How to Remove a Lost Device From Your Google Account

Follow this guide to learn how to easily remove any device from your Google account and keep your account secure.

I have a lot of devices attached to my Google account. Sometimes, those devices no longer need to be attached to my account, and other times, I just need to know what activity has been going on between device and account. With so many devices, tracking activity would quickly become a monstrous challenge. Or, rather, it would if Google were not the company in question.

Google has a number of well-thought-out tools at the ready for device and user management. However, most people don’t know about these tools. That’s why I want to highlight Google’s device security feature. Accessing the Your devices menu from a Google account, you can get an overview of what’s connected to your account, find the last location from which a device was used and remove devices — even lost devices — with ease.

How to review your connected devices

Google’s ability to let you manage your devices via your account security settings is much more important than you might think. It’s a quick way to sign a device out of your account, whether you have said device in hand or not. So, how do you use this magical tool?

1. Make sure you’re logged into your Google account on the machine you are using — desktop, laptop or mobile.
2. Once you’ve logged in, go to https://google.com/devices.
3. At this point, the system will display the devices associated with your account (Figure A).

Figure A

How to remove a device from your Google account.

Now, let’s remove a device from the account. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click to expand the information about the device (Figure A).
2. Click the Sign out button (Figure B).

Figure B

3. Confirm removal by clicking Sign out (Figure C).

Figure C

The device has now been removed from your account. You can double-check that this process worked by opening the device and attempting to use any Google services. It should require you to re-authenticate to access your Google account. If the device is not in your possession, revisit the list of devices connected to your Google account. It can take a bit of time for a device to disappear entirely from the list.

Google has included a number of security features with your Google account, including the ability to update your password, configure two-step verification and even recover your account. With the ability to easily remove devices from your account, your computing life just got a bit more secure.