Sony A7 V: How to Set Up a Second Device Without Duplicating Everything
Running two devices well is a matter of deciding what syncs and what deliberately does not.
Last revised
Why this matters
Blanket syncing means every notification arrives twice and storage fills on both. Choosing what is shared makes the second device useful rather than noisy.
What you will need
- Both devices signed in to the same account
- Fifteen minutes
Step by step
- Sign in and let the initial sync finish before changing any settings.
- Decide which device is primary for notifications and silence duplicates on the other.
- Sync documents and photos, but not necessarily app data and downloads.
- Turn off automatic app installation across devices, which is rarely what you want.
- Set different automatic backup times so both are not competing for bandwidth.
How often
Once at setup, then review if notifications start duplicating.
Specific to the Sony A7 V
Bear in mind that expensive, which is worth factoring into how carefully you approach this.
Before you start
- Set aside enough time to finish — a job abandoned halfway is worse than one never started
- Work somewhere well lit and uncluttered, with a container for anything that comes off the device
- Take a photograph before you change anything, which costs seconds and saves guessing later
- Check whether the Sony warranty still applies, because it changes which steps are worth doing yourself
How long it takes
Budget ten minutes the first time and half that afterwards. It is the kind of job that takes longer to schedule than to do, which is exactly why it gets skipped — put it on the same recurring reminder as something else you already do.
Signs you have left it too long
- It takes noticeably longer to do something that used to be instant, and a restart only fixes it briefly
- It runs warmer than it did under the same load, in the same room, at the same time of year
- The behaviour you already know about — expensive — starts showing up earlier in the day than it used to
- You have begun working around it without deciding to, which is usually the first real symptom
What not to do
- Enabling every sync toggle by default
- Using the same device name for both, which makes management confusing
Behind this page
This reference page is written from the same testing notes as the reviews it supports, and it is revised whenever the hardware or the software underneath it changes. Where a figure appears here it has been measured rather than quoted from a specification sheet.
If something on this page no longer matches what you are seeing, it is out of date rather than disputed — tell us and it gets checked again.
Related reading
The reviews this page supports go into the measurements behind these figures, and the knowledge base collects every reference page we keep.
Elsewhere in maintenance: Sony A7 V: How to Test It Properly Before the Return Window Closes, Sony A7 V: How to Transfer Everything to a New Device and Sony A7 V: How to Update Firmware Without Breaking Things.