Give a custom name to the General channel in Microsoft Teams

This is a great idea as "General" can just become a dumping ground for people too lazy to think which channel they should really be collaborating in.  However, there's some fundamental issues with the implementation at present!

1. It now appears to be impossible to have a channel named General ... which is important for consistency for those who still wish to use it.  You have to complete the "Name the first channel" box to create the Team, but can't use "General" as it says that's reserved.  Neither can you rename the first channel to "General" once the Team is created.
2. Your first channel just appears alphabetically within your list of channels.  This may be great, but Owners may wish for it to always be at the top of the list, like "General" currently is.
3. Whilst it's unlikely users would be able to distinguish the first channel from any of the other channels, it actually operates differently to subsequent channels.  For example, the moderation options are different and it gives the name as "General Channel" within those settings, even though the channel is now called something else; it can't be archived or deleted; etc.

I love the idea of being able to not have a General channel, but we need the option to still have one if desired.  Also, if your first channel operates differently from the others, it may be useful to highlight it in some way as a 'special' channel.  There should be a channel setting to keep it at the top of the channel list if desired.

This really should be an administrative option.  By default, the "General" channel was always the main channel. It was always pinned to the top and you knew everyone on the team had access to the channel. Removing that core functionality makes no sense, especially if there is no option to force pin the channel in the order you want for all users in the team.

The biggest issue though is not allowing us to name the first channel "General" to maintain consistency with every team create since Teams launched.

This is a major point of contention for our clients, almost as bad as including the general channel to be automatically hidden. Nothing is more fun to go into a team and have all your channels hidden because you have not accessed it in a while. (FYI, an admin setting here to enable, disable or set the time inactive required before adding would be nice, as well as an option to set a channel to never hide)

It really should have stopped at allowing the users to rename the channel. Now when this rolls out to everyone, I get to deal with upset clients who have to adjust documentation and process around this.

Now I get to start testing our automated processes we have created for various clients that create teams, add tabs, applications, etc. to the "General" channel that apparently no longer exists.

Whilst allowing the rename great, for backwards compatibility with training material (and habits) it is an enormous pain that the "Name of the first channel" does not default to "General" with an Option to change it!   

For on-the-fly single channel Teams/Sites everyone is accustomed to the notion that the "general" channel is well for "general" use, and HAVING to call is something other than "General" is just adding a level of unnecessary thought.

Not sure if this is by design, but it looks like the name in the moderation section doesn't reflect the actual channel name and still says 'General Channel':

Renaming the "General" channel is a great option, but you should definately take into consideration the remarks of @OzOscroft and DamienS, amongst others.

Please also take into consideration the non-English tenants. One of the perks of having the ability to rename the "General" channel is that the "General" folder in the document library could be renamed too. Because "General" only fits for English users, whilst it should reflect the actual name of the channel so it actually means something in other languages as well. So if the main channels name is "Abcde" the foldername in the library should be the same, not "General".

Oh and Linda_C, the originally published date in the top of your blogitem shows 2025, shouldn't this be 2024?

In addition to OzOscroft excellent points we identified some issues with how "add shortcut to onedrive" treats this first channel.

When utilizing the "Add Shortcut to OneDrive" feature the shortcut is created with ONLY the new custom name we chose.

For example we have decided to use the label "Files" instead of "General", so that is the first channel. Within Files channel in the Files section are the Directories and files we would like access to in OneDrive.

It creates the shortcut in OneDrive but only as "Files" as opposed to previously it would create a shortcut "General - AnAmazingProject".

Anyone else experiencing this?

Great news !

I have shared where i work and people get really excited about it.

Do you know when the feature will be available to everyone? As for now only people in preview ring can access. 

Thank you!

M

Wow! Renaming the "General" folder creates a separate "General" folder, but this time it's just a folder within document library, syncing to the Team folder in File Explorer, yet no longer appearing as a channel within Teams. The top Documents library now lists two separate names—one under "In Channels" and the other under "In Site Library"—if you rename the "General" directory from the SharePoint side. This could quickly turn into a big mess, with different names depending on how you access and rename it, and the new "General" folder existing solely in the site library.

The idea has been thrown up on the wall, and now we need to figure out how to make it work. Once we've done that and everything is functioning as needed, it will likely get re-thrown up again, breaking the functionality. Then, we'll have a real mess on our hands, trying to figure out what's gone wrong and how to fix it all over again.

The renamed "General" channel actually points to Documents > General, which was automatically created when I renamed the Teams channel, and is separate from the original "General" folder that I renamed. The channel name is "New Name," but it still points to the new "General" folder. Both folders are listed under the site library and File Explorer. So, whatever I add to the "Files" tab in Teams now defaults to the newly created General folder. No, I’m done here.

P.S. Renaming the channel also renamed the newly created "General" folder, and now the new channel name points to the correctly named folder. As I mentioned, it becomes a big mess when we start renaming things...