Google Play shows my device twice. Why?

[Mihail_Lazarev]

Hi. I am faced with an incomprehensible problem. In Google Play Library/Devices, my phone appears twice. If uncheck or tick one device, the other is automatically checked/unchecked as well.

Could you explain why there are two identical devices, not one? This has never happened before. It starts appeared as I bought S22 ULTRA.

P.S. I use only one sim card.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like. The interface is in Russian, but everything should be clear there. It can be seen that the Samsung SM-S908B is displayed twice.

 

[mustang7757]

Hi welcome to AC!
You bought 2 Samsung s22 ultras?

 

[mustang7757]

[I moved your question to s22 Forum]

 

[fuzzylumpkin]

It can happen when you update your device. Maybe if you factory reset too.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! As fuzzylumpkin said, it can definitely happen if you do a factory reset. When you set the phone up again, it's a new "instance" of that phone, but the old instance still exists (even though you can't install anything on it). But in that case, unchecking the old instance shouldn't cause the current one to uncheck as well.

If you go to myaccount.google.com/security and then Manage All Devices, do you see that phone listed there more than once?

 

[Mihail_Lazarev]

Welcome to Android Central! As fuzzylumpkin said, it can definitely happen if you do a factory reset. When you set the phone up again, it's a new "instance" of that phone, but the old instance still exists (even though you can't install anything on it). But in that case, unchecking the old instance shouldn't cause the current one to uncheck as well.

If you go to myaccount.google.com/security and then Manage All Devices, do you see that phone listed there more than once?

Yes, I see two devices there.
I also did (4 months ago) a hard reset.
I also bought this phone on the second try. The first one is exactly the same, I bought it in February of this year (and use it few weeks), but it was defective. I returned the phone back and bought the one I have now.

But this was all in February and March, and the dates in the Google Play library, as well as in myaccount.google.com/security and then Manage All Devices, are today.

Here you can see in the screenshot that I used it today (the date is 11 of July).

Are there any ideas on how to get rid of this?

 

[mustang7757]

If you had bought this device twice and log in with same account then u will be seeing this , if you see both devices on my Google account try deleting one but it will take time to see it removed, in short this would be normal to see.

 

[B. Diddy]

That is pretty weird, and I'm guessing it's a glitch. I doubt it will have any significant impact on your account or usage, but if it bothers you enough, you could try signing out of your Google account on one of those listings (in the Manage My Devices menu of your Google account). It sounds like this will sign out of both instances, since the two listings seem linked, so you'll have to sign back into your Google account on the phone. To ensure you don't lose any data, make sure everything is backed up beforehand.

 

[B. Diddy]

If you had bought this device twice and log in with same account then u will be seeing this , if you see both devices on my Google account try deleting one but it will take time to see it removed, in short this would be normal to see.

The weird thing is that if one of the listings represents a previous instance of the phone, whether it's physically another phone, or the same phone before a factory reset, you should be able to uncheck one of them while the other one remains checked. I've never seen two instances be linked together, where unchecking one automatically unchecks the other.

 

[mustang7757]

The weird thing is that if one of the listings represents a previous instance of the phone, whether it's physically another phone, or the same phone before a factory reset, you should be able to uncheck one of them while the other one remains checked. I've never seen two instances be linked together, where unchecking one automatically unchecks the other.

Yeah that scenario is kinda strange

 

[noscere]

definitely happen if you do a factory reset. When you set the phone up again, it's a new "instance" of that phone, but the old instance still exists (even though you can't install anything on it). But in that case, unchecking the old instance shouldn't cause the current one to uncheck as well.

If you go to myaccount.google.com/security and then Manage All Devices, do you see that phone listed there more than once

Yes this is happening to me.

I have two devices on play store, both SM-S908B its Dual SIM Samsung Galaxy Ultra S22.

This only started happening recently. Can't recall the exact timing, but Ive had this device a year now, and it wasn't like that until recently. It became glaringly obvious when I happened to be installing apps on my Note 10+, and thought, this needs to go on the S22 as well, I'll just remote install it - clicked top of the two same device names. Says installed, opening play store on S22 also saying installed - but the app is not on the launcher!

Very weird...

(not posted my introduction thread yet; I'm in middle of writing it!) but I am a software engineer, graduated 1998, first job embedded systems (uk telephony, low level C programming equivalents of layers 2-3/4 in OSI-7 terms).
Moved into app development, 2002, Symbian OS. Moved into .NET, cloud based development, and Android (I'm the living, breathing quintessential example of that horse with the hi-res arse and the line drawn face)

Now we've all become buzzword happy and labelling things, im a "Full Stack Developer".
Point is, I've got extensive experience all over the industry and have even developing/targeting android devices for ten years or more. I've never seen this.

 

[noscere]

Okay, heres some screens to assist...​

This is screenshot whilst in play store on my NOTE 10+ 5G.​

Now looking on my S22, I couldn't see the app. So I fired up the launcher, swiping up and typing it's name:

Launcher on my Galaxy S22 Ultra DS​

It's not there! Let's go to play store...

• (food for thought: incidentally, I went to file manager+ app to create and FTP the screens from Note10, and rename the screenshots with a prefix so I knew which phone.
• This text I had copied for the prefix into the clipboard. I renamed the screenshots, pasting the prefix. Then I could move them to my S22.
• Swapped to a different app, Gallery, I then tried to search for the files I wanted to place into an album of their own —to pqste here eqsily—by clicking to search.
• Clicked my clipboard history icon from Samsung keyboard - COMPLETELY DIFFERENT history appeared. Switched back to file manager, opened rename, and boom, there is the "real" clipboard history!!!
• Different in two different apps!!! There is stuff in that Gallery apps keyboard's clipboard that I had copied months ago, whilst the keyboard in the file manager has all of todays up-to-date copied data in its clipboard!
• Something is very wrong in Ultra S22 and its got naff all to do with a factory reset.... unless...I did have to get my scren replaced about two months after I got the device [but I would have noticed it if it was happening since then])

Back to the IP Finder app...​

Play store screenshot for IP Finder on S22 Ultra​

So it clearly indicates that the second of the S22 devices wgen in the note 10 play store was the one google thinks is "my device", not the first one, which is the one I had clicked.

Installing it aagain on "this device" and now I can see it in the app launcher...​

 

[mustang7757]

Do you use secure folder?

Have you tried resetting play store by clearing it's data and force stop it see if it still same?

 

[noscere]

Additionally...

I have enabled 2FA on my Google account. If I try to login to it on, say, a public library computer, I will click "Say yes on my smartphone / tablet"

A pop-up window appears on my Ultra S22 with some rudimentary information (what/who is trying to login from where/into where, etc) asking to click "NO IT NOT ME" or "Yes It Was Me"

When I click "Yes It Was Me" there is a second exact same notification window popup, same app, and name Google, but this time it says something like, "Logging into Google Account. Authentication request timed out, this message has now expired"

If I have the Note 10 next to me at the same time (eg I'm at home and sitting at the computer where I normally leave the Note) it is logged into the same gpogle account and gets the same prompt, for me to approve/deny. If I let the pop-up display, then click the Yes It's Me on the s22, the popup on the Note 10 changes to the same wording & text as the supposed timed out one on the s22.

It's sending two approve/deny requests to my SM-S908B, one for each device that has logged in! Even though they are the same device. And since my Note 10 is logged in, it gets an approve/deny box too.

 

[noscere]

If you go to myaccount.google.com/security and then Manage All Devices, do you see that phone listed there more than once?

Here's what I get when I manage my devices - it says 6, but the last 3 are Firefox browser, and chrome Web views (well. One view, two SM-908B owning it)

 

[B. Diddy]

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what's going on with your phone. I typically see this when a device is factory reset -- the older instance of the phone can still show up, along with the newer instance. However, the older instance should no longer be active (and so the last active time should be when it was reset). Your situation seems to show both instances being active either at the same time, or in close proximity to each other.

I wonder if the dual SIM nature of the phone is causing this, but I can't find anything on the web about dual SIM causing a phone to show up twice in the Google device list.

 

[mustang7757]

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what's going on with your phone. I typically see this when a device is factory reset -- the older instance of the phone can still show up, along with the newer instance. However, the older instance should no longer be active (and so the last active time should be when it was reset). Your situation seems to show both instances being active either at the same time, or in close proximity to each other.

I wonder if the dual SIM nature of the phone is causing this, but I can't find anything on the web about dual SIM causing a phone to show up twice in the Google device list.

I'm thinking dual sim also

 

[Village_Idiot]

If you had an S22 Ultra, then send it in and it was replaced. The replacement device is a completely new device as far as Google is concerned. When you logged into it to set it up, Google sees it as a new device. Th new one has a separate device code, serial#, IMEI, etc. Delete the old one and you will be good to go.

I would also suggest going through any apps that have web-based account management (i.e. banking apps, Google, MSFT, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) and log out of the old device or remove it from that account. This revokes any tokens associated with the old one so no one can use it to log into your accounts. Same with your Samsung account and Samsung Wallet.

 

[BerryBubbles]

Do you use secure folder?

That's where I found my missing Watch 6 companion apps, installed into my secure folder.

I didn't realize you could install apps to secure folder without being in the Play Store within the secure folder.

From my Note20U, I figured out which of the two listed SM-S908U1 (s22U) devices was the secure folder & renamed it. No confusion now... (Well, at least for that.)

 

[Village_Idiot]

Update: You need to update your Google account and update your security,

Manage account -> Security -> Your devices -> Manage all devices

From here you can log out of any devices you are no longer using or own.

It revokes any tokens on those devices and they can't be used as 2FA on your account.