Not Enough Space warning pops up every time you try installing an app. Right from fun-loving games like PUBG or downloading photos of your loved ones or 4K videos, every element seems to have taken its toll in the smartphone realm. But the question is storing huge amounts of data on your smartphone’s internal device can be very tricky! Fortunately, we have technology like installing a memory card slot.
Call it old school ways, incorporating a micro SD slot is one of the cheapest ways of expanding your phone’s storage. Moreover, you can move apps to an SD card just to free up space rather than removing apps on your Android device.
The question is why?
Like it or not, Android phones are featuring a very little amount of storage spaces that will definitely make you worry about storing your crucial data. However, phones are featuring a huge amount of internal storage spaces these days where
you would think you don’t have to worry regarding storage spaces. Such examples of Google's default apps / systems, including Google Play, Google Play Store, and Google Text-to-speech engine can take enormous amounts of internal storage spaces and are therefore unable to transfer in external SD cards.
So in order to reduce the space, all you require doing is uninstalling those default apps or else switch your crucial data to SD cards. Besides, smartphones used internal storage to store camera files, screenshot images, sounds, texts, notes, schedules, alerts, phone books, web pages saved, etc. by default.
These all signs says, adding an external SD card to transfer as many resources as possible to the SD card / set the service to use SD card as default storage, including transferring the installed apps to external SD cards.
But before moving any app, ensure whether the app is movable or not. How?
Settings > Apps > Click the app which you want to test
In the Storage section, check if the ‘Move to SD card' button is cover out or not. If the button is clickable and not covered out it means you can transfer the app to the external SD card. Once you move it, the button will change to ‘Move to phone', which indicating the app has been moved to the external SD card.
When not movable to the SD card?
Keeping into account how limited internal storage can be; disappointment is inevitable. There are the app developers do not make their apps as movable to external SD cards.
Technically speaking, the connection between the external SD card and phone can be disrupted as soon as you connect your phone to the computer and enable the USB mass storage. At a time, it is recommendable to unmounted and remove the SD card. Every single time when connection made between the external SD card and the phone is disrupted, few features/processes/ services are killed by the time. As a result, this makes some apps cannot work appropriately. For instance, if an app has alarms feature will have the alarms canceled when the SD card is unmounted – users have to re-register the alarms again after the SD card is remounted. These kinds of apps are not to be movable to external storage to prevent their apps' features broken.
How to Move Apps to an SD Card on Android?
In case, your phone doesn’t support adoptable storage; do you think it is quick and easy to transfer apps to an SD card manually?
- Go to Settings > Apps & notifications > App info
- Look around for the app you would wish to move in the list and tap it.
- Select Storage Then go to SD Card and change storage dialogue box
Lastly, Tap Move to begin
Use an SD Card as Internal Storage
After the introduction of Android Marshmallow, everything changed especially in the way phones can handle memory cards.
Yes, the good news is you can set micro-SD cards to work as internal storage. Other than having internal and external storage existing as separate spaces, Android views the card as an extension of the built-in memory. Moreover, data and apps can write to either as needed and all this happens pretty seamlessly.
For this, you need to follow certain steps: –
- Insert the card into your phone
- Tap Set up
- Select Phone Storage on Android 9, or Use as Internal Storage on older versions
- You can directly select Storage Settings. Tap Format as internal.
- In the next screen tap Format SD Card, or Erase & Format. This will wipe your card.
- Hit Move Content to complete.
The entire process we are talking about is Adoptable Storage, this means you have to keep your card in your phone for a permanent basis. In addition to this, the card is also encrypted, so you cannot put it in another device to copy the data.
Author Bio:
Olivia Diaz is working at eTatvaSoft, an Enterprise level Web & Mobile Application Development Company. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets. Follow me on twitter.
Alicia leads content strategy for LearnWorthy managing a team of content producers, strategists, and copywriters. She creatively oversees content programs, awareness campaigns, research reports, and other integrated marketing projects.
