Is there any way to sign into Google Play without also signing into Gmail?

Question

I have an android tablet. I would like to sign in into the play store in order to get other apps, but I do not want to sign in gmail/contacts/calenders/g+ etc. This device will be shared among multiple people and I want to keep my information private.

The mere ability to turn of syncing with gmail is not enough - it can be trivially turned back on without a password. And in the time it takes to turn off gmail sync, a fair bit of email still gets synced to the device. I can't find a way to remove it, without also signing out of Google Play.

On iOS, the app store credentials are separate from iCloud credentials, so this isn't a problem.

Is there any way to sign into Google Play without also signing into Gmail?

Answer 1

As pointed out by Hiemanshu you need to do this by using a separate account.

Now, as Android itself doesn't differentiate between Google accounts the question in your use case boils down to: How can I create a Google Account that does not have Gmail (and various other Google services with possible private information on them) associated to the account in question?

I have had similar cases at hand both in work and private use and would advice the following three options:

1. Create a regular Google account without Gmail. You can do this via https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail . Note that You need to provide some non-Gmail email address to do this but it can be anything and it's only used as a username, ie. it doesn't give access to that email address in any way. (I use [email protected] for which I have a catch-all email set up so that I can just invent emails on-the-fly and will get emails pushed to that should anyone ever email to those, but that's another thing).
2. You can also delete the Gmail address. In essence this will make your [email protected] Google Account become the same as one created in the prior step. You'll still login with the [email protected] but you just won't have the Gmail email service active anymore after that. You can do this here. Lastly
3. You can use a Google apps account and simply limit the services available for the username in question. If you don't have a Google Apps account you can still create one for free even though it's been officially discontinued for some years not. You can find this advice by searching the web for: Techwalls "How to Get Free Google Apps Standard Account for Single User"

I've been using options 1 and 3 myself and they have both worked fine. As a final additional advice I would remind you to pay attention when you are adding the account(s) to the device in question. There are two things to pay attention to, actually:

1. ALWAYS add the limited account as the very first account on the device. The thing is that (at least on older devices) you can't delete the first account that was added to the device. On shared devices you might very well run into situations (that you don't come to think of now) in which you want to completely remove your personal account when you give the device to someone.
2. Last but not least, pay attention when adding the non-gmail account that you don't activate the synchronization of any of the Google services (unless you specifically want to).

That's it!

Answer 2

Depending on the version of Android you can create multiple users where each user has its own accounts system. http://www.howtogeek.com/170191/share-your-android-tablet-and-keep-your-privacy-with-a-guest-account/

The only other way to work around this issue is to create a new account just for that device and use play store with it. Most of google apps seems to be really coupled at the moment.