ENS App and Explorer are on the Sepolia testnet. Features may change before mainnet.
A name has two kinds of control you can hand to someone else:
Owner: the wallet that holds the name NFT. It has full control: it can set records, move the name, and grant or revoke roles.
Manager: a role the owner grants on the name. A manager gets only the permissions the owner ticks (renewing, changing the resolver or subregistry, or unregistering the name) and can't move the name or touch ownership.
Change the owner (transfer the name)
You transfer a name from its Ownership tab in ENS Explorer: select Transfer, enter the recipient, and sign. Full steps, including what the Detach the resolver option does, are in Transfer a name in ENS Explorer.
A name is also an NFT (a token one wallet holds at a time), so sending it from your wallet, or selling it through a marketplace, transfers it the same way.
Change the manager
You grant manager roles per name in ENS Explorer:
Open the name in explorer.ens.dev and go to the Roles tab.
In the section headed
Parent registry roles, select+ Add user.Enter the new manager in the
User name or addressfield: an ENS name or address; your own wallet, another person's, or a contract.Tick the permissions to grant as
Manager:Renew,Set Subregistry,Set Resolver, orUnregister.Select
Saveand sign the transaction in your wallet.
To change or remove a manager later, select their row in the Parent registry roles table, adjust the toggles or select Remove user, then Save. If you edit the owner's own row, Explorer warns you: removing or changing its roles can lock you out of managing the name.
Roles move with the name
Transferring moves all of the owner's roles to the new owner automatically. Roles granted to other people stay in place, so if you receive a name, review its Roles tab to see who else can manage it.
Marketplace listings and the token ID
Granting or revoking any role changes the name's token ID, the number that identifies the name as an NFT: the old token is destroyed and a fresh one is issued to the same owner in the same transaction. Any marketplace listing or approval tied to the old token ID stops working, by design, so a name's permissions can't be quietly changed after it's listed. If you change roles on a listed name, re-list it afterwards.
See Why did my name's token ID change? for what this affects and what to use as a stable reference instead.
No undo
Once you transfer a name, only the new owner can send it back. Check the address before you sign. The same care applies to any address you grant a role to.
A name in its grace period (the window after it expires) cannot be transferred. Renew it first.