Change your Gmail password

When you first signed up for your Gmail account, you had to pick a password, which will remain the same until and unless you manually change it yourself. It is not only possible to change your password, but it is in fact safer to regularly change your password (in case someone got hold of it, your changing your account's password means that this person will no longer be able to login to your Gmail account). As you'll see in this tutorial, changing your Gmail password only takes a minute!

Pick a new password for your Gmail account / Google account

The first thing to remember is that when you created your Gmail account, you actually signed up for a "Google profile", which allows you to sign in to all kinds of services with the same user name and password (this includes all the Google services (like Google Analytics, Google Search...) as well as other Google "properties", like YouTube).

• To change your Gmail password, start by signing in to your account.
• Once logged in, click on the "Settings" link displayed in the top right of your inbox:
  
  
• When the Settings screen loads, click on the "Accounts and Import" tab:
  
  
• Then, click on the "Google Account settings" link at the bottom of that screen / tab.
• A new browser window will open, containing all kinds of options and settings for your Google and Gmail account (same thing when it comes to authentication - user name and password stuff). Click on the "Change password" link in the right column.
  
  
• On the next screen, type your current password (or answer your security question if you forgot your password), and pick a new password, and retype it to confirm and avoid typos. Then, click on the "Save" button to apply your new password. (The change takes effect immediately, for Gmail and all other Google services.)
• Google will change your account password / Gmail password, and redirect you to the screen you came from, with a confirmation message: "Your new password has been saved". (And you can click on "OK" to dismiss the notice.)
  
  

This is literally all it takes to change your Gmail password; and while it took you a bit longer since you were following this tutorial at the same time, it is very quick to change once you know how to go about it! A later tutorial will focus on the password recovery process itself.

Caution: changing your Gmail password affects your "Google profile". So you will need to start using the new password for all services that use your Google account for authentication; this includes all services belonging to Google (or that use Google for login), like YouTube.