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

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Thanks for the guide.. I can see it being useful with Adobe Air & Skype out.

Can you just confirm something. I don't have HTC Sync installed.. and don't really want to syhc with outlook.

Can I do this without installing sync by just installing the driver before connecting to the PC?

Someone posted earlier about a usb driver...

At first i can't get the usb_driver which comes with the android sdk working. To work around that, i simply goto the device manager in Control panel, and install the adb driver myself from the "program files/htc/htc driver/driver files/xp_x86/" directory. Presumably, this directory is setup by HTC after you run HTC sync the first time.


Thanks
 
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I presume if you factory reset you'll lose all the apps that aren't either on the SD card or embedded in the firmware, and will also lose all contacts, etc?

Realistically, how much memory can you regain? Is it really worth the faff of reloading contacts, resetting up homescreens, etc? If it's 10 or 15Mb, then maybe, but anything less than 10Mb and I'd say not...
 
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Not sure if I've missed something here, btu it looks like this "all to SD" malarkey doesn't necessarily work for all apps downloaded. Even after modding the install location, I had to prompt Vignette to move to the SD card, and Winds of Steel (purchased before I modded) refuses to move to SD card altogether - the optiopn is greyed out. Any thoughts?

Just to let you know, this does work, just not for everything...
 
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Hey Guys! I need your advice.

I'm kinda new to Desire, bought it 3 months ago and I Love IT! My only problem is this internal memory shortage thingy...

I was really happy to find this method to solve the problem a bit, so I decided to give it a try.

My only question is: would it be useful to do a Factory REset (never done it since I have the phone) to start from scratch? I mean is it possible to have trash, unused files (just like in win) in the memory. So do you its a wise thing to HR the phone or is it totally useless, as I wont have any real advantage of it.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cheers!
 
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Useful mod, but caused more problems than it solved. I now have widgets that don't work, even if I uninstall, reinstall, and move to the phone before opening. Sometimes they work, but most give a "problem loading this widget" error on my screen eventually. One of my favorite programs now completely refuses to install at all! Smooth Calendar, Sense Analog Clock are two that are doing this.

Only about 50% of my apps were able to be moved to the card - I still get fails even if the button is now available. I was able to clear out only about 30MB, and that includes uninstalling the Flash 10.1 update which takes a comparatively huge amount of space and is one of the ones that refuses to install or move to the SD card.

I would like to confirm instructions on how to reverse this mod, when needed. I would guess I'd just use "pm setInstallLocation 1" instead of 2? Knowing this, perhaps I can turn the option off when needed for apps that are being difficult.

So this is my plan for the next little time. I've synced the phone and copied the SD contents to my backup drive. I'm going to factory reset the phone, note how much space is available for my apps, and go from there. Install the widgets and app that have heartburn from this mod, do the mod, install the rest. See how it goes... wish me luck!


[edit] results: Factory reset phone had 69.32MB space available after a Gmail update. When I finished installing apps, that had dropped to 43.39. Note, these are the same apps as before, that had dropped the space available down to 14MB. No apps would successfully move to the card. Redid the Install Location 2 mod, was only able to move over two apps, but since I have 44MB available, I'm not too upset. So mark starting from scratch a success, so far. We'll see if my widgets keep working this time. Should, I installed them before running the mod.

Still have no idea what was taking up so much space. Didn't check available space when I first bought the phone. I noted that the configuration it had after a factory reset was *not* the same exact configuration it had when I got it, so perhaps something was added that is now gone? No idea.
 
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After the mod, is there a way to revert back to installing apps to phone memory?

I only need to do this for only one app. Curvefish's APN On-Off widget will not work properly if install and run from SD.

Tried installed and then move it back to Phone from SD won't work.
I cannot add it as widget on the Home screen. Can only add as short cut.
 
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Thanks for the Tutorial I could get back almost 20Mb of space. For those experiencing issues with missing widgets.

Just go to settings > Applications > Manage applications > chose the app > move to phone

After that it is required a phone reboot and then voila widgets are not broken anymore.

Charlie, it works for me. My APN widget is not broken now. THanks :D
So the key here is to reboot the phone after moving widget from SD to phone.
 
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Was away for a bit so sorry for the late replies. To save annoying people and clogging up the thread, I'll combine all my answers into one big reply.

After the mod, is there a way to revert back to installing apps to phone memory?

I only need to do this for only one app. Curvefish's APN On-Off widget will not work properly if install and run from SD.

Tried installed and then move it back to Phone from SD won't work.
I cannot add it as widget on the Home screen. Can only add as short cut.

Yup it's really simple. Just plug the phone back in, complete an HTC sync and then open command prompt. Follow what you did before but just before the end, type "pm setInstallLocation 0" as opposed to 2.

Hey Guys! I need your advice.

I'm kinda new to Desire, bought it 3 months ago and I Love IT! My only problem is this internal memory shortage thingy...

I was really happy to find this method to solve the problem a bit, so I decided to give it a try.

My only question is: would it be useful to do a Factory REset (never done it since I have the phone) to start from scratch? I mean is it possible to have trash, unused files (just like in win) in the memory. So do you its a wise thing to HR the phone or is it totally useless, as I wont have any real advantage of it.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cheers!

Hey. Yup a factory reset makes a huge difference. When I first did this process I was left with about 30mb free internal space. After I did a factory reset and then did this process, I had about 60mb.

Useful mod, but caused more problems than it solved. I now have widgets that don't work, even if I uninstall, reinstall, and move to the phone before opening. Sometimes they work, but most give a "problem loading this widget" error on my screen eventually. One of my favorite programs now completely refuses to install at all! Smooth Calendar, Sense Analog Clock are two that are doing this.

Only about 50% of my apps were able to be moved to the card - I still get fails even if the button is now available. I was able to clear out only about 30MB, and that includes uninstalling the Flash 10.1 update which takes a comparatively huge amount of space and is one of the ones that refuses to install or move to the SD card.

I would like to confirm instructions on how to reverse this mod, when needed. I would guess I'd just use "pm setInstallLocation 1" instead of 2? Knowing this, perhaps I can turn the option off when needed for apps that are being difficult.

So this is my plan for the next little time. I've synced the phone and copied the SD contents to my backup drive. I'm going to factory reset the phone, note how much space is available for my apps, and go from there. Install the widgets and app that have heartburn from this mod, do the mod, install the rest. See how it goes... wish me luck!


[edit] results: Factory reset phone had 69.32MB space available after a Gmail update. When I finished installing apps, that had dropped to 43.39. Note, these are the same apps as before, that had dropped the space available down to 14MB. No apps would successfully move to the card. Redid the Install Location 2 mod, was only able to move over two apps, but since I have 44MB available, I'm not too upset. So mark starting from scratch a success, so far. We'll see if my widgets keep working this time. Should, I installed them before running the mod.

Still have no idea what was taking up so much space. Didn't check available space when I first bought the phone. I noted that the configuration it had after a factory reset was *not* the same exact configuration it had when I got it, so perhaps something was added that is now gone? No idea.

Hey. Sorry to hear you had problems with all this. Firstly, only being able to transfer 50% of your apps over is quite unusual I would say. Unfortunately that is just bad luck if you happen to have many of those apps. Personally though, it's only system apps, widgets and Google apps ie. maps etc that don't work. I don't think there is anything you can do about this. Widgets don't work well on sd, so I recommend you try and keep these on the internal memory.

As I posted above - to reverse the action (so it installs back onto the internal) you just repeat the process but change the step where it says "pm setInstallLocation 2" to "pm setInstallLocation 0".

Furthermore, remember part of the reason for your problems may be that this process only forces it to install the apps to sd. It doesn't move existing installed ones. This is why I recommend doing a factory reset before doing this as it forces most apps to sd giving you much more to begin with. I found when moving apps currently on internal to sd I lost more than from scratch. For example, when I first did this process I was left with 30mbish free internal memory. I then did a factory reset and installed the same apps + app data + music etc etc and was left with 60mb ish. So a factory reset really does make a big difference.

Finally, what network are you on and are you running that networks specific android firmware? Because I'm running the official O2 unbranded and untouched Froyo 2.2 update so haven't rooted or anything, and a factory reset leaves me with about 128mb free from first boot. So to be only left with 70 is ridiculous. I know orange loads it with a load of crap so i'm guessing you are with them? Anyway again nothing can be done about that unless you wan't to root and install a custom rom ie. the official android one unbranded which would give you 130ish free?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were too many replies since I last checked so hopefully this will help the people I quoted. Any more questions post below and Ill try and help :)
 
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I did this, it worked, but rebooted to see some of my widgets couldn't load...
If I went to my main menu those apps weren't there, but showed up after a while... But still no widgets.
I moved them to the phone memory and rebooted and it works again.
Dunno what exactly the problems is cause I have a class 6 SD card, so it should load pretty fast on start up right?
 
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Williamj1 - Now that I've done this, I presume I should do a factory reset? And (noob question alert..) presume I don't have to do the whole process again once I've done the factory reset?

Does this help?

you will have to do it again. But bear in mind, the process will now be much easier as the sdk is already downloaded and extracted.

So assuming you didn't move the sdk folder from the desktop (or wherever you put it) - you can now skip all the way down and start from step 10 :) It takes about a minute from there.
 
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When you factory reset and re-install apps have you re-installed them from a backup eg ASTRO or from the market again? Just wondering because i restored from astro backed up apps and think this may be why i had trouble updating, any light on this would be greateful, ill factory reset again if i have done it the wrong way as it is a gr8 mod
 
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Williamj1 - Now that I've done this, I presume I should do a factory reset? And (noob question alert..) presume I don't have to do the whole process again once I've done the factory reset?

When you do a factory reset you will have to do it again.

The whole poi
nt of doing a factory reset is that it will ultimately give you more space long term. There is no need to do one for the process to work, it just helps. But if you do, yes you will need to redo this process.


.... I pressume this is what you mea
n?
 
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Once you extract / unzip the sdk file, open the folder that's created. Inside that is another folder. That is the folder. It is called "android-sdk-windows"

Ok, got that but there's no SDK Manager.exe to be found! :thinking:

Here's a ss of what I get:

Noobguidess.jpg
 
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This works really well. As stated earlier, you will encounter problems with widgets. I've got round them all except one by uninstalling and reinstalling, moving back to phone in some cases and restarting the phone. The only one I can't get to work is Battery Widget which refuses to update the battery level now wherever it's installed. Shame but a small price to pay for reclaiming over 30Mb.
 
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Widget Fix / Guide

Just to clarify about widgets for anyone unclear. There seems to be a bit of confusion here. This may have been said earlier I don't know, but again hopefully this is simpler. Ill add this to the first post too.

With this process, you can still use widgets, but not if they are on the SD Card (which they automatically will be assuming you got my original guide process to work.) Ive tested this, and it works every time for me. I know some widgets are weird but I think it will work. So to get a working widget....

Note: Some irritating widgets may require you to uninstall the app before you proceed to step 1.


  1. Download and install the widget from the android market
  2. Go to Settings/Applications/Manage applications/Downloaded (or All) and find/select your widget.
  3. Select move to phone.
  4. Turn off the phone
  5. Turn on the phone
  6. Voila. Widget should now work.
 
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All - I have just got into big problem. All my moved apps have now disappeared from the market download list. SO I can no longer see any updates etc. Has anyone had this problem?

Is there any solution to this? I am guessing using appbrain will not solve this issue as it synchronises using google account. So the next time I sync appbrain to my phone all the moved apps are going to disappear from there as well.
 
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