Profile, language and sign-in methods

Change your name, language and appearance, and add or remove the ways you sign in to your Beyond account, with the rules that protect it.

  • Availability: Experimental
  • Evidence: Read from source
  • How-to guide

Before you start

You must be signed in. Your name, language and appearance change nothing about what you are allowed to do, so they need no extra proof. Adding or removing a way to sign in does: it requires a recent sign-in.

Change your name

  1. Open Your account. Its lead is "Your name, your language and how this looks."
  2. Edit Name. The help text says what it is for: "What other members of your organizations see." It holds up to 100 characters.
  3. Choose Save. The button is available only after you change the name.

Expected outcome: "Saved."

If you see "Saved. This page could not be refreshed, so what you see may be out of date.", the change was accepted and only the re-read failed. Reload the page; do not type the change again.

Change language and appearance

On Your account, under Language:

  • Language offers English and Español.
  • Appearance offers Follow the system, Light and Dark.

Both apply immediately, with no save button. They are also in the header of every signed-in screen, and Language is on the sign-in screen before you have a session.

Both preferences are stored with your account, so they follow you to another browser: when you sign in, the account's own choice replaces what that browser remembered. Before you sign in, the browser's own language is used.

See your sign-in methods

Open Sign-in and sessions. The panel Ways to sign in says "Each of these reaches this account. Adding one needs a recent sign-in." Each row shows:

  • the method: GitHub, Google or Email;
  • the address the provider reported, and "Added {date}";
  • Address confirmed or Address not confirmed;
  • a Remove button.

Add a way to sign in

  1. On Sign-in and sessions, find the text "Adding another way to sign in does not create a second account: it attaches that identity to this one."
  2. Choose Add GitHub or Add Google. Only methods the installation can perform, and that your account does not already hold, are offered. If there is no button, there is nothing to add.
  3. Approve at the provider. You come back to the same screen.

Expected outcome: "That sign-in method is attached to this account.", and the method appears in the list. From then on, either method signs you in to the same account, with the same organizations.

Rules the service enforces:

Rule What you see
The identity you are adding already belongs to another account. It is refused, never moved, and the two accounts are never merged, not even when they show the same email address. "That identity already belongs to another account."
Your sign-in is too old for a sensitive change. "Sign in again to change how you sign in." Sign out, sign in, and repeat the step.

Remove a way to sign in

  1. On Sign-in and sessions, choose Remove on the row of the method.

Expected outcome: "Saved.", and the row disappears. That method no longer reaches this account.

You cannot remove the last method. With only one method, Remove is disabled and the panel explains: "This is the only way into this account, so it cannot be removed. Add another first." The service enforces the same rule even when two requests try to remove the last two methods at the same moment, because an account nobody can sign in to cannot be recovered.

Removing a method also needs a recent sign-in; an old one shows "Sign in again to change how you sign in."

Limits

Next action

With two methods attached, review where you are signed in.

Related: Sign in and create an account · Identity and resource permissions · Accounts troubleshooting