{"id":380616,"date":"2025-12-30T14:52:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380616\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T14:52:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:52:13","slug":"youre-factory-resetting-your-android-phone-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380616\/","title":{"rendered":"You’re factory resetting your Android phone wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"factory<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

For the past 15 years, I\u2019ve switched Android phones more than 50 times, easily. Each time I did that, I performed the same action on my old phone: Go to settings, find the factory reset option, and tap it. Simple, right?<\/p>\n

But in the past few years, I started noticing something a little different. It seemed like my old phone didn\u2019t dissociate from my Google account entirely, and there were remnants of it in a few places. I recently started looking into these and realized something: There\u2019s a crucial step I should always do before factory resetting any Android phone, and I\u2019ve been skipping it for years.<\/p>\n

How do you factory reset your Android phone?<\/p>\n

139 votes<\/p>\n

I go to “Erase all data” and perform that.<\/p>\n

41%<\/p>\n

I remove my Google account then factory reset.<\/p>\n

40%<\/p>\n

I delete several things one by one, then factory reset.<\/p>\n

16%<\/p>\n

I’ve never factory reset an Android phone.<\/p>\n

4%<\/p>\n

The problem with a simple Android phone factory reset<\/p>\n

When you factory reset an Android phone \u2014 in this case, my Pixel 9a \u2014 the phone itself goes back to its blank state. However, your Google account doesn\u2019t seem to realize this has happened. What results are \u201cghost\u201d presences of this phone across your Google account, i.e., it still shows up even after you\u2019ve sold, donated, or thrown away that phone.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

I noticed this at first with the Play Store. I would still see the name of my old wiped phones in the list of available devices I could install an app on. I tried to delete those phones, but there was no way to do so. The only solution was to go to play.google.com\/library\/devices<\/a> and hide each phone I no longer wanted to see. This is what I first did with my Pixel 9a.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

Then, I realized that these old phones were starting to litter my Find Hub web<\/a> and app too. Instead of seeing a list of only active phones, buds, watches, and trackers associated with my account, I was also seeing ghost devices I\u2019d long ago reset and donated or sent to my Android Authority colleagues. The Pixel 9a is still there, but it only shows its last seen location, never updates to the current one, and can\u2019t be deleted. It\u2019s basically a useless stub in the app. The only option for me is to ask for a factory reset, which never happens because the phone is already wiped and can\u2019t be reached remotely via my account. Even after several futile attempts to reset it, the phone remains in my Find Hub despite not being trackable at all.<\/p>\n

Google Fi users have also complained about seeing these old, wiped phones as \u201cinactive\u201d devices because they were never formally de-authorized from the network.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

Finally, I saw these ghost phones on myaccount.google.com\/device-activity<\/a>, where they also showed the last time I used them actively. There, though, I could tap on Sign out, which would magically erase the ghosts of my old phones from all of my Google services, including the Play Store and Find Hub.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, if the device is super old, it doesn\u2019t show up under this Device Activity page, which makes this workaround not so reliable. There is a foolproof solution, though.<\/p>\n

You should remove your Google account first<\/p>\n

\"android<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Before you factory reset your Android phone, there\u2019s one crucial step you should take: remove your Google account from it. Google doesn\u2019t explain this when you go to wipe your phone \u2014 it does say that your Google account will be removed from it, but doesn\u2019t tell you that your phone won\u2019t be removed from your Google account. The only mention of this \u201ctrick\u201d is in a Play Store support page<\/a>, where Google says (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

Google Play keeps track of your previously used devices. You cannot remove a device from your Google Play history, but you can:<\/p>\n

Remove your account from a device.\u00a0If you remove your account from an old device,\u00a0your Google Play history or activity are not visible on that device.<\/p>\n

If you plan to sell or give away your device, first\u00a0remove your account\u00a0and do a\u00a0factory data reset.
\nIf you already sold or gave away a device but didn\u2019t remove your account, you can remove your account from the device remotely.\u00a0Learn how to sign out on a device you no longer use.<\/p>\n

Hide the device on Google Play.\u00a0When you hide a device, it doesn\u2019t show up when you download something from the Google Play website.<\/p>\n

This is where I understood that removing the account from the device before it\u2019s wiped tells all of Google\u2019s services that this particular device is no longer associated with your account and should therefore not be shown anymore. Not as active, not as inactive, not as last seen, not as hidden. Just gone.<\/p>\n

To do this, follow these steps:<\/p>\n

Go to Settings, find Google services and preferences (on non-Pixel phones, this might be in a sub-menu called\u00a0Google or\u00a0Accounts. Use search.)
\nTap on your Google account, then Manage accounts on this device
\nFind the Google account you want to delete, tap it.
\nChoose Remove account\u00a0and confirm that once again.<\/p>\n

You should repeat the last two steps for every single Google account you\u2019ve used on this device if you want to dissociate it entirely and stop all ghost, inactive devices from showing up ever again. When you\u2019re done, the device will completely disappear from the Play Store (not just go hidden, it won\u2019t even be there in the list), as well as Find Hub, Google Fi, and Google\u2019s Device Activity page.<\/p>\n

\"eraseFactory reset when there are Google accounts still on the phone\"eraseFactory reset after removing all accounts\"eraseNow you can factory reset<\/p>\n

After that, you can go ahead and perform a regular factory reset like you\u2019re used to in order to wipe it, then do whatever you want with the phone. Sell it, donate it, put it in a drawer \u2014 whatever. The important part is that your device is no longer associated with any services or showing up there despite being long gone.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n

\"google\"google<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank you for being part of our community. Read our\u00a0Comment Policy<\/a> before posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority For the past 15 years, I\u2019ve switched Android phones more than 50…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[6384,64,63,196143,113,35885,26387,203,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-380616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-android","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-find-hub","12":"tag-google","13":"tag-google-account","14":"tag-google-play-store","15":"tag-mobile","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}