for 37 days, in case the player wants it back, and after that anyone can take it. The moment a reserved name becomes available again is called its drop.

Sniping a name means claiming a Minecraft username at the very moment it drops, before anyone else does. For a wanted name, such as a 3-letter name or a common word, many people try in the same seconds, so what decides it is knowing the drop time and being ready when it comes. This site gives the drop time of each name as a window with a countdown. It does not claim names for anyone: you change your username yourself, from your own Minecraft profile.

The drop time, or droptime, is the moment a reserved username is released: 37 days after its previous owner changed their name. Mojang does not publish it. We work it out from the moment we saw the name lose its owner, which is why each name here has a window, from its earliest to its latest possible drop time, shown in your own time zone.

OG is what players call the rare usernames taken in the early years of the game: very short ones, real words, first names, with no digits or underscores padding them out. There are few of them and nearly all have an owner, so one can only be had when its owner renames and the name drops. The 3-character ones are on this list whenever that happens.

We look up short names over and over. When a name that had an owner stops having one, its owner renamed away at some point between our last two looks, so the name will drop 37 days after that. Since we only know the rename happened between two looks, each drop has a window rather than an exact second: the narrower the window, the closer together those looks were. Our windows are getting shorter as our own database grows: the widest ones come from names we were looking at less often when their owner renamed. In less than a month, no three-character name on this list will have a window wider than 15 minutes.

No. The previous owner can take the name back during the 37 days, and a name can be blocked by Mojang. When that happens the drop is removed from this list. The windows are estimates made from our own observations, not data published by Mojang.

The list only shows the next few drops. To see any other, type its whole name in the search box: if it is going to drop, you get its window. If it is not, we tell you what our last look at it found: taken, available, or not allowed by Mojang. That answer is as old as that look, so an available name may have been taken since.

Type the whole name in the search box at the top of this page. The answer comes up under it: taken, available, blocked or dropping soon, with a link to the page of that name, where its skin, capes and name history are. You do not need an account to search.

Partly. Mojang no longer shows the past names of an account, so nobody can look up a full name history any more. What we show on the page of a name is what our own scanner has recorded: the name changes it saw happen, who held that name before, and the earlier names of the account that has it now.

Yes. Search the player's username and open its page: it shows the skin the account is wearing, with a link to download the skin file, and the capes it has, both official Minecraft capes and those given by mods such as OptiFine or LabyMod.

Yes. Follow the name and we write to you on Discord or by e-mail when its owner renames, shortly before it drops, and when it is free to claim.

37 days. For the first 30 the previous owner cannot change their name again, and for about a week after that only they can take the old name back. If they do not, it is released to everyone on day 37.

A username needs at least three characters, and there are only 50,653 three-character combinations of letters, digits and underscores. At our last count 50,643 of them had an owner (the figures), so one only becomes available when its owner renames, and many players are waiting for that moment.

No. Bedrock Edition uses Xbox gamertags, which follow Microsoft's own rules. Everything here is about Minecraft: Java Edition usernames.

Change your username from your Minecraft profile page as soon as the name is available. An account can change its name once every 30 days, so make sure yours is able to before the window opens. The guide goes through it step by step.