Anyone who has set up a second Android device knows the hour that follows: opening the Play Store, scrolling the list of everything on the old phone, and tapping Install fifty times. Google is testing a fix. A new option, Sync apps to devices, has appeared for users in several countries under the Play Store’s Manage apps & device screen, ahead of any official announcement.
How it works
Open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Manage apps & device. Where the new feature has arrived, a section lists every Android device signed in to the same Google account — phones, tablets and Wear OS watches. Select one and the message reads: “Apps you install on this device will be installed on your synced device.” From then on, installing an app on the phone queues the same app on the tablet, provided the app supports that device type. It is a one-way mirror from the device you are using; you choose which others receive.
What it does not do
Updates are not synced — each device still fetches its own — and nor are uninstalls, so removing an app from the phone leaves it on the tablet. App data and logins do not travel; that remains the job of each app’s own cloud sync or of Android’s backup. And apps that are phone-only in the Play listing simply skip the tablet.
Who it is for
Ostensibly, people who own a phone, a tablet and a watch. In Bangladesh that is a small group. The larger case is quieter: the family that hands the old phone down. A parent who buys a new handset and gives the previous one to a child, or a shop that resets and resells, can now make the second phone a copy of the first in one step — which is convenient, and also a reminder to remove the banking apps first. Google has not said when the feature becomes universal; Play Store features typically reach everyone within a few weeks of appearing in the wild.
The habit to pair with it
Sync only what you would want on every device. A useful pattern is to keep one device as the “source” — the phone — and never enable sync from the tablet, so a child’s game downloads do not arrive on the work phone.
Source: Gadgets 360, via Prothom Alo.
