Android 101: How to add a second gmail account to your phone

By Phil Nickinson  | May 05 2010 | 1:09 pm  | 25 Comments

A question we get quite often from you guys is "How do I add a second gmail account?" Consider that question answered in the video above. Note that I'm adding a Google Apps account, which is the same as a normal gmail account, just with a different domain name.

Anyhoo, it takes about 30 seconds to do, and you can sync all of your e-mails and contacts, just like with a "normal" gmail account.

Phil Nickinson

Phil Nickinson Editor in Chief

"Phil is a recovering print journalist, editor of Android Central, subtitles and street signs."

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There are 25 comments

kmatheny says:

Glad to see that you used a Google Apps account for your demo. I know a number of people who's company/school email is actual a Google Apps account and wonder if they can sync all of their email/calendar/etc. with Android. I always tell them, "Yes, absolutely." Hopefully this video helps to get the word out that it doesn't have to be a Google domain, but just a Google account.

drathos says:

A secondary account will only be used for some of the apps. GMail and Contacts sync. Calendar, Talk, Market, and Maps only seem to work for the primary account.

surfacinglove says:

I was just trying to add my wife's Google account to my phone last night, so that we can easily check her Gmail when on the road. I set it all to not sync automatically (Contacts, Gmail, Picasa - for Gallery).

My question is this: Gallery keeps requested permission to access this secondary Google account, and I have to keep selecting Deny. It says if I approve, it'll stop asking me.

Any way around this?

DavidAUM says:

No joy on a G1 with Android 1.6. There is no "Accounts" option in my gmail app settings.

nkwebb140 says:

I wish had the "accounts" option on my HTC Droid Eris 1.5 ....

thatdidnthurt says:

Good on you for providing 101 videos! I am a little surprised that people miss the big add account button though - but I guess there are a lot of new Smartphone people.

surfacinglove - I tried to recreate the issue you are having but I am not having the same issue, though I am not using the stock rom. I have one gmail account syncing and the other not and I haven't been prompted yet for any permissions. Did you happen to let it sync at first and then stop it? You might also try deleting your wifes account then re-adding it. When you do, it will start trying to sync picasa immediately. Uncheck as quick as possible (at least that is what I did) and hopefully it will work. Sorry if this doesn't help.

understimulated says:

We are not overlooking the "Big add account button"!! Not new to smartphones either. I have had mytouch for almost a year now. Some phones are different.

When I push menu in gmail, I don't have a "account(s)" button. So all the other steps are useless. I have 5 buttons when I push menu, not six like in the video. No solution. I only want to add my husbands Google calendar to my phone instead of going online to see it. I'm very intelligent, perhaps my OS just isn't capable of this.

djangelic#ac says:

hahah sweetness! I did this a few days ago on my cyanogen G1 Running android 2.2 :D :D :D

berry_buster says:

I have an email question no one has been able to answer so far, maybe it is just a limitation of Android currently.

I have 2 exchange accounts, both accessed by the same user credentials.

I set up account 1 no problem.

When I go to set up account 2 using the same user ID/PWD, it throws an error saying this user ID is already in use by account 1.

Is there any way around this? I would like to be able to monitor both inbox's.

Thanks

BradSmithSC says:

I have a Droid Incredible. I understand it only supports one Exchange account. However, for my other Exchange accounts I use 'Improved Email' by mtwebster from the Droid Marketplace. It is a free app and supports muliple Exchange accounts. The authors site is www.mwebster.us

frozencloud says:

I actually love these sort of 101 videos over on the Crackberry website when i used a blackberry. Happy to see android central is doing something similar. Hope you do alot more regarding the small features like this and branch it out to "must have" or often used apps as well.

guimmer says:

Yes This appears to be a newer feature of 2.0 or so. I use K9 Mail on my LG eve which is stuck on 1.5 for the time being. I would use the GMail app but is is terrebly slow. Imap receives the mail Hours before the Gmail app does

trmoney24 says:

when i sync 2 google email address, and then create a shortcut on my home screen to each inbox, each icon simply says 'Inbox'. is there a way to rename that?

kmatheny says:

Not by default, but you can download "SMS Unread Count" in the market. It's a widget (so long-press on a home screen) that gives you either a messaging or Gmail icon that you can rename to whatever you want- and also, like the name implies, it will show you the number of unread messages for whichever account you associate with the "widget"/icon.

dangerboy13 says:

My biggest problem is no way to sync calendars for the second account (in my case, a work Google account for domains that has some shared calendars I would like access to). Using the web is the only way to access this currently.

gregnx says:

Perhaps this should have been labelled "Android 201" since it requires an OS version greater than what I have on my phone. -sigh-

jansenma says:

Can't access any accounts option on my Sprint Hero, maybe that will change with the upcoming 2.1 upgrade =]

dg417 says:

That won't automatically sync your calendar, will it?

DroidLorri says:

Thank you! I spent all of yesterday trying to figure out how to add a secondary Gmail account to my Incredible and in less than a minute, your video cleared everything up! I'm grateful that you chose to use a Google Apps account as a demo because my second and third accounts are both Apps accounts! YEAH! I love my Droid!!

vicw926a4 says:

Nice video - I really appreciate the series.

Pretty simple, but I keep ending up with the message "Can't establish a reliable data connection on the Server." I've been trying it on and off all afternoon and evening with no change, via either Wi-Fi or cellular path.

I see there are any number of threads related to this problem on a variety of forums, and I don't see any reasonable solutions. The most common one is to do a factory reset, which I think is a non-solution solution, unless things are totally desperate. I may create a thread in the forum asking about this.

mgrankin says:

hi did you ever find a solution to this problem other than the hard reset?? I have the same issue.

luciart says:

I found another thread on the issue of "Can't establish a reliable data connection on the Server."

The instructions it offered were to sign into the YouTube app using the account name and password of the gmail account you wanted to sync.
I do not have a YouTube account with that username and password, but I logged in no problem.

When I went to add the gmail account as per this video, it finally connected to the server!!! yeay!!!

luciart says:

oops the message above refers to my question

jmizer says:

I had the same error message all day and did as luciart above said and it worked for me also, register with youtube using the gmail address on computer and after go to phone and login then went to settings it showed up and then synced it and all done!!!

drpencil says:

Just get the Youtube app. Then from your Android, open youtube app and create a new account using the 2nd Google account's info. Stay logged into Youtube, and go back to Gmail app and the 2nd account will either be there or you can add it then. Been several weeks since I found the fix and it's been syncing both accounts ever since. Good luck!