How to create a Lightning Node Alias?

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Moderator Edit: These steps are now obsolete in the new version, to summarize lnd.conf is used for non-UI settings and you can now change your alias directly from the UI in Lightning Node advanced settings! You may reference “Updating Your Lightning Node’s Alias” in our Official FAQ guide here
(as a note this is also different than the Umbrel dashboard username, changing this is also listed within the guide!)

Want to set an alias for your Umbrel Node?

Follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your node using SSH. Usually this means opening a terminal and typing ssh -t umbrel@umbrel.local. The user is umbrel. Default password is moneyprintergobrrr for older versions of Umbrel. New versions use the dashboard passord. When typing your password you usually see nothing (for safety).

  2. (Optional) change your default password by typing passwd

  3. Open the config file sudo nano umbrel/app-data/lightning/data/lnd/lnd.conf . lnd is small for LND, there are no i’s. It will ask you again for your password (same as before), and you will again not see you entering the password.

  4. You are now in the editor. Add alias=SOMENAME. This must be added to the first paragraph. Somewhere below the block [Application Options], not in a different block.

  5. (Optional) set color=#ff0000 or any other hex color, on a new line, just below alias. find a nice color.

  6. You will see the commands you can give at the bottom. The caret ^ means CTRL button. ^X is eXit, so use CTRL-X to exit the file. Confirm you want to save the buffer using Y. Press enter for file name (don’t change).

  7. After you have exited the editor, type cat umbrel/app-data/lightning/data/lnd/lnd/lnd.conf to look at the content of the file.

  8. Then restart your Umbrel node. You can do this properly from the Umbrel web interface (Settings, Restart)

  9. IF you have public channels, it will take (max) 2 days for the new node to become visible on 1ml.com.

  10. If you have RTL installed you should see the new node name after a restart of RTL, or after logging in again. A node clean restart (using the web interface) should also restart RTL.

If your terminal freezes you may have pressed CTRL-S. Unfreeze by CTRL-Q.

Have fun :slight_smile:

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