Gravatar not syncing profile picture after changing emails?

[crispiestsquid]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Profile

Body

Hi

I recently removed some old emails from my account, and set up a new verified primary email address.

Once I had a new primary email, I also decided to set up Gravatar for it, since I use WordPress a bit at work, and thought it would be neat to keep it in sync with my GitHub as well.

It has been more than a few days and still no update on my GitHub. I did notice that GitKraken and WordPress are pulling the image. I checked the rating of the image, and I triple checked that I do not currently have an image assigned on GitHub directly.

This seems to be an issue that people struggle with from time to time, but I was hoping maybe there was any more recent information about how to possibly resolve this?

I saw someone say they opened a ticket with GitHub and they were able to bust the cache, but I cannot open a support ticket with a free account.

Obviously this isn't the end of the world, but I just would love for it to work as expected. Any thoughts, tips, or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Kevin

[initial-d]

GitHub will not continuously "sync" over a GitHub-uploaded avatar. Gravatar is only the default/fallback profile image when GitHub can use a Gravatar for the email associated with the account, and a photo uploaded directly to GitHub overrides the Gravatar image.

I would check these in order:

1. Go to Settings -> Public profile -> Profile picture.
2. If you previously uploaded a GitHub profile photo, choose Edit and either remove it or use Revert to Gravatar if that option is shown.
3. Make sure the email address that has the Gravatar is still added and verified on your GitHub account.
4. Make sure the Gravatar image is associated with exactly that email address on Gravatar.
5. Try in a private/incognito window, because avatar images are cached quite aggressively by browsers/CDNs.

GitHub's docs say that if you use Gravatar and your Gravatar image is associated with the email you use for GitHub, it is shown as your GitHub profile picture by default, but uploading a new image to GitHub overrides the Gravatar image:

https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/reference/profile-reference

The profile customization docs also mention the Revert to Gravatar option under the profile picture settings:

https://docs.github.com/articles/gravatar-problems

So if WordPress/GitKraken already show the new Gravatar but GitHub does not, the most likely causes are either a GitHub-uploaded avatar still overriding it, or GitHub using a different verified email on the account than the one you updated in Gravatar.

[riskyasyam]

Hi Kevin,

GitHub's Gravatar integration isn't as immediate as it used to be, and in some cases the avatar cache can take quite a while to refresh. Since GitKraken and WordPress are already showing the new image, it sounds like your Gravatar is configured correctly.

A few things you can check:

Make sure the email associated with your Gravatar is exactly the same email that is set as your primary, verified email on GitHub.
Confirm that you don't have a custom profile picture uploaded directly to GitHub, since that takes precedence over Gravatar.
Try signing out and back in, or viewing your profile in a private/incognito window to rule out browser caching.
If you recently changed your primary email, GitHub's servers may simply not have refreshed the associated Gravatar hash yet.

Unfortunately, there isn't a user-accessible way to force GitHub to refresh its Gravatar cache. If it still hasn't updated after a week or two, contacting GitHub Support is really the only option, although free accounts have limited support options.

Since other services are already displaying the correct avatar, the issue is most likely on GitHub's caching side rather than with your Gravatar configuration.

[blazee14]

Hi Kevin, this is a known and fairly commonly reported issue — you're not alone. Based on what other users have confirmed, it's usually caused by GitHub caching the Gravatar-to-email association tied to your old email, and not refreshing it automatically when you change your primary email, even though the docs say it should sync automatically as long as the email matches.
A few things worth trying:

1. Remove and re-add the email: Some users fixed it by removing the new email from GitHub settings and adding it back — this sometimes forces a re-sync.
2. Upload and then remove a manual photo: Upload an image directly to GitHub (this temporarily overrides the Gravatar) and then delete it — this sometimes "resets" the cache and makes it look up the correct Gravatar again.
3. Check your avatar URL: If you inspect your current avatar's URL (right-click → copy image address), you'll likely see it's still an avatars.githubusercontent.com link rather than pointing directly to Gravatar — this confirms GitHub is caching the image on its own servers rather than serving it live from Gravatar.
4. About the support ticket: Confirmed by similar reported cases — this type of issue usually does require the support team to manually refresh the association on their end, since clearing the cache alone doesn't always fix it. Even with a free account, you can open a ticket at https://support.github.com/contact — ticket support is available for all accounts, free ones included, just with lower priority/SLA than paid accounts.

I'd recommend going straight to opening a ticket, mentioning you've already tried steps 1 and 2 without success — in similar reported cases, the support team resolved it by manually updating the Gravatar association on their backend.