How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide. **Updated 09/02/11**

[bartlet]

In your profile it shows: Device(s): HTC Desire AndroidTM 2.1 (Eclair)

As far as I know, this only works on 2.2+

 

[dayd08]

will this work on desire HD?

 

[SUroot]

will this work on desire HD?

The desire HD doesnt need this. It has 1.5GB storage. The desire has 148MB

 

[DesireMe]

I did this today. My storage went from 24MB to 40MB. I checked all the apps and they work fine. I noticed a slight delay with Apps Orgraniser, so moved it back, but all the rest are fine.

Happy Bunny!

 

[garryknight]

One small point that I think people should be aware of, and which isn't covered in William's excellent post: Once you've got your apps on the SD card, when you plug the phone into the computer using the USB cable with the connection set to Disk, you won't have access to any of those apps. It's only a small point because I suspect that most of you won't be playing with the phone while it's syncing or whatever.

Last night I was syncing some files across to the phone when I realised that I need to make a note about something important. The only problem was, I'd moved Note Everything onto the SD card. I had to actually use a pen and paper!

 

[rwleigh]

I had to actually use a pen and paper!

Do such items still exist?

Surely not...

 

[kiratomic]

hi there! this method seems to have worked, thanks so much for breaking it down. i have 2 questions though..

1. i have moved quite a few apps using this method and settings>apps>manage apps but it doesn't seem to have given up any space on my internal memory, one reason i did this was to free up space. what's the deal?

2. i have an app to move apps to SD called 'app 2 SD' but the apps i HAVE moved to my SD using your method don't show up as being moved when i go into 'apps on SD' nor do they show up as being able to move over. why is that? they seem to have moved....

thanks so much if you can help!!

 

[adarshkvenuraj]

fantastic job williams ..

me using almost every apps on my htc desire sd card .. thanks for such a great idea

 

[garryknight]

2. i have an app to move apps to SD called 'app 2 SD' but the apps i HAVE moved to my SD using your method don't show up as being moved when i go into 'apps on SD' nor do they show up as being able to move over. why is that? they seem to have moved....

Can't help with point 1. When I made the change, my free internal storage went from 15 MB to about 34 MB. Incidentally, I went through all of my installed apps, clearing the cache for those I haven't used for a while, and that freed up even more.

You're second point becomes obvious the more you think about it. If you've implemented this change, you've told the Android system that you want the SD card to be the default location for installation, then you've moved your apps manually. So, 1) since Apps2SD didn't move them, it won't know that they've moved, and 2) since the SD card is now the default location and that's where the apps are, Apps2SD won't think of them as moveable. In fact, Apps2SD is now redundant. You can uninstall it and free up a tad more storage space.

 

[kiratomic]

is there a way of not having the SD as my default location? i'm having huge problems with a lot of apps going to SD and then not working.... i can't tell you how many times i've uninstalled and rebooted my phone to get them back. some vital "always running" apps like clocks/countdown/last.fm keep moving themselves to my SD (or so it seems) and quit working.
Merci!

 

[nsainty7]

Hi All,
Used the guide. Excellent stuff. Worked a treat. But here's my question... apps such as NDrive, Skype, Handcent SMS, that are large. Can these be moved to the sd card, with no issues?

Will NDrive work if moved to the sd card?

I am bit confused about what apps can be moved, that use services etc.

Sorry is this is a stupid question !

 

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the post. It'll help a lot.

 

[karthik_venna]

hey, its seems its not working for me.. i don know why.i am facing the same problem faced by a guy named hanimal

in Command promt im getting msgs like adb server is out of date... killing...

 

[karthik_venna]

hey guys.. finally it worked for me.. thanks alot. i just need info about the lines mention by our hero of thread William

//One final note. Fairly irrelevant to this process but since this is being viewed a lot I'll say it anyway. Don't ever use a task killer. Wrecks the phone! Happened to me, happened to thousands. Ask below for more info....//

because when i was doing the steps, i got some thing like adb server out of date.. killing.. i proceeded tho and made it fine

but my doubt is , the word Task killer mentioned by william have anything to do wth the "killing" msg shown to me

hope you understood my question.. sorry if my question was stupid.

 

[ross vegga]

HI guys, im a newbie here and i just bought a htc desire. Having problems this low disk in my phone so i wud like all application to be installed in my htc desire.
Im not a techi or knowledge about this. I am trying to follow the guide but i Can not understand this one here, "Untick all options you are promted to download except ones like the manuals, and Essentially, ensure the USB driver option is selected / ticked."
I see here, Packages to be installed. Which one should I uncheck here? Theres question mark also.
Please help on this.. im so confuse...

THank you...

 

[ambrozy]

brilliant guide - cannot thank enough!
so far what I had to move back to phone was only MixZing (only because of the widget issue)

 

[ambrozy]

HI guys, im a newbie here and i just bought a htc desire. Having problems this low disk in my phone so i wud like all application to be installed in my htc desire.
Im not a techi or knowledge about this. I am trying to follow the guide but i Can not understand this one here, "Untick all options you are promted to download except ones like the manuals, and Essentially, ensure the USB driver option is selected / ticked."
I see here, Packages to be installed. Which one should I uncheck here? Theres question mark also.
Please help on this.. im so confuse...

THank you...

the only thing you need is the USB Drivers (was bottom up 3rd for me)

 

[CRAZYISH]

works go0d the only one that it wont work for is my FIOS app not sure why , i cant get it to go to my sd card

 

[pwongcc]

thanks for the guide

HOWEVER

i followed the steps up to entering "adb shell" in the command window
then it said "no device found"
i repeated the command "adb shell" but still "no device found"
so i closed the command window and replugged my phone trying to repeat the whole process again
but since then none of my computers can detect my usb connection
i used htc desire and the phone used to prompt me with choices of usb connection when i connect it to the computer but now it doesnt

can anyone please help?

 

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the guide, it did just what it said on the tin. I've moved enough apps(co-pilot, skype etc.) so I've now got a comfortable buffer of 48mb spare. Am I right that although the app is on the card additional data will remain in the internal memory? Now that I've freed up memory I've returned the device to default (pminstallLocation 0) to avoid any issuses with widgets or future downloads. Am I right to assume this won't affect the apps I've transferred using this workround? I like the Desire, but more phones are appearing like the Galaxy S with large internal memories, so how many developers will bother to update their apps to load to the SD?

 

[Deleted User]

right i got the sdk going, by downloading the zip version however on step 2 i get an error saying adb is not recognised...

any help?

 

[SUroot]

right i got the sdk going, by downloading the zip version however on step 2 i get an error saying adb is not recognised...

any help?

You unzipped it to the desktop and changed the directory to the same location within Command Prompt?

 

[Deleted User]

yeah all unzipped, i downloaded theolder 1.6 sdk andi found the ADB.exe, i usedcommand promt and logged in to the old version and it all semmedto work however before my reset alot of things worked on the sd like my gallery app was on my sd and worked well, i cant put it on the card now so i dont think its worked? maybe the new update?

]
thanks

ben

 

[SUroot]

No Idea to be honest.

I haven't done this process and wouldn't particularly recommend it either

 

[spotdespot]

Just for info - I tried this and I had an issue originally as it seems the latest version of the sdk puts the ADB script/app whatever it is in a different folder called "platform-tools". The "tools" folder still exists but now instead of setting the folder to "desktop\android-sdk-windows\tools" it needed to be set to "Desktop\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools".

I hope that helps anyone struggling.

And THANK YOU VERY MUCH - this is fantastic.