Why can't I remove my Google account from a Galaxy S7 running Nougat

[Kurt Hazelback]

As I'm not in the Google ecosystem, I only use a Google account to update apps frequently for security reasons and I always remove that account after updating apps.

This has always worked in the past but as soon as I update Google Play Services to 11.9.51 or above, I cannot remove the Google account and instead get a message that 'Account is needed by some apps' and that the only way to remove the account is to do a factory reset. This to me is not a particularly informative message and I cannot find any official Google support that addresses this problem. It seems that removing the apps causing this message would be far easier that performing a factory reset.

Anyway, I perform a factory reset on my Samsung Galaxy S7 running Android 7.0 and create and add a new Google account with all default settings. As soon as the above update installs (and of course a lot of apps, including Maps require the latest GPS), it is again not possible to remove the account. Does anyone have a clue what is going on here? Would love to find out.

 

[rescuejg]

Sounds like a Google strangle hold.

 

[gordol]

Are you signed into GMail? or Google Maps? Or any other Google service/app on the phone?

 

[Kurt Hazelback]

Hi all,
I finally worked this out to be a Samsung rather than a Google issue.
It turns out that the culprit is the screen lock on the S7, it somehow depends on the Google account being active. If I remove the screen lock I can remove the Google account and then re-enable the screen lock.
Will contact Samsung about this (as have others).

 

[Nailahh]

Hi all,
I finally worked this out to be a Samsung rather than a Google issue.
It turns out that the culprit is the screen lock on the S7, it somehow depends on the Google account being active. If I remove the screen lock I can remove the Google account and then re-enable the screen lock.
Will contact Samsung about this (as have others).

Hello. I have the same issue as you with my nougat version. However i tried removing my screen lock and readding it but now by google account is gone. And i can't sign in

 

[Rukbat]

Settings/Accounts. Add a Google account.