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Unable to move apps to SDCard on Sprint GS3

I recently noticed that I cannot move any apps to my SDCard using App2SD. The normal option to move them is simply there. After some reading it seems this is true for all Samsung phones. I'm not sure why they removed this feature but I was wondering if there is a SuperUser app or a version of CyanogenMod which allows this.
Note: I realize that moving apps to external is not recommended because internal is faster.
However when some of my games take up to 1 GB it would be nice to send them to my 32GB external instead of completely fill up my internal 16GB. Currently I only have 4GB remaining internally.

Not enough memory, delete some item? ?

So my sister has her phone when she does anything this message comes up she getting very pissed off any way on solving this ? she has space and she has a sd card ... whats the deal.
Sent from my SGH-T889 using xda premium

xxjrsmith3xx said:
So my sister has her phone when she does anything this message comes up she getting very pissed off any way on solving this ? she has space and she has a sd card ... whats the deal.
Sent from my SGH-T889 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The deal is that we only have 2GB of internal storage, which is where the camera defaults to. This can be filled very easy if one likes to take lots of pictures. There are a lot of ways around this, but the easiest for a non techie is to download a 3rd party camera app and set the storage to the external card. You could also swap mount points or try to symlink it as well.

dispozable said:
The deal is that we only have 2GB of internal storage, which is where the camera defaults to. This can be filled very easy if one likes to take lots of pictures. There are a lot of ways around this, but the easiest for a non techie is to download a 3rd party camera app and set the storage to the external card. You could also swap mount points or try to symlink it as well.
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I have a hard time understanding this, too. Settings>Storage tells me that I have only about 60 MB free in "USB Storage." It also tells me that I have 93 MB of "Pictures, Videos" there. The trouble is, I have no pictures or videos in USB storage. It's all on the external SD card. The camera saves to the external SD card, and all my music, photos, and videos are there, not in internal storage. It even tells me I have 3.4 GB of "Miscellaneous files" in USB storage, which is impossible. That 3.4 GB is actually what's on the external SD at the moment. It tells me that over 1 GB of apps are stored there, even though the apps actually there come to far less---maybe there's app data that's adding to the total.
The only time it becomes a problem is when I run NewsRob, which invariably tells me it doesn't have enough memory to work.

ubizmo said:
I have a hard time understanding this, too. Settings>Storage tells me that I have only about 60 MB free in "USB Storage." It also tells me that I have 93 MB of "Pictures, Videos" there. The trouble is, I have no pictures or videos in USB storage. It's all on the external SD card. The camera saves to the external SD card, and all my music, photos, and videos are there, not in internal storage. It even tells me I have 3.4 GB of "Miscellaneous files" in USB storage, which is impossible. That 3.4 GB is actually what's on the external SD at the moment. It tells me that over 1 GB of apps are stored there, even though the apps actually there come to far less---maybe there's app data that's adding to the total.
The only time it becomes a problem is when I run NewsRob, which invariably tells me it doesn't have enough memory to work.
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For pics and such, use Google drive, drop box or sky drive. Mine is set to upload over WiFi only. After my pics are up, I delete them from gallery. Also, make sure all music is on external sd . Then go to settings/storage erase SD card. This should clean up any uneccesary files or clutter. Last, move all possible apps to SD and clear all caches. FYI , if on any cm 10 variants don't clear the caches to fast or the phone will freeze for 20-40 secs. That is all

jbats said:
For pics and such, use Google drive, drop box or sky drive. Mine is set to upload over WiFi only. After my pics are up, I delete them from gallery. Also, make sure all music is on external sd . Then go to settings/storage erase SD card. This should clean up any uneccesary files or clutter. Last, move all possible apps to SD and clear all caches. FYI , if on any cm 10 variants don't clear the caches to fast or the phone will freeze for 20-40 secs. That is all
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Well, I made an interesting discovery last night. I found that, even though I had set the PodKicker app to store podcasts on the external SD card, it had somehow reverted to internal USB memory, and had dumped a bunch of large files in there.
I also found that my Kindle app had deposited a bunch of files in internal USB memory. There's no way to tell Kindle to put them on the external card, but I supposedly only had a few books residing there. An examination of the kindle cache, however, disclosed almost two hundred, taking up a big chunk of memory. I deleted the whole directory, started Kindle, and let it re-download the few that I need. I think somewhere along the line I had to re-register the Kindle app, and it just left a bunch of old files there that it couldn't use anymore.
Between these two purges I freed up about 150 MB of internal USB storage.

150mb isn't much and will be eaten quickly.
a lot of apps install to the internal but load a bunch more on the external.
Camera ICS + is a good camera replacement that can save directly to the external SD.
Also, run ES File Explorer and use it's SD card analysis to see what is taking up space. I know that if you have your google photos synced, even just the thumbnails database file will be up to 1gb.
Move any Titanium or CWM backups to the external SD, but make sure you remember where they are when you go around deleting things.
I also found a trash can folder that was huge so I'm pretty sure that the internal SD card isn't fully freeing up memory when you delete things.
Also go to your App Manager and see which things are taking up a lot of space. I know that Google+, Gmail, Chrome, Facebook, Grooveshark and a few others take up a lot of space.

novice storage question

Hey guys,
I would like to buy 16GB version, but it's on long delay on Moto site and I need to ship this phone to my nieces in Ukraine by the end of August. So I bought 8GB version from Amazon to play with it and see how it works and really love the phone. The storage is the only sour point. 8 GB just does not cut it and Moto does not allow to use SD card storage for app installation. Moving apps to SD card works only for some apps and even then most of the storage being used is Internal, so 3-4 large games and this phone would be out of storage.
Is there is a way to force apps to install fully to SD card? Root + App2SD maybe? I do not have much experience with rooting and would like to avoid it, if possible due to desire to stay on OTA updates schedule.
Any advise?

To be honest rooting is your best bet for an optimal experience. I'm using CM and this phone can move more apps of you install the smaller version of google apps if it is really a big problem your only bet is to order the 16 and wait.

Transfer app to SD Card to free up space
Currently, there seems no tool can help you to move apps to SD card to free up space, but there indeed tools can be used to transfer photos, pictures, music,videos, contacts etc. to the SD card. If you are interest in it, you can read some tutorial for help

Transferring music and photos works wonderfully. And Google Play Music as well as Google Photos supports saving files on SD Card as default which makes it even easier to manage your storage. The apps though is a huge issue. I installed yesterday Walking Dead and it ate more then 1GB of storage of the puny 3GB available out of the box. Add here the app cache as well as storage required to do OTA updates and you really will struggle to install any large apps on the phone without running in 'out of memory' error messages.
The phone is wonderful otherwise - light, bright screen with excellent auto-dimming, good speaker and even better camera, responsive, waterproof (yes, I tested ), pure Lollipop Android experience , etc. etc.

No way to format SD card as Private or 50/50 *Internal* ?? Useless..

I have an S7 /w 32GB that has been used up 99%. I used ADB to format my 128GB Evo + /w 50/50 however, this has not fixed any storage issued. In fact, I cannot even use the new Internal partition; the phone does not access through ES File Manager. The phone also does not move any apps unto it, and does not use the free space!
My Internal space is 99% used up and Apps even Gallery are telling me to free up space; instead of using the 64GB that's unused on my SD Internal storage.... basically useless!
Seems others in North America are having same issue. Any ideas?? Thanks, the 32GB of internal storage honestly does NOT cut it, especially with the massive Gear VR apps I have installed! :crying:

Take a picture of the settings>storage screen.

vdruts said:
I have an S7 /w 32GB that has been used up 99%. I used ADB to format my 128GB Evo + /w 50/50 however, this has not fixed any storage issued. In fact, I cannot even use the new Internal partition; the phone does not access through ES File Manager. The phone also does not move any apps unto it, and does not use the free space!
My Internal space is 99% used up and Apps even Gallery are telling me to free up space; instead of using the 64GB that's unused on my SD Internal storage.... basically useless!
Seems others in North America are having same issue. Any ideas?? Thanks, the 32GB of internal storage honestly does NOT cut it, especially with the massive Gear VR apps I have installed! :crying:
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Click to collapse
Did you hit the migrate data option after setting up the sd card?

I have gone back to just using it as external but essentially the storage/settings screen read a total of 200+GB for some reason, it wasn't correct but the reading of the rest was correct.
Internal 99% full
sd card 0 apps/0 data
sd card (external) is what it looked like.
Also I do not recall it ever asking me to migrate anything... I tried it several times.

BCSC said:
Did you hit the migrate data option after setting up the sd card?
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This. Unless you do this, its a moot point

vdruts said:
I have gone back to just using it as external but essentially the storage/settings screen read a total of 200+GB for some reason, it wasn't correct but the reading of the rest was correct.
Internal 99% full
sd card 0 apps/0 data
sd card (external) is what it looked like.
Also I do not recall it ever asking me to migrate anything... I tried it several times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once in the internal card you created, you should have hit the hamburger menu and seen Migrate Data. If you did not do this your problem is now answered. It would have moved many GB of data from the phone to the adopted SD.

After I did the migrate, I still had errors from Google Music saying that there was not enough storage for my downloads. I've rebooted a few times and deleted and remade my playlist. Still getting the error message.

Some of the Oculus apps are really amazing but it is really annoying that they don't offer any options to store at lease the media files on the external storage. Also all their files are hidden and I can't find where they keep them. I'm on the verge of getting rid of the whole application and just use the VR set like a regular google cardboard!

There is a method to install/move apps to SD?

I've been looking for a method to move or force installation of apps to my 128gb micro SD card and so far I haven't found anything that works correctly, is there some method that actually allows moving apps to the SD card? or any custom rom that allows this? would titanium backup "move to SD card" option work?

You can use adoptable storage. It binds an SD card to your phone so you won't be able to use it with any other devices, but it essentially extends your phone's storage space by that much. Make sure you back up everything on your external SD card somewhere if there's anything important on it because this will wipe it clean.
1.) Open the "Files" app (the Google app with the colorful folded rectangles).
2.) Go to Browse.
3.) Scroll down to the bottom where you see your SD card, and tap on it.
4.) Hit the three dots in the top right.
5.) Click "Storage Settings".
6.) And finally, "Format as internal".
Once you've "adopted" the storage space you can move apps to it freely by going to a specific app's "App Info" page, clicking Storage, and choosing "Change" for each app. If you want to move multiple apps you can use something like "Internal Storage To SD Card" from the Play Store, which helps streamline the process; or even go into Developer Options and enable the option "Force allow apps to write on external storage" near the bottom which will force the majority of apps to favor the external SD card over the phone's.
Here's a bit more info on where your files are kept after this process.
If you want to retain separate access to the external SD Card so that you can use it with your computer or other devices while also storing app data on there, I'm afraid it's not very simple to do so. Android 9/10 has made a lot of changes with file access and how things are managed and stored on your device. I'm still figuring it out for myself, too.

i have a question, it will lose performance?
because i think if the phone is using a UFS 2.0, is the same or better maximum speed of R/W of SDCARD?

Polakiyo87 said:
i have a question, it will lose performance?
because i think if the phone is using a UFS 2.0, is the same or better maximum speed of R/W of SDCARD?
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Of course, the performance of the external drive will be lower.
However, don't underestimate them.
The performance of modern transflash is quite enough, for example, to run games like Doom, witcher or Skyrim(20+GB distros) from them on Nintendo consoles. The main thing is that the card is good. Like the same Sandisk extreme.

Not working for me. I've formatted the SD card as internal, but I can't move any apps to the SD card. When I go to the storage screen for an app, it only displays the total, app size, data and cache. There's no option to change storage location.
Yes, I've rebooted.

Same for me.
App mgr III and link2sd did not works even with Root :/
WTF nobody found a solution on a Android 10?

You don't want the apps running off the SD card as it's bandwidth is a lot slower than internal memory! It's a bottleneck to avoid.
Use the SD card as a data drive only.
Internal memory: OS, apps, temporary data and downloads.
SD card: all critical data, backups, music, vids, etc. Everything you need to fully restore the phone after a factory reset should be on it including copies of the apks.
Always redundantly backup the data drive on at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically separated! Or you will lose your data sooner... or latter.

blackhawk said:
You don't want the apps running off the SD card as it's bandwidth is a lot slower than internal memory! It's a bottleneck to avoid.
Use the SD card as a data drive only.
Internal memory: OS, apps, temporary data and downloads.
SD card: all critical data, backups, music, vids, etc. Everything you need to fully restore the phone after a factory reset should be on it including copies of the apks.
Always redundantly backup the data drive on at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically separated! Or you will lose your data sooner... or latter.
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Yes i know ... All my pictures, videos etc are on SD ...
But you don't reply, do you have a solution?
Like millions of android users, i have not enough space for games in the phone. I don't care about slow speed of game. Genshin inpact for example take more of 7gB !
OS takes 15gB ... App takes often many hundred of mB it's WTF...
App are crazy to cache, and snapchat instagram facebook etc can take 1gB each.
The sd limitation is a programmed obsolescence for smartphones (256 gB of microsd are cheap). All people don't care about low performance of specifics app, it's better than the impossiblity to install then.
Normally we should be able to make symbolic links between linux partititons.
That's the same on windows, i install my terabytes of games on an hard drive because my sdd is not enought ... And it works well.

raysar said:
Yes i know ... All my pictures, videos etc are on SD ...
But you don't reply, do you have a solution?
Like millions of android users, i have not enough space for games in the phone. I don't care about slow speed of game. Genshin inpact for example take more of 7gB !
OS takes 15gB ... App takes often many hundred of mB it's WTF...
App are crazy to cache, and snapchat instagram facebook etc can take 1gB each.
The sd limitation is a programmed obsolescence for smartphones (256 gB of microsd are cheap). All people don't care about low performance of specifics app, it's better than the impossiblity to install then.
Normally we should be able to make symbolic links between linux partititons.
That's the same on windows, i install my terabytes of games on an hard drive because my sdd is not enought ... And it works well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Be happy for the bump...
You should also post your OS version for solutions.
Maybe a ADB edit could get it.
Lol, I have one game loaded. Most are fair to high privacy/security risks... that could really keep you amused.

I used App2sd earlier with android 7 and devices with 8GB flash , where only 3.5GB we ahve for applications. The result, I was able to install 100 or more apps and games without problem. It will not work in modern android.
I use a script which move all pictures , movies, call recordings to the sd card when I plug in usb-c cable. The card is a place of storing multimedia, nandroid backup and titantium backup.
Modern devices with 64GB+ flash are able to keep all apps inside , of course if all media files will be moved to sd card.

raysar said:
Same for me.
App mgr III and link2sd did not works even with Root :/
WTF nobody found a solution on a Android 10?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess xda developers not the same. It is ****. They can't brake a **** Xiaomi? It seems that I have to buy an old phone not Xiaomi and brake it.

Hi, I know I'm late to this but hopefully it will help someone having the same problem.
Tested on Redmi 9a, android 10
1- After you format your sd card as
SeekerofLight.iz said, download this app from Google store: this app basically shows all the hidden settings on all Xiaomi phones.
2- Open the app and type storage in the search bar located at the top.
3- you will see several results, tap at
"Storage Use: Storage use
com.android.settings.applications.StorageUse".
4- A new window will open with a list of all apps installed on your phone. Tap the app you want to move to sd card then "storage and cashe" and you will find the da** "Change" button we all have been looking for tap it and select sd card.
I've attached screenshots for those who prefer them.
And about performance, there was a slight lag almost unnoticeable but games were playable in general.

AngryYoungMan said:
Not working for me. I've formatted the SD card as internal, but I can't move any apps to the SD card. When I go to the storage screen for an app, it only displays the total, app size, data and cache. There's no option to change storage location.
Yes, I've rebooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not all apps will support installation on sd card... If u want force it to be on sd card, u can use App2SD Pro app but root needed