Solution
The Lemmy server appears to have a database limit of 255 characters [2]; however, individual instances appear to put their own limits on username length though the frontend [3] and/or the API [4.1][4.2].
Original Post
If you know, please also provide relevant documentation.
UPDATE (2025-02-02T06:06Z): I did some brute-force testing, and, at least for sh.itjust.works, it seems that the maximum username length is 50, and the maximum password length is 60 [1].
References
- “Sign Up”. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Accessed: 2025-02-02T08:49Z. https://sh.itjust.works/signup.
- When creating an account on sh.itjust.works, the sign-up form will throw this error if the provided password is greater than 60 characters in length.
- @[email protected] To: [“[SOLVED] What is the maximum username length for a Lemmy account?”. “Kalcifer” @[email protected]. “Lemmy Support” [email protected]. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2025-02-03T00:54:51Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32085936.]. Published: 2025-02-02T05:57:26Z. Accessed: 2025-02-03T00:44Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32085936/16442382.
- They pointed to code on GitHub for the Lemmy server which outlines the length of the username data in the SQL database.
- “[SOLVED] What is the maximum username length for a Lemmy account?”. “Kalcifer” @[email protected]. “Lemmy Support” [email protected]. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2025-02-03T00:54:51Z. Accessed: 2025-02-03T00:46Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32085936.
- §“Original Post”. ¶2.
[…] I did some brute-force testing, and, at least for sh.itjust.works, it seems that the maximum username length is 50 […]
- The maximum username length for sh.itjust.works was found to be 50 characters by brute-force testing the length limit.
- §“Original Post”. ¶2.
- “Andrew” @[email protected] To [“[SOLVED] What is the maximum username length for a Lemmy account?”. “Kalcifer” @[email protected]. “Lemmy Support” [email protected]. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2025-02-03T00:54:51Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32085936.] Published: 2025-02-02T19:57:49Z. Accessed: 2025-02-03T00:59Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32085936/16453656.
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curl -L http://lemmy.world/api/v3/site | jq -r .site_view.local_site.actor_name_max_length(26)- The maximum username length for Lemmy.world was found to be 26 characters via an API request.
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curl -L http://sh.itjust.works/api/v3/site | jq -r .site_view.local_site.actor_name_max_length(50)- The maximum username length for sh.itjust.works was found to be 50 characters via an API request.
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Then what is it about me using your comment as a source makes you think that I viewed your response as “not good enough”?
Nothing. It wasn’t about the edit.
I’ve said elsewhere that I thought your second follow-up question was disingenuous, so I’ll expand on that here. That’s the thing that annoyed me. Not because I think no-one should question me, or because no-one should inquire further, but because the more questions you want to ask about a particular thing, the more informed those questions need to be. Otherwise it just gets tedious, explaining why irrelevant things are irrelevant. User display names aren’t relevant to an API’s ‘/site’ response; ActivityPub isn’t relevant at all, and ‘name’ is such a generic, widely-used word, that reaching for it as evidence that I might be confused is such a stretch, I don’t know why you’d go for it. It made me question your motive, given that the likelihood of you being correct - after fishing a word out from something you don’t seem that experienced with - is so low. It stops reading as a well-intentioned question, and starts reading as scepticism for scepticism’s sake.
I suspect this statement is the source of all of this. When I sent this comment, I wasn’t trying to do some “gotcha”. I thought we were, in a sense, investigating together through documentation to try an find the right answer to the question. From my perspective, you provided an idea of what it could be, and I was trying to work with you to narrow down if that was for sure what we were looking for by providing some documentation that I came across. I wasn’t trying to insult your intelligence, or belittle you or your help. I simply thought we were brainstorming together.