Slack App Name Change: Why the Bot Name Does Not Update, Tested

A Slack app has three names, and you change them in different places. The app name (display_information.name) shows on the app's profile and in "added an integration" lines. The bot display name (features.bot_user.display_name) is the name above every message the bot posts. The bot username is the @handle, and it is set once, at the first install. On 6 October 2026 we renamed a test app and its bot eight times in our free-plan test workspace and watched the API and an open Slack tab after each change. The main result: a bot display name changed through the app manifest showed in Slack within about 20 seconds, but the same change saved through the App Home > Edit dialog never showed up, not even after a reinstall.

Which name shows where

We read each name from the API after every change and compared it with what Slack showed.

The username did not change at all in our test. It stayed sglab1006b, the value from the first install, after we saved a new default username and installed the app again. Slack's dialog says why: it is the name used when a workspace installs the app, and Slack may change it to make it unique. To get a new handle you would have to remove the app and install it fresh. Because the handle sticks, look up a bot by its user ID, not its name; users.info returns the ID and all three name fields.

Changing the names, and how fast Slack showed them

We posted a message from the bot, renamed it, and polled users.info and the open Slack tab every few seconds.

Old messages change too. The client draws the bot user's current name above each message, so message 1, sent before any rename, showed every new name. A reinstall was never needed for a manifest change, and a reinstall did not help the App Home edit.

The App Home edit did save. apps.manifest.export returned the new display_name right after we clicked Save. But the bot user in the workspace kept its old name, and a later apps.manifest.update that sent the same value changed nothing either, because nothing in the manifest was different. If your Slack app display name is not updating, change it in the manifest: open App Manifest, edit display_name, save, and wait about 20 seconds. If the manifest already shows the new name, change it to something else and back. We confirmed the second, different apps.manifest.update in our test; we did not test the App Manifest page in the browser separately.

The rules and the exact error messages

The App Home dialog checks both fields as you type and greys out Save on an error. These are the messages it showed:

The dialog accepted Rename-Bot, Sam's Bot. and a name with an emoji, even though its help text says only apostrophes and periods are allowed. The manifest is looser: apps.manifest.update accepted Rename Bot, RenameBot, rename_bot and rename.bot-2 as display_name, and returned invalid_manifest for an empty name, an 81-character name, and rénamebot with an accent. 80 characters passed.

A different name on one message

If you only need another name on some messages, you do not have to rename the bot. With the chat:write.customize scope, chat.postMessage takes username and icon_emoji (or icon_url):

{"channel": "C0C6UGBU151", "text": "Message 4", "username": "Deploy Bot", "icon_emoji": ":rocket:"}

Message 4 in the screenshot above shows the result: "Deploy Bot" with a rocket, while the other bot messages keep the bot's name. The returned message has username: "Deploy Bot" and icons: {"emoji": ":rocket:"}. It also comes back as subtype: bot_message with only a bot_id and no user field, so code that reads message.user to find the bot misses these messages. Our icon_emoji and username guide covers the per-message options and what webhooks do with them.

FAQ

Does renaming the app change the bot's user ID?

No. Messages 1 to 3, sent before and after eight renames and a reinstall, all carried the same bot user ID, and users.info on that ID kept working. The bot_id stayed the same too. Code that stores either ID keeps working after a rename.