Registering your app name

Now that you’ve created a developer account on the Snap Store and built your snap you can register a name for your app.

What name to choose

Pick the name that most represents your app and use lowercase. As an example, a snap of the Firefox web browser should be called “firefox”. Do not prefix or suffix the name, for instance with your username or “-snap.”

Snap names are globally unique and cannot be changed. For example, only one snap can be named “firefox” and it can never be renamed. Ultimately, each name should be owned and published by members of the relevant project. For example, the snap named “firefox” should be owned and published by the developers of Firefox: the Mozilla project.

However, if you are not associated with the project but want to help them create a snap, we welcome you to join snapcrafters, create the snap yourself, register the name and hand off to upstream projects when asked.

How to register the name

Make sure that the name you wish to register is the same as the name field in the snapcraft.yaml file of your snap. You’ll need to rebuild your snap after you changed the name, a quick process when only the snap name has changed.

If you are working with an Electron app, you will not have a snapcraft.yaml file. If your snap name differs from the name property in your package.json file, set the executableName property, under the top-level linux key, to your snap name.

You also have a choice over whether a snap is public or private:

• Public: the snap will appear in local snap find searches, in the Snap Store, and other application installers that access the store
• Private: the snap is hidden from search results, and can only be installed from your account and from accounts linked to your account

To change a snap’s visibility after registering, see Release management.

A name can be registered from either the web UI or with the snapcraft command:

Register with the web UI

To register a name with the web UI, log into your developer account and click “Add snap” at the top of the page. You will be taken to a page where you can enter your snap’s name to register.

If the name you want is already in use and you believe you are the rightful owner, you can register a dispute. Follow the on-screen instructions to be guided through this process. Your dispute will be reviewed by a member of the Snap Store team and a decision communicated by email.

Two further options enable you to register the snap as either public or private.

Register from the terminal

To register a name with the web UI, log into your developer account with the snapcraft login command:

snapcraft login
Enter your Ubuntu One e-mail address and password.
If you do not have an Ubuntu One account, you can create one at https://snapcraft.io/account
Email: <email address>
Password:  <password>
Second-factor auth: <one time password, if enabled>

Login successful.

You can now use the snapcraft register command to register your new snap’s name:

$ snapcraft register <snap name>

We always want to ensure that users get the software they expect
for a particular name.

If needed, we will rename snaps to ensure that a particular name
reflects the software most widely expected by our community.

For example, most people would expect 'thunderbird' to be published by
Mozilla. They would also expect to be able to get other snaps of
Thunderbird as '$username-thunderbird'.

Would you say that MOST users will expect '<snap name>' to come from
you, and be the software you intend to publish there? [y/N]: y

As shown in the above output, you need to agree that most users will expect your snap name to represent the snap you’re wanting to publish.

By default, a newly registered snap is published as a public snap. It can be registered as private with the additional `–private- argument:

$  snapcraft register --private <snap name>

Creating an unofficial fork of a snap

There is a single exception for having your username as a suffix in a snap name: an unofficial snap that has no chance of being handed over to the official project.

This should be done with extreme caution because we don’t want to end up in a situation where, for example, “firefox-john” gets super popular and the developer decides they want to call it “firefox”. This is not possible because snaps cannot be renamed. So it will be “firefox-john” for ever, or they upload a second “firefox” snap and you end up orphaning the “firefox-john” snap and those users will not get updates.

Next steps

See Releasing your snap to learn how to upload your app to the Snap Store.

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Last updated 2 years ago.