How to Move Android Apps to an SD Card

How to move Android apps to an SD Menu

Android phone with MicroSD slot open and a card next to it

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Though the best Android phones come with enough of storage these days, space is ordinarily scarce on older devices and inexpensive phones, with a big role of the phone's storage taken up by the operating system and preloaded apps.

Fortunately, a number of Android devices sport microSD bill of fare slots that allow you to aggrandize your storage chapters by inserting a retentivity bill of fare. Using a memory card in your phone will not but allow you to store your photos and videos to it, but may as well allow y'all move some of your apps beyond. Not all Android phones support this. Only for those that do, hither'due south our guide on how to motility Android apps to an SD Menu

What to know nigh adding storage

First, non all Android devices allow you lot to install portions of an installed app to the microSD carte, only for those that do, it's just a quick trip to the application manager and a button press away. Most flagship phones have moved away from back up for this feature; it is more ordinarily found in midrange to low-finish hardware, but these are often devices that could apply the extra storage.

Unfortunately, even if your smartphone supports the feature, not all apps practice. Large apps such as games leave nearly of their data on the internal storage. For instance, Asphalt eight puts only 64MB of data on the microSD bill of fare while leaving the remaining one.4GB to make full your telephone or tablet. That said, you can salve some space this way, particularly if yous accept a lot of apps installed and movement as many as possible to a microSD menu.

Move apps to SD carte using application director

1. Navigate to Settings on your phone. Y'all can find the settings menu in the app drawer.

two. Tap Apps.

three. Select an app you want to move to the microSD carte du jour.

4. Tap Storage.

v. Tap Change if information technology'southward in that location.

If you lot don't run across the Change option, the app cannot exist moved. If you are unable to detect whatever apps with this option, information technology is probable that your device does not support the feature.

6. Tap Move.

If you lot wish to motility an app dorsum to the internal retention, hit the Alter push button again and select Internal Storage.

Apply SD card as internal storage

If your device does not back up moving apps to a microSD card there's some other option, first introduced in Android Marshmallow, that may exist the answer for you lot. This characteristic is called Adoptable or Flex Storage, and information technology allows y'all to format a microSD bill of fare to human activity like added internal storage. Again, not all devices with a microSD slot volition support this characteristic: Motorola, Huawei and Nvidia have all chosen to enable Flex Storage, while Samsung and LG have removed it.

There are a few factors to consider before enabling this feature. You will want the fastest microSD card that you can find to ensure smooth performance, at least Class x or UHS-I and preferably UHS-3. Whatever data present on the microSD card will exist erased when you format information technology every bit internal storage, and from that betoken, it will exist unusable in other devices (unless you reformat information technology again). Finally, recollect that if you remove this microSD card from your phone, you volition break functionality to any apps or content you've moved to it.

1. Navigate to settings on your phone. You can observe the settings menu in the app drawer.

2. Tap Storage.

iii. Select your SD card.

4. Tap the overflow card push in the upper-right corner.

5. Select Storage Settings.

6. Tap Format every bit Internal.

7. Tap Erase & Format. If the system determines that your microSD card is too irksome it will prompt yous with a warning hither that it volition degrade performance.

eight. Tap Move now. Subsequently making the selection you will tap side by side and initiate the transfer to your microSD card. The organisation will indicate roughly how long the transfer will take and how much data will be moved to your SD card.

ix. Tap Washed.

Your SD menu volition at present exist listed immediately beneath the internal shared storage and the system will apply it equally additional internal storage in the future.

At present yous know how to move Android apps to an SD Card, accept a look at how to speed upwards your Android telephone or tablet in this quick and piece of cake guide. For something more advanced, check out how to connect USB storage devices to your Android phone or how to print from an Android phone or tablet.

A self-professed "wearer of wearables," Sean Riley is a Senior Writer for Laptop Mag who has been covering tech for more than a decade. He specializes in covering phones and, of form, vesture tech, but has also written about tablets, VR, laptops, and smart dwelling devices, to proper noun but a few. His articles have also appeared in Tom's Guide, TechTarget, Phandroid, and more.