How To Move Your Apps To A MicroSD Card On Your Android Phone

By Maurice L. Bays
15 May 2019

One of the reasons that some folks will go for an Android phone over an iPhone is the fact that you can add more storage to the majority of Android phones. While new phones these days are quite generous with their storage capacity.

Some more budget priced phones can be rather stingy. A prime example of this is a phone I got for my son a year or so ago. It was a budget Samsung (the J5 I think) and it had a measly 8GB of internal storage, which about half was used for the OS and essential apps!

Being able to add a large MicroSD card to a phone or even something more modest like a 32 GB or even a 16 GB can be a real game changer for you.

That is why today we are looking at how you can move android apps from your phone storage to your MicroSD Card.

Step 1: Go to the settings section of your phone.

Step 2: Click on your Apps or Applications setting icon.

Step 3: Pick the app you would like to move. I would suggest moving the larger apps to your MicroSD card first.

Step 4: There will be a tab that says storage, tap this. If there is not a tab, scroll down on the app and it will be located at the bottom.

Step 5: Now you want to click the “change” tab. Once you do this the app will start to move over to the MicroSD card. Please note that if the app is large or the MicroSD card you have is not fast, this can take a short while so please be patient. Also, some apps simply will not allow you to move them to an external memory source. Trust me, I know what a pain in the butt this is!

Using A SD Card Like Internal Storage

One cool feature that was added with Android Marshmallow was a way to “trick” your phone into thinking that your MicroSD card is part of its internal storage. This is referred to as flex or adoptable storage on different devices.

You can actually format your MicroSD card and your device will treat it like it is its internal storage. This is awesome, but Samsung and LG do not allow you to do this. Other Android phones like Huawei, Motorola and Nvidia do though.

Step 1: Go to settings

Step 2: Press the storage tab and then go to your MicroSD card.

Step 3: Tap the three dots that are in the top right corner (the overflow button) and then select storage settings.

Step 4: Now you want to tap the one that says, format as internal.

Step 5: Look for erase and format and tap it. Now if your MicroSD card is not very fast, you may get a warning about that here. It should still let you do it though.

Step 6: Next you want to press the tab that says move now. This will move your apps and so on to the MicroSD card. This depending on the number of apps and data getting transferred can take a while.

Step 7: All that is left to do is press done and your phone will now use your MicroSD card without you having to tell it to do so. Please note, that this feature as of writing is not on Samsung or LG phones.

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How To Move Your Apps To A MicroSD Card On Your Android Phone

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One of the reasons that some folks will go for an Android phone over an iPhone is the fact that you can add more storage to the majority of Android phones. While new phones these...

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Maurice L. Bays

Lead Analyst Cameras

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