How Do I Copy Apps to my SD Card?

by Android Tapp Nov 30, 2008 5:08 PM – 59 Comments

Update: Announced at Google I/O 2010, Android apps and games will be allowed to be installed to SD Card with ease starting with Android 2.2!!!

All over the web you’ll find a variation of this question for installing Android Apps on the SD Card of the T-Mobile G1:

How Do I Copy Apps to my SD Card?
Applications on SD Cards?
Saving apps to SD Card?
How do I backup Android Apps to SD Card?
Where do Android Apps install?

I spoke with Konrad Hübner of Skycoders, the dudes who brought you Cab4Me, to help answer this question.

Android apps are installed on the internal memory and there is nothing you can do against it. This is part of the security concept. Each app or more precisely all apps signed with the same developer certificate run in the context of the same Linux user and get file access through that user. There are user and group ids generated whenever you install an app. All data of the app, also created files, get the user and group assigned and thus can only be accessed by the app itself. In addition, each app (identified through its package) runs in its own Dalvik VM sandbox.

If you put apps on the SD card, this security concept (file access) is broken. That is why you have no choice. The described concept is only a part of the entire security concept, but it is the one responsible for not being able to install apps outside the internal memory.

The problem with the G1 is that the internal memory is much too small to install all the apps you might want to have. This is killing half of the Market right because of that “I need to uninstall” thing.

-Konrad

UPDATE

Bratman asked an interesting question in the comments about a software hack to get around this. We posed the question to some top Android app developers, here’s some of their responses:

Well, yes, due to the security model, you can’t change where the app is installed. But if your app is that large I’m sure whatever data makes it so bulky can be stored onto the SD card. The problem is that that data can’t be embedded into the apk. You’d have to download (or side-load) or something. An example of this model is the music player.

Rylan Barnes of Big in Japan (ShopSavvy)

I would expect that you can cheat the system by using symbolic links and moving the software to a different mount. This mainly requires root access (so this is where you need to hack the phone which most users probably do not do, at least the standard users) and support for symbolic links on the phone. As the entire security system works based on linux user rights and user accounts. I have no idea if this would really work. It might be a chance, but it is a quite tough hack.

Konrad Hübner (Cab4Me Lite)

As a short follow-up:

I played around a bit. With a standard formatted SD card it does not work. I copied the .apk file from the internal memory to the sd card and created a symbolic link. The phone then told me that the app is not installed. Maybe the sd card needs to be formatted with a linux file system and not the default FAT. So the first try failed. For that I even had to change the permissions on the file system to get the apk file off the phone as the mv command did not work (cross-device link error).

So it looks like this might need more work.

Cheers,

Konrad Hübner (Cab4Me Lite)

No software hack will work until Google itself adds it to the Android platform, which will take some time. To deal with the space issue on internal memory what we will be doing with the premium version of PicSay is to move all of the user data to the SD card. But the application itself needs to be on internal memory. [More can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/android-platform]

Eric Wijngaard (PicSay)

Sorry peeps… looks like either we won’t have it for a while (maybe OTA update) or the G1 won’t get it at all…

Categorised in: Apps Blog

59 Comments

By Doron David on November 30, 2008 at 8:22 pm:

We can survive this as long as a future android phone will carry at least 4 gb of internal memory. I constantly un-install applications, and clear up cache.

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- By Sergio on December 6, 2009 at 7:25 pm:
  
  Yes you have to live with certain things about this phone because it is so new.
  1. Don’t install so many apps that you reach the capacity of your internal memory or you will have to do a hard reset and loose all data to get enough memory to even launch the app that allows you to make a phone call. Then call to have your security settings reset.
  2. Remove all duplicate apps. Test right away remove the ones that crash or you don’t like.
  3. Wireless may not be able to connect to multi protocols such as Wireless Routers that are set up to connect to wireless G and B Nics. as well as N. Must be N only…
  4. Install a Quick un-installer to remove completely from the phone.
  5. Use a good Task killer to make sure the service and process is not running for the app you just killed.
  6. Find and use a backup utility that will backup the apps, Contacts, Pictures, Music and notes to the SD Card and allow you to re-install them again. There are a few that work rather well.
  7. Make sure you completely shut down and restart your phone after you install several apps. This helps with the crashing.
  Have fun folks…
  
  Reply
- By Unbelieveable... on July 16, 2010 at 1:19 pm:
  
  Welcome to the technological world around you folks.
  
  It’s very hard to Beta Test a phone, in case you didn’t know. When you make something totally new, you have to ride out the rough spots that you didn’t anticipate. Talk to Sony and Microsoft about their video game systems…they are very familiar with that concept. You people need to calm down and stop being uptight and snobby. This is why the world hates Americans. We have such a sense of entitlement that it makes me sick. And if you aren’t American, then you need to stop acting like one. “Do this or I’ll never buy another Google phone again.” Really? Because what you seem to be forgetting is that this is the launching point. The phones will get better and they will fix bugs and cater to our thoughts because we are their consumers. But, Christ, calm down. This isn’t about flicking a switch. It’s about having to completely overhaul the way the phone works. I hope at least one other person understands how much code that is. I am willing to bet that most people posting this junk here doesn’t even fathom how complicated these phones and computers are or how they work. If you guys think that it’s so easy and that Google should be pooping code out to fix this, then I give a standing ovation for being the asshat you are.
  
  Doron David – 4 GB? What in the name of all that is holy are you downloading onto your phone? The laptop that I just bought last week has 4 GB of RAM and I think I’m actually going to have to TRY to use all of it. Seriously, these apps aren’t that big. Yes, they add up, but there is no reason to have that many. You never will use all of them — whether for business or pleasure.
  
  For the record, I do not work for Google. I do not have any affiliation with anything or anyone having to do with Google, Android, or and other third party.
  
  Reply
  - By Hog on August 11, 2010 at 2:03 pm:
    
    What an a** you are, you don´t even know the diference about the 4Gb RAM in your computer and the mem of your smartphone, and you think 4Gb is a lot??? Bill Gates once said: who will need more than 640kb of RAM is crazy! and didn´t take long to see he was wrong. Google have to take care of this bug, real quick or Androinds can have a bit of trouble with Windows Mobile 7 and the iPhones
    
    Reply
    - By Natalie81 on August 22, 2010 at 8:26 pm:
      
      You know there is a very simple way to get more storage space. Buy a new android phone. The Samsung Galaxy S aka Samsung Vibrant has 16GB of storage. Problem solved and you get a faster processor, more ram, and a bigger screen to boot. I wouldn’t expect much for the G1 now without rooting it even if there is a fix down the road in a later version of the android os, seeing as T-Mobile isn’t supporting the phone anymore.
      
      Reply
      - By Hog on August 23, 2010 at 8:36 am:
        
        Not everyone has 500 dollars every year to replace the old phone, this is a simple question that Google should think about before the OS was out in the first place
      - By Matt on October 7, 2010 at 8:46 pm:
        
        You are incorrect. The 16BG you speak of is the SD card, which if you read this article is the whole issue. You CAN NOT INSTALL APPS TO THE SD CARD – only the phone internal memory.
        I bought a new Android phone (my first) two days ago, and I’m already researching this issue because it’s already happened to me. I got a Samsung Intercept, put in a 16GB micro SD and am out of space with little more than 20 apps. I can put a ton of music, videos, pics, etc on my SD, but not a ton of apps, and that sucks.
      - By Jason Norment on October 7, 2010 at 9:15 pm:
        
        If you have Android 2.2, you can move apps from the internal memory (partially) to the SD card. You cannot install them directly onto the SD card.
      - By Chris2.2 on October 8, 2010 at 4:39 pm:
        
        I have a new G2 running Android 2.2 and can confirm that newer or recently updated apps can be installed directly to the SD card (Angry Bird Lite, Labyrinth, etc.) Most developers are noting the SD card storage ability in their change logs. If you have a device that has or will have Froyo soon, I recommend uninstalling old apps (pre 2.2) and reinstalling them as they are updated to run on 2.2
      - By sapphiraa on January 5, 2011 at 11:17 pm:
        
        @matt….you sir, are a dumbass. the samsung vibrant comes with 16gb ONBOARD memory and a 2gb sd card (which i read is where avatar is pre-loaded). i dont actually HAVE the phone yet but i will soon and have done the research to know these things.
        
        ffs WHY do people decide that its a GOOD IDEA to spout off ‘facts’ that they know absolutely NOTHING about? -.-
      - By Anuj on February 4, 2011 at 10:23 am:
        
        I agree with most of the replies…google should have anticipated this problem before releasing the os into the market, to spend on a phone which is more than 500 dollors in india….replacement is not a viable option at all, this is why i guess nokia and blackberry are far dependable out here, i think rather than going in for android based tablets, i would look at balckberry new tablet to buy….i am sure they would have thought and anticipated simple problems like these
  - By RedDroid on January 25, 2011 at 3:23 pm:
    
    @sapphiraa Maybe the Vibrant works differently but the Captivaye works exactly as Matt describes. 16GB… 1GB internal storage and the rest on an “internal SD card”.
    
    Reply
By OP8'd Android on December 1, 2008 at 5:45 am:

I certainly hope that they figure out a way either around this or a way to allow it because it severely limits what/how many applications we can take advantage of! If not hopefully someone figures out how to get me my root back after RC30.

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- By Deah on November 10, 2010 at 3:18 pm:
  
  I agree, Im a 47 yr old grandma type and Ive had my droid ally for 3 days and have killed my internal memory. (yes Ive gotten low mem warnings & had to uninstall) I cant afford a diffrent droid. it took me 2 yrs to risk the extra expence of a data plan & get this one …. why did I buy a droid??? if I cant get all of the cool toys. I thought the theme is droid dose… not droid dose if you only want to run a few apps at a time ???
  any chance of a patch or something that will let me eventually move apps or at least swap from my sd card on my ally????
  
  Reply
  - By Jason Norment on November 10, 2010 at 3:26 pm:
    
    From what I’ve heard, the LG Ally is supposed to get the Froyo upgrade to allow apps to move to the SD card but no specific date has been given (that I’ve found so far). Until that happens, your only given the usage of the internal memory. Like all other Androids, the Ally is completely capable of multi-tasking and running more than one application at a time but you have to be careful what you install on the memory your given. Large apps (such as games, navigation apps) take up a lot of memory. Until the upgrade comes through, you’ll have to be a little more cautious of what apps you install on your new Ally.
    
    Reply
- By Jason on December 5, 2010 at 8:05 am:
  
  I have the evo and couldnt get the programs onto my sd card however, I researched and saw mulitiple programs that claim they can do it on a rooted phone so I rooted my phone to see. It works I would install the program from lets say the Android market then I have a program called ApptoSD i click on it and find the newely installed program it moves it to the SD card when I play my program everything works great I have approximately 100 applications on the evo right now with most of my internal memory full and the sd almost half full with the programs I am using. The only thing left i have is trying to find a way that works too root my wife’s phone so it can do the same. Hope this helps some people
  
  Reply
By jeucey on December 5, 2008 at 8:32 am:

that sucks

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By Bratman on December 20, 2008 at 3:17 pm:

So there is not a software way to port the apps to the SD card so that it thinks it’s on an extended partition of the internal memory? It seems there must be a work around, leaving the small links in the internal but allowing the bulk of the app to exist as well as it’s collected data on the SD card

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By Android Tapp on December 20, 2008 at 3:39 pm:

That’s a good question and approach… If it’s OK with you, I’ll forward this over to Konrad and a few other Android app developers to see what they think about it.

My assumption is, the built in security wont allow it, thus requiring some alteration to the core Linux OS.

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By Bratman on December 21, 2008 at 11:48 am:

Ask away! I want a fix, and you know there is always a hack…

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By Matt on December 23, 2008 at 12:44 pm:

What I don’t understand is why the Android folks haven’t at least moved mail storage and market/browser cache onto the SD card. Right now the Market’s taking up 12MB of space on my G1 and I can’t even clean it up. Rubbish.

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By haitiankid4lyf on January 20, 2009 at 6:44 pm:

sorry for the above ^^
all you need to back up apps to sdcard is astro file manager do a search for “astro” it has an application manager that allows you to save apps on to your sdcard for back up. if you want to install apps on you sdcard that’s another story.
First you need a rooted G1 if you have a g1 that is rc29 or earlier (to check this go to settings -> about phone -> and scroll down to build number you should RC-## if the ## are 29 or less you are good, if its 30 there is a little more work for you to do)
you can visit this page
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=442480

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By Neil on January 31, 2009 at 11:09 pm:

What were they thinking when they designed the G1 to only put apps in intenal memory? How can they expect people to buy apps (once developers can sell apps on the Market) when there’s no more room for them in memory?! Some of my friends with Iphones have over a 1.5 gig of apps installed! And here we G1 users are having to uninstall apps just to avoid the “low memory” warning. This is ridiculous!

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By Bratman on February 8, 2009 at 2:23 pm:

Jesus Freak 1.41 RC 33 after root gives you the phone you thought you were buying in the first place…

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By Roger on February 26, 2009 at 4:05 pm:

Use the application called MyBackup from the Android Market to backup all your applications to the SD card… You can backup a lot of other things too… Great app, it is a must have.

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By Bratman on February 26, 2009 at 7:14 pm:

my backup is fine but it doesn’t allow you to run apps from the sd card and say internal memory, which is the point of this. It looks like Rooting and JF’ing the rom is the only way we’ll see a fix, unless you have a developer G1, but then you can’t get paid apps because of a flaw that let’s you grab paid apps for free from their storage area on the google server… this is kind of like the Iroq war, lot’s of time a money and thought went into getting there… but not much went into ok now we’re here NOW WHAT?

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By ryan on April 9, 2009 at 1:00 am:

What a rip off. No A2DP or storage of programs on the SD. I bought an 8 gig micro sd in anticipation of storing programs, etc. Now I have a phone that is full of programs and thus runs sluggishly. What is the sd for? Music? If I wanted a music phone I would have bought an iphone or something like that. Get over it google and let us store on the sd. If not I can guarentee I won’t buy another google phone and you will be dooming the android os.

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By namo on April 11, 2009 at 1:46 am:

Well this is my 1st google phone. I will never buy another google phone again until they solve this problem. The OS is good but the person who decided to put a 128mb internal memory should be skinned alive and dip in sea water for being a retard. G2 is about to come out and this problem still have not been solved.

Remember people, every time you uninstall a app everybody should make the reason “low space” even if your just trying to test the app.

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By Mill3000 on April 11, 2009 at 11:56 am:

The major downfall on the G1 and Android phones is that they force the user to use the built in memory. They do this to stop people from copying programs to each other but they will learn that people will just hack there phones so they can run it off of the memory card. They are limiting the public to a small fraction of programs in the market because of a space issue with the internal memory and that just won’t satisfy people who bought this phone for the potential of what a smart phone can do.

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By Name on June 22, 2009 at 4:29 am:

Download Appmanager it allows you to backup and install from the sd card !

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By Marcelo on June 26, 2009 at 10:44 am:

You can use this app to install apps on sd.

AppstoSD2.zip (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=512743)

Just install in G1 and follow

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By Austin G on November 16, 2009 at 10:14 pm:

If droid wants to beat the Iphone they will have to expand to the SD card….if not it will die….I have hope for Droid!

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By Sam the Man! on December 7, 2009 at 3:48 pm:

That sucks man! I sold my unlocked iPhone for the G1 and now stuck here and not able to get anymore apps bec the phone crashes when the memory is close to full!
How can Google and T Mobile do this to us… at 500.00 per share, you would think that Google would of done better… I hate to say this, but I am going back to my beloved 8GB iPhone!!!!!!!!!!!

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- By Cathal on January 20, 2010 at 10:50 am:
  
  This article is archaic. By rooting your phone (which shouldn’t be any harder than jailbreaking the iPhone, look up your model on http://theunlockr.com ) you can partition your SD card and move your Apps to it. You can also create swap-space on the card, which can improve the speed of your hardware if your firmware supports it.
  
  For example, the HTC Hero can be installed with Modaco’s firmware, which supports Swap and Apps2SD as a built-in feature, and the Amon-Ra recovery image supports partitioning and moving of Apps and Dalvik. You also get Wifi tethering built in for any computer OS (including Mac, at last), powerful GPS-based phone-finding security, Backup software, and you can install Market Enabler to gain full access to the Market from wherever you are (so you don’t need to resort to Piracy!).
  
  Hope this helped assuage some fears, but the author of this article should *seriously* update this, it’s ancient and scaremongering.
  
  Reply
  - By Android Tapp on January 20, 2010 at 12:39 pm:
    
    True the article is now “archaic”, it was written November 30, 2008 (one month after the first commercial debut of the first and only Android phone at the time.. the T-Mobile G1). This was the “fear” and main concern at the time. Also, this was before all the solutions you mention even existed. So to comment current opinions and solutions with valid concerns on issues on topics over a year ago is not a valid argument.
    
    The article itself would probably not be updated, however we can write a new article on the topic expressing improvements of installing apps to SD card. Google even recently announced they’re working on solutions to allow app installs on SD cards, without all the techno developer hoopla suitable for everyday consumers. I would hope readers are savvy enough to check the date stamp when reading old articles and understand this was an issue then, but probably won’t be in the coming months with new software releases.
    
    Reply
By upset droid user on April 5, 2010 at 12:53 pm:

this is nonsense. how can we all sit & not state the simple issue needs to go on memory cards. there should be no limits here. Another thing why does the droid for verizon save & install automatically by it self when i just read you say it is not allowed due to apps rights. i left verizon for drop calls & no signals why should i go back to verizon to enjoy my milestone right. update this setting right now. if no update will be done i will never consider using another android since no body knows anything not even own android teach support becuase as i mentioned the verizon droid saves & installs from the sd memory cards.

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By mohammed atiq on September 10, 2010 at 5:53 pm:

my personal data are there my micro sd card my sd card is corrupt maybe micro sd card saying make formet i want my personal data plz help me

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By darkan9el on September 27, 2010 at 3:35 am:

I cannot understand how such a fundamental error of judgement on the part of HTC and Google could happen. Such clever people miss such a blatantly obvious need as to install ridiculously small amounts of internal memory, to the point it cripples the whole concept of the phone. It totally baffles me and really is tantamount to incompetence.

What did they think the users were going to do? control their urge to use 100 apps and only go for three. If apps were good and reasonably priced, people just wouldn’t bother hacking them, they’d buy them, so negating the need for securities. But what has happened is you have created a need to hack because of the stupid lack of insight and the 1980′s sized internal memory.

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By ndeso on September 27, 2010 at 11:36 pm:

all you guys need is just to wait a bit more…get your droid upgraded to 2.2 (froyo) then install the app2SD application…it allows you to actually move apps to SD

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By mohammed on December 16, 2010 at 7:28 am:

How Do I Copy Apps and themes and install to my SD Card give me reply pleaseeeeeeeeeeeee

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- By Antonio Wells on December 16, 2010 at 12:12 pm:
  
  You would need an Android version 2.2+ phone and developers of the apps would have to enable this feature, read more here: http://www.androidtapp.com/android-developers-move-app-to-sd-card-feature-in-android-2-2-requires-you/
  
  Reply
By Drey on December 26, 2010 at 5:14 am:

ha-ha! (c) Nelson

I’m so glad that I can just root my sex10minipro and install app2sd.

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By lycaon on January 10, 2011 at 11:07 pm:

well my android tablet wont connect to internet properly so i cant download any apps and so im stuck with a blank tablet…. anyone know how to get the internet working? it says its connected to my router it just wont connect to internet

Reply
- By Jason Norment on January 11, 2011 at 9:55 am:
  
  What android tablet do you have?
  
  Reply
By Chris Ault on January 29, 2011 at 6:21 pm:

I have an HTC Hero as of now, HTC is making no upgrade to the HTC Hero software. Therefore if you are low on memory, you have to wait until you can change phones. The new version 2.3 and above Android software is the only way you can easily move apps from your internal memory on your phone to your SD Card which is non existent for the HTC Hero. Thank God I can get a new phone in 2 months!!! This is total BS by the way, 2 year contract and not having upgrades? Shady!

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By Joe on March 2, 2011 at 6:28 pm:

ok. So i bought an HTC aria from att yesterday. you have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!! 128MB internal memory!!! thats it!!!!! when i had the iphone, i was buying apps left and right, and now this! 128 MB is not enough to put hardly 2 apps on.

You are out of your minds google! i mean really.. what retard would of only thought of 128mb of memory.

Google: ok all were gonna make a phone thats gonna dominate the cell market. and were gonna make a Market called android market so people can buy lots of apps for there phone. oh yea lets give these phones a wopping 128MB of internal memory. and i thought my brother was a retard.

sorry google i brung back the android and got my money back. sux to be you. get more memory. duh huge android market. no damn memory to install all those apps. WOW your smart. i can tell Microsoft is rubbing off on google lol.

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- By Jason Norment on March 2, 2011 at 11:09 pm:
  
  Sounds more like a rant against HTC rather than Android. Your choice in device is the issue there, not the OS.
  
  Reply
  - By google and android sucks on February 5, 2012 at 2:57 am:
    
    no! the os sucks as well all of the android phones are like that I returned my samsung as well and went back to the Iphone!!!
    
    Reply
By Raghavendra.K on March 15, 2011 at 7:48 am:

hi just i know about andriod 2.2, which i read my emails last week it will not showing in this week is there any application where i can save my old emails to
memory card, and i can see.pls any one help me because i cant carry any where my laptop, I have samsung galaxy Tab. pls pls pls

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By Angel on April 19, 2011 at 9:19 am:

Hi…
I found a nice tutorial for moving applications from phone memory to SD or memory card in Android….

http://ishankgupta.com/2011/04/move-applications-from-phone-memory-to-sd-card-in-android/

Thanks.

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By djsmoky on January 21, 2012 at 11:15 am:

HTC G1 s nice but f*** u lot…don’t try to buy

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By David kasonde on March 10, 2012 at 12:19 pm:

i have tried using different sites to access a flash player compatible with my android nokia E65 but i cudn’t. So if anyone knows where to access it, can email me please.

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By jasminius on May 16, 2012 at 1:07 pm:

BUY UR SELF A FUCKING IPHONE

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By jiji on September 9, 2012 at 3:33 am:

i have installed the dark knight risess in my samsung galaxy tab2 p3100…………..but i do whr to open it ………….anybody say how 2 open it

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