Redirecting www to non-www

Hi, i am trying to use wordpress mu in my 2 year old blog. which requires non-www url to setup. I am already getting good traffic and backlinks. if i change my https://www.example.com to example.com, will it affect my backlinks and seo ??

url change inside dashboard -> settings -> general to redirect the url is enough or i should add 301 redirect code in .htaccess as well ?

please suggest some tips. thank you.