Note: The ENS App and ENS Explorer are both currently on Sepolia testnet. Behaviour and available 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)
There's currently no transfer button in the ENS App or ENS Explorer. ENS names are standard NFTs (ERC-1155), so a name moves the way any NFT does:
Open the wallet that owns the name.
Send the name's token to the new owner's address, or list it on an NFT marketplace.
Sign the transaction.
To find the token, check the name's Token info tab in ENS Explorer — it shows the contract address and token ID.
Change the manager
Manager roles are granted per name in ENS Explorer:
Open the name in explorer.ens.dev and go to the Roles tab.
Under
Parent registry roles, click+ 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.Click
Saveand sign the transaction.
To change or remove a manager later, click their row in the Parent registry roles table, adjust the toggles or click 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 old token is burned and a new one is minted to the same owner. 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.