I’ve been using Android for nearly a decade, and in this duration I’ve switched phones dozens of times. Starting with the Asus Zenfone 1 and now the Samsung S24 series. Every upgrade followed the same routine: open Settings, tap Factory Reset, wipe the phone, and move on. It felt foolproof.

But over the past few years, I started noticing something odd. Even after resetting and giving away my old phones, traces of them kept showing up in my Google account. That’s when I realised there’s a critical step I had been skipping all along — and a factory reset alone isn’t enough anymore.

Why a Simple Factory Reset Isn’t Enough

When you factory reset an Android phone, the device itself is wiped clean. From the phone’s perspective, everything is gone. But your Google account doesn’t fully register that separation.

The result is what I now call “ghost devices”. Phones I had reset, donated, or sold were still lingering across Google services as inactive or unreachable devices.

I first noticed this in the Play Store. Old phones like my Pixel 9a still appeared in the list of devices where I could install apps. There was no delete option. The only workaround was to visit play.google.com/library/devices and manually hide each device.

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Ghost Phones Also Appear in Find Hub

Things got more annoying when I spotted these wiped phones in Google’s Find Hub. Instead of only seeing active phones, earbuds, and trackers, I was also seeing devices that hadn’t existed for years.

My Pixel 9a, for example, still showed up with a “last seen” location. It couldn’t update, couldn’t be tracked, and couldn’t be removed. Trying to factory reset it remotely did nothing because the phone was already wiped and unreachable. It became a permanent, useless stub in my account.

Google Fi users have reported a similar issue, where wiped phones still show up as “inactive” because they were never properly deauthorised from the network.

The One Place Where Ghost Devices Can Be Removed

Eventually, I found these devices listed on
myaccount.google.com/device-activity.

Here’s the important part:
On this page, you can tap Sign out on old devices. Doing that immediately removes them from:

- Google Play Store device lists

- Find Hub

- Other Google services tied to device activity

Once signed out, the ghost phone disappears completely.

The Catch: This Method Isn’t Always Reliable

There’s one problem. If the phone is very old, it may not appear on the Device Activity page at all. When that happens, you’re stuck with no way to remove it after the reset.

That’s when it hit me: there’s a foolproof way to avoid all of this — and it has to be done before factory resetting the phone.

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The Crucial Step You Should Never Skip

Always sign out of your Google account on the phone before performing a factory reset.

Here’s what to do:

1. Open Settings

2. Go to Passwords & accounts (or Accounts)

3. Select your Google account

4. Tap Remove account

5. Confirm, then proceed with the factory reset

By removing your Google account first, you fully de-authorise the device from Google’s ecosystem. The reset then cleanly erases the phone without leaving behind ghost entries in the Play Store, Find Hub, or your account activity.

Why This Matters More Today

Android phones are now deeply tied to cloud services, device tracking, subscriptions, and security features. A factory reset wipes local data, but account-level cleanup requires manual action.

If you’re selling, donating, or recycling an Android phone, this extra step takes less than a minute — and saves you years of cluttered device lists and unremovable ghost phones.

I skipped it for years. I won’t ever skip it again.