My mom gets email that she doesn’t always understand. She wants me to look at it.
Can I use the web browser without having the account added to my Android phone?
This used to be very common. Hey let me use your computer and check my emails. Back when we didn’t have smart phones.
I could add her account to my phone and then remove it. That’s a lot of trouble to read one email.
Well, I would think you could aim the BROWSER app on a smart phone at gmail.com and on that screen enter the credentials and don’t click the “save my login information” or however it’s worded… can’t you?
Android does some unexpected stuff. I connected to my Google drive to copy some music to my mom’s phone. I was using a file explorer App called X-plore.
I was pretty annoyed to see my emails in her Gmail App. I had to remove my Google account off her phone.
I have to read this email. I’ll try logging in with Chrome. Sure hope her account doesn’t get dumped into my phone.
Well, there is a Chrome guest mode for computers. Not for mobile devices. Damn…
I signed in with my duckduckgo browser. Google sent a couple security pop-ups. But I got in.
Signed out after reading the email.
I don’t see her account on my phone.
I suspect Chrome would have added it. Your gmail address isn’t just for email. It’s your entire Google account.
Instead you could have shared the folder on your Google drive with your mother’s Google account and copied it from there. It’s not really Google’s fault that you decide to do things in unnecessarily complicated ways that looks exactly like your mom’s phone being used by someone with more than one Google account.
I have 3 active Google accounts on my phone: work, client and private.
That is, of course, more than many. And honestly, it is a pain. But the simple solution would be to create a “work” profile for the second gmail account.
I sign into a lot of Network shared drives at work. My employer has several dedicated file servers.
I thought that’s what I was doing with Google drive. But Google saw it as accessing the entire account.
Sometimes my background in computers works against me.
A work profile looks interesting. I’ll read more about it. I’m always trying to stay current.
Yes, though it’s best to log in via a browser other than Chrome, if you’re already signed in with another Gmail account.
Alternatively, could she simply forward the email to you? Could she understand how to if you talk her through it over the phone?
I have access to my daughter’s Gmail account as well as my own - you don’t have to log in and out, you just add another account, and then scroll down to select that account to read those emails. Your main log in for Chrome, Google pay, etc, stays the same.
That’s only suitable if your Mum is comfortable with you having access to all her emails, of course, but it sounds like it might be a good idea.
I probably will just add her account to my phone.
I set her phone up. Created the Gmail account for it. She’s still learning to use Android.
Use Firefox Focus or Private/Incognito on another browser if you want to be really sure no remnants are left.
There’s nothing inherently more complicated about the way he was doing it. It’s the way you would do it if you weren’t using a Google service. It’s only more complicated because of the way Google has chosen to set things up, where you can’t log into Drive on Android with a different account without saving that account to the phone in question.
The same issue also arises in other situations. What if you’re borrowing someone else’s phone to check your Gmail? What if you record a video on their phone that you want to upload to YouTube?
While Google did give Android the ability to use multiple accounts, they didn’t really design around the common practice of letting someone borrow your phone for a bit.
That said, I would also point out that the mother could have just forwarded the email to @aceplace57. I do this when I need to share an email with someone else. If this is something that may happen again, you may want to encourage her to do that–teaching her how if necessary.
I get some of your point, but If I was using dropbox instead, I would still share the dropbox folder with that person, not log into my dropbox on their phone.
I’d log into my Gmail using a private window in their browser. I’d have them share the video with me from their cloud account, whichever service that was.
That said, I agree the Google is a bit overzealous in adding your account all over the google-sphere when you log in on an Android device.
I have two gmail accts & like to keep them separate for {reasons}. I use the app for my main one & a browser for the other one.
Bonus tip: go to settings & check off ‘Desktop mode’; if it recognizes a mobile browser it tries to get you to sign into the app (& may even give you extra security prompts?)
I have literally never done that or been asked to lend my phone to anyone.
It won’t in privacy mode.
While not necessarily common, it’s more common for ER staff to be asked that from patients who were rushed in, especially after an accident when their phone either can’t be found immediately or was smashed beyond usage.
I’m so used to regular email. We routinely signed in with a browser. That was for over 20 years. I still occasionally use my old Hotmail address.
Gmail is different. It is nice opening the App without the need to login. The notifications on the Shade.
I will try the privacy option in Chrome.
They’re probably not going to be taking videos and uploading them, or sending music to someone else’s account, so they can just log in via a different browser.
I agree, I was responding to your comment about never lending your phone to someone by pointing out the scenario where I have seen phones lent to strangers.
At least one of the local hospitals I used to take patients to would provide taxi vouchers for those patients to get home. Sometimes, based upon mechanism (ie. a rollover car accident) we’d take the patient to the trauma center that was further than the local hospital; the trauma center hospital didn’t provide taxi vouchers, that proves it’s hospital policy & discretionary (so don’t piss off your ER nurse) & not something that is mandated.
I only know two phone #s that I could call from memory; I could borrow someone else’s phone, log in via a browser & get full access to my email &/or contact list to call someone to let them know I’m being admitted/need a ride home, as you can’t even use uber/lyft w/o your phone.
& for the subset of the population that needs ( 
) to You/Insta/Book Live them being in a hospital bed, they could do that from a browser of someone else’s phone, as well…provided they can remember their login info.
Oh yeah, I’m not denying nobody ever needs to borrow anyone else’s phone, just that it’s not “common.” I don’t think going to the ER - and also not having a working phone - is that common, fortunately!
But in that case a borrowed phone works perfectly well.
Uploading a video would probably actually be a fair bit more difficult, but, well, tough. I don’t expect phone companies to bear that in mind when thinking of ease of access.