How to move apps to the SD card on Android

One of the aspects of Android that more headaches has given to the users of historical form is the subject of the internal storage. A few years ago, having a capacity of hundreds of GB was a little less than a dream, and it was very easy for a terminal to be left soon with no memory. The big stores seem to have been relegated to the ranges higher, the lower ranges have limited capabilities. In this article we’ll talk about how to move apps to the SD card in any version of Android, both in the more recent, as in the case of the oldest.

Before entering into specifics it should be noted that, without being root and in older versions of Android, which you move are not so much entire applications in themselves, as portions of the same. Also keep in mind that not all applications support this procedure.

How to move Android apps to the SD card

To be able to move apps to the SD card, you’ll need to follow the following steps. First, you’ll need to set your microSD card as internal storage. When you enter a new card into your phone, the device should ask you if you want to configure it as such. In that case you will see the following screen:

Setting up a SD card new in Android

If you click on Storage of the phonethe terminal will format the microSD card automatically, so you can expand the internal memory of the device.

If you do not, first download and install Minimal ADB & Fastboot.

Download

Connect your phone to your PC, open the tool and type the following commands:

adb shell

sm list-disks

Look at the value that we highlight below and which appears nothing more you enter the second command. This is the ID of the memory card and is unique to each one:

Id of the memory card

By knowing this ID, we can already format the card to work as internal storage:

sm partition disk:IDTARJETA private

With this command formatearás the entire memory card, but if you’re only interested in using a part you will have to use this other:

sm partition disk:IDTARJETA mixed X

Where X refers to the percentage of memory card used as internal storage.

Once we have the formatted memory card as part of the internal storage, we will have to go to Settings > Applications and notifications > See all applications:

View all installed applications

You will see the list of all the apps that you have installed on your terminal. Then search in the list that you want to move to the SD card and click on it; then click on Storage:

Menu storage of apps on Android

After, click the button Change:

Button of change of the storage

If the button does not appear, the application cannot be moved to the SD card. If the option is present it will appear a dialog box like the one you see below, in which you’ll have to choose your SD card to move the app:

Change of an app to the SD card

How to move apps to the SD card in previous versions of Android 6.0

Those of you who have an Android version lower than 6.0 will have to use this second method, which requires in addition to go through the process of rooting a terminal Android. Each one requires a series of steps different, so you’ll have to documentarte well before taking the plunge to do it. However, before anything else, think if you go through all the process you are worth it or not.

If finally, you decide that yes you are worth, then you will need to do several things. The first will be to download a partitioning tool for disks to your computer, such as AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Download

When you have it on the PC, connects to your microSD card and open it. You will see the following image:

Main view of AOMEI Partition Assistant

Searches the program to your memory card. When you’ve found it, click with the right button on it and then click on Delete partition and then on the button Apply. When you have done this, the card will be clean and empty of all its content (it is important that you do a backup of everything that was inside):

SD card content

After, right click again with the right button on top of your microSD card and click on Create partition. We will be asked to enter the size of the same and the type of partition that we will have (by default will be FAT32, and the whole unit):

Create a new partition in AOMEI Partition Assistant

We apply these changes and after we click with the right mouse button on top of the unit. Now select Split partition. The program will automatically assign a size for the two parties, but we may change it to our liking. Then click on Ok and, as always, we apply the changes:

Division of partitions in AOMEI Partition Assistant

Now we come to the smallest partition in our microSD card, and repeat the process of deleting and creating partitions, only that in this case we will create will be of type ext3:

Creating an ext3 partition in AOMEI Partition Assistant

When you apply the changes, you can re-copy it to the FAT32 partition of the data that we have taken from our microSD to preserve them. We insert below the microSD in our device and download an app called Link2SD, that can only work on phones rooteados.

Download

When the open for the first time we asked the relevant permits. As soon as the accord, we can already start to move apps whole and true of the internal memory to the microSD card.