Android 2.2: Install Android Apps to SD Card

by Antonio Wells May 20, 2010 1:56 PM – 39 Comments

One of the plagues of using Google’s Android platform was the inability to install Android apps and games to the SD Card versus internal memory storage; with the official announcement of Android 2.2 this feature will come standard. By default, apps will continue to be installed on internal memory storage, however a quick visit to the list of applications in the Settings menu offers one touch to move the app to SD Card. Thus they are playable just fine from the SD Card. Now user storage for apps and games will only be limited to the storage of the SD Card purchased.

Tags: Android 2.2, Android App, Android Games, Install Android Apps to SD Card, Saving Android Apps to SD Card

Categorised in: Apps Blog, News

39 Comments

By Magnus on May 23, 2010 at 3:16 am:

Running Froyo on my Nexus now and this “move to sd” button does not work for any of my installed applications.
tried reinstalling applications and also installing new ones to be able to do this but nothing works…

Reply
- By Chamo1 on January 14, 2011 at 9:52 pm:
  
  Hello Magnus
  
  I found this info and thought it could be useful to you as well as other Android OS device users, make sure you are running 2.2 as stated on the original article, I am no sure if it works with any of the lower versions. I should also mention that I have NOT done it on my phone yet as I just found this info and plan on doing it over the weekend. All credits go to Lars Aronsson who posted the instructions on Andronica.com. this is the link to the article:
  
  http://androinica.com/2010/08/03/how-to-install-apps-to-the-sd-card-by-default-on-android-2-2-froyo/
  
  Here we go..
  1. First you have to enable USB debugging on your Android device from Settings > Applications > Development > USB debugging.
  2. Now you need to download and install the Android SDK on your computer from http://developer.android.com/sdk/. Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the package to the folder of your choice, run SDK Setup.exe and click on Available Packages to the left. If you get an error message at this point, enable “Force https://…” in the Settings. From the list of available packages, select “Usb Driver package”, click on the Install Selected button in the bottom right corner and follow the prompts.
  3. Connect your phone to your computer with a USB-cable. Your OS will prompt you to install new drivers. Choose to install them from the android-sdk/usb_driver folder. Do not mount your device; you only need to plug-in the cable.
  4. Next, run a command prompt and navigate to the Android-SDK\tools folder. In Windows, this is done by selecting Run from the Start Menu (or by pressing Win+R) and typing cmd. You change drives in the command prompt by entering the drive letter followed by a colon (:), and change folders with the CD command. For example, to enter the Android-SDK folder, simply type cd android-sdk.
  5. In the Android-SDK\tools folder, type in adb devices and you should get a serial number starting with “H” in return. All you have to do next is entering adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2. Voilà, you’re done! Android will now install apps to the SD card by default.
  6. To switch back to storing software on the internal memory, enter adb shell pm setInstallLocation 0.
  
  Reply
  - By ampers on May 7, 2011 at 4:49 am:
    
    There’s now an app to do all this called App2SD
    
    Ampers
    
    Reply
    - By Dorian on May 13, 2011 at 11:39 am:
      
      Thanks a bunch for posting this, I downloaded the free version on my Nexus One and I am loving this APP. I wonder how different the Pro version is?
      
      Reply
    - By droidoS on May 27, 2011 at 6:09 am:
      
      i installed the apps2sd. but when i click move to sd button it says, not enough memory.
      
      any help?
      
      Reply
      - By Jason Norment on May 27, 2011 at 4:37 pm:
        
        Have you verified that your SD card isn’t full? are you using a custom ROM or modified SD card?
    - By chirag on February 26, 2012 at 5:00 am:
      
      in app2sd we can only save the installation save file to sd..not the app
      
      Reply
      - By chirag on February 26, 2012 at 5:02 am:
        
        the app which we use is installed on phone memory only..only selected apps can be moved to sd..only selected apps which suppport sd can only b moved to sd
  - By amudhan23 on July 8, 2011 at 4:27 am:
    
    hi… greetings
    
    i am from india and i have bought one android os (•Operating System : Android Froyo 2.2) based pad which is called “Olive pad”. i have tried your solution for installing application directly on SD card. when i check for adb devices its not showning anything in “H” series. below is the message, which i received after entering “adb devices”. let me know how proceed further to install application by default in SD card.
    
    have a delightfull day
    
    C:\>Cd\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools
    C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb devices
    * daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
    * daemon started successfully *
    List of devices attached
    FM6111051091 device
    
    Reply
    - By Nitish on November 24, 2012 at 11:48 am:
      
      Now you need to download and install the Android SDK on your computer from http://developer.android.com/sdk/. Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the package to the folder of your choice, run SDK Setup.exe and click on Available Packages to the left. If you get an error message at this point, enable “Force https://…” in the Settings. From the list of available packages, select “Usb Driver package”, click on the Install Selected button in the bottom right corner and follow the prompts.
      
      I dont even see the SDK setup.exe…I have two folders extracted – eclipse and sdk and none of the subfolders have the setup file..
      
      Please help nhemdani(at the rate)gmail
      
      Reply
By blak on May 23, 2010 at 1:01 pm:

It’s grayed out one my 2.2 also for some reason

Reply
- By Tim Instone on September 6, 2010 at 9:24 am:
  
  Some apps will transfer as advertised but the majority of mine are greyed-out.
  
  I assume it’s a function of how they were written and hope that authors might include a where-to-install option in future upgrades.
  
  Reply
By Cross on May 23, 2010 at 11:06 pm:

It wont work until developers update thier apps and optimize them to be run off the sd card.., sucks i know….

Reply
By douwe on May 24, 2010 at 6:31 am:

the move to SD card is also grayed out in my install of 2.2. on my Nexus One.. any idea what could be wrong, should this be activated elsewhere??

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By redsolo on May 24, 2010 at 3:32 pm:

Apps that hasnt been updated can not be installed onto SD card because the app is not stating if its ok to store the app on a sd card. This is done by design as apps with services or widgets should not be installed on a sd card as those SD cards can be yanked out at any time. The developers only need to add a tag to their manifest files and upload it to make it possible to install the app onto a SD card.

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By PooDog on August 3, 2010 at 8:56 pm:

Also, just because developer of the apps allowed you to installed on SD, you may not want to do that. I have widgets that got broken after moving apps to SD; event after system reset they did not recover. Have to re-install the apps.

See following link for background info
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html

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By nick on August 16, 2010 at 3:06 am:

THE ANDROID SUCKS….. i spend 499 euros to buy the HTC Desire and i CAN NOT INSTALL OTHERS APPLICATONS TO PHONE CAUSE THE MEMORY IS FULL!!!!! (the total free memory by default in desire with 2.2 is only 20-25MB………. with this ammount of memory you can install only 2-3 application/games)

IT’S SUCK….. google need to make a update to froyo to fix this problem…..

i am idiot to sell my iphone….

i have 16GB in desire and non of my applications can be install in sd, i try even with applications (move2sd) but is the same

if i want to play a game i must go and unistnall all others and install from the beggining and after tha game i must uninstall

TOTALY SUCK………

Reply
- By Jason Norment on September 6, 2010 at 10:21 am:
  
  @Nick: You must have a LOT of applications if you filled up the storage space on your internal memory already. The largest application I have is 23MB and I still have 64MB of available space on my phone. Not all applications will be moveable to the SD card but often you’ll notice that developers are adding that function into their apps with updates. Make sure all your applications are up-to-date. You can also try “Apps to SD” that is designed to manage your moveable apps. Try it here: http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.a0soft.gphone.app2sd
  
  Reply
- By JTEE on October 2, 2010 at 3:22 pm:
  
  shut up moron! do your research before you spend your money idiot
  
  Reply
- By Mihai on October 21, 2010 at 12:13 pm:
  
  you are a real douchebag then…. 13 year old kid… and i bet you didn’t spent anything on your phone… your parents did…
  
  Reply
- By ben on November 23, 2010 at 6:30 pm:
  
  dont worry nick just tell momy about your problems and maybe she will buy for you the new iphone!!!! and a new dipper
  
  Reply
- By ampers on May 7, 2011 at 4:52 am:
  
  I have the HTC Desire and I have around 60 applications on it.
  
  Did you buy your phone from a badly dressed dude near a street market?
  
  Reply
By dadzor on September 4, 2010 at 2:38 pm:

What the hell were they thinking?
I mean i have like 80-90 megabytes of memory … and i filled that with a few applications and games but if i want to try something new i have to delete old ones which i really like.
If you can’t store on sd you can’t do shit.
And the OTA update for desire or any other phone is like … never coming.
This is the biggest minus of android…

Reply
- By Jason Norment on September 6, 2010 at 10:24 am:
  
  @Dadzor: Be patient. It’s coming I’m sure. I read this morning that 02 released an update then took it down after having some issues with devices. I have to say that upgrading my Evo was painless and only took about 20 mins.
  
  Reply
By Kurt on October 4, 2010 at 8:25 am:

This has to be corrected and soon that tall apps can be installed to the SD card or moved from the phone to the card. I-phone allows the internal storage for all apps etc. This is a no brainer get-err-done.

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By Mark on October 4, 2010 at 12:04 pm:

Hi, Does anybody have an example app that can be moved to card, so far I have not found one…..

Cheers, M

Reply
- By Antonio Wells on October 4, 2010 at 12:16 pm:
  
  A few of the popular apps are:
  
  Angry Birds
  AppBrain
  Barcode Scanner
  Dolphin Browser HD
  Foursquare
  
  You can also use Apps2SD to help you filter which apps are eligible to install to SD card.
  
  Reply
- By Bob in Stuart FL on December 11, 2010 at 6:26 pm:
  
  Yeah, Adobe PDF Reader allows you to move to SD card. Not too many others though so far.
  
  Reply
By Mutts on October 17, 2010 at 10:04 am:

While i love my Desire.
It is total idiocy that apps won’t be installed to the SD by default.
And while there are apps that have the move to sd option. The majority of the apps have it not.

So to give the desire ROM: 512 MB and RAM: 576 MB
While no app is installed to sd by default is silly.
I do not have many apps installed roughly 62 and only 18 can be moved to the SD.

So App Devs get working.

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By Amit Patekar on November 12, 2010 at 12:28 am:

I love Android, but still i must say, here in India the economy range phone which is around $300 Samsung Galaxy 3 comes with 2.1
I have installed not more than 30 apps and i have only 42 MB of memory free in internal memory. Today i got the low memory message and then i came to know about this problem with android enabled phones.

Its not exactly problem with android the phone/device have less internal memory, they should at least provide 1 GB

Any way i am doing research on various “move to sd” applications. Dose any one have any research done already.

If i was aware of this problem i could have bought some higher end Android phone

Love Android
Regards
Amit Patekar

Reply
- By Nimesh on January 2, 2011 at 8:25 am:
  
  Hi Amit,
  
  2.1 does not have this facility to move apps to SD. 2.2 is have this facility. Try to upgrade ur pone to 2.2
  
  Reply
By leggy801 on January 11, 2011 at 1:00 am:

I just replaced my WInMo 6.5 (Touch Pro 2) with an EVO 4G. This is one of the features I miss from WIndows. THe phone only had a 512 Mhz cpu, but it ran fast because nothing was on the phone. Everything was on the memory card. I really hope the developers update their apps.

BTW, is it possible to move the apps after you have rooted the phone?

Reply
- By Jason Norment on January 11, 2011 at 9:54 am:
  
  The experience on a Touch Pro 2 is considerable differently because of the infrastructure of the operating system, not because of the memory card. The resources and capabilities of a Windows Mobile 6 phone are significantly lower thus requires less RAM, CPU, and memory to function. It’s ultimately a trade-off.
  
  Performance on any Android device is all about how you use it. Moving apps to your SD card can actually cause a negative effect. Using task killers on Android devices can do more harm than good. Not all SD cards perform the same. There are different classes of micro SD cards as well that range from Class 2 (up to 2 MB/s transfer rate) up to Class 10 (up to 10 MB/s transfer rate).
  
  You can move apps on any phone with 2.2 installed (Froyo) whether it’s rooted or not. Rooted devices have more control on how they operate to give you options such as overclocking/underclocking the CPU. If your thinking of rooting your device, you can install a custom ROM that may prove to have a little bit better performance. Also, you can remove apps that the carrier pre-installs when your device is rooted but be aware what you uninstall may cause stability issues.
  
  Reply
By Prateek Kole on February 15, 2011 at 11:49 am:

The “move to SD card” option works fine for me, but for most of the apps, the option was grayed. After I moved the apps to the SD card, the total size of the app got reduced. Is that normal? (I’m new to the Android OS)

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By ampers on May 7, 2011 at 4:58 am:

Whenever I get the warning that my memory is full, I go into App2SD and check which apps that can’t be moved I can do without. I do not delete it there though for a reason.

I go to “Market” and check the “my app” button and uninstall it from there. Where it asks “why are you uninstalling” I click on “This app is defective” I am hoping this will persuade the developer to add the code to port to the SDCard.

I also write a review. I only put one star and if a good app will say “This app is very good but only gets one star because it won’t port to the SDCard.”

My hoping is, if enough people do this, more apps will be moveable to the SDCard.

The reason why developers are slow, I have been told, is that it is difficult to add the code without a lot of rewriting of the app.

Reply
By Adony on May 29, 2011 at 9:00 pm:

Hey It Does Not Allow Me to “”MOVE TO SD”" well it Dont Show it…

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By KEVY Romania on April 3, 2012 at 5:01 pm:

A easy way to move all most anything even unmoveble things like maps,yahoo,facebook is Link2SD.apk you can download from googleplay, only problem is that you need root acces, best & easyest software I found for root is unlockroot.exe that you install on pc, conect data cable & run it, be carefull & don’t restart phone with software may give you bootram error & you have to take out battery, just disconect data cable & then restart phone. Tasted on 2.2 froyo!

Reply