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Help [Moved apps to SD] Apps icon greyed out

Vu8128

Newbie
Jul 16, 2018
22
12
Hi. I am using note 8. I recently moved a few applications to the sd card. Initially it was ok. After i restarted the phone, i noticed that the icons (of the moved app) while appeared as normal in the Home Screen, the icons were replaced with the icon of a sd card(with the android guy) on the Application Screen. Any solutions please?
IMG-20180713-WA0133.jpg
Screenshot_20180714-111304_Samsung Experience Home.jpg
Screenshot_20180714-111215_Samsung Experience Home.jpg
 
Are you rooted?
What carrier?

What SD card fo you have? Is it mounted?

If you click on the icons, do they open up the app?

I have a ton of apps moved to sd and never have seen this issue.

How did you move the apps to SD? Did you do it in the app settings or some other way?

Flush your phone cache (search the internet on how to do this)

Hi. I am not rooted. Carrier is Unifi (malaysia).

Sd card is kingston class 10 32GB.

The icons although greyed out, the applications still can be used. I moved the apps using the app settings.

Will try flush phone cache.

I discovered something. Under Home Screen Settings - Home Screen Layouts, i am currently on Home and Apps screens. If i choose Home Screen only then all the app icons reappear, even if i were to change back to Home and Apps screens. But if i were to restart my note again, the icons disappears again

Problem with the card, or card mounted, is the most obvious cause. Have you checked that the card works otherwise (remembering that /sdcard is not the SD card - I can't recall what that will be called on a Note 8 offhand).


Card is working (can access music and video files stored there) and is mounted.
 
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Did you copy files over to a new SD card or have you always had this card?

Can you remove the icon shortcut ? If you can remove the shortcut and then drag a new icon from the app in ther drawer.

If you cant remove the icon shortcuts from the home screen, Perhaps deleting and reinstalling the app then re-attempting the move.

Ive not see this behavior in years. If you are using a 3rd party launcher, try to clear that apps cache and re-attempt.
 
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Did you copy files over to a new SD card or have you always had this card?

Can you remove the icon shortcut ? If you can remove the shortcut and then drag a new icon from the app in ther drawer.

If you cant remove the icon shortcuts from the home screen, Perhaps deleting and reinstalling the app then re-attempting the move.

Ive not see this behavior in years. If you are using a 3rd party launcher, try to clear that apps cache and re-attempt.

I am using original launcher. And it is an old sd card.

The icons appeared greyed out not in the home screen (in fact, icons moved to home screen reappear). The icons appeared greyed out in the application screen / app drawer.
 
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Are you sure the card is actually class 10? (it may not be even though is is printed on the card) Give SD Insight a whirl and see if it is performing to specs. I remember this being an issue with slow cards not being able to mount/read fast enough to load the apps when faster phones boot up.

Ooops....app SD Insight not compatible with Note 8.
 
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Try this one: A1 SD Bench ... I wasn't able to get SD Insight to run on my G6, so it must be an Oreo thing.

If you get a sequential write speed less than 10 MB/sec then it's either not a true class 10 card or it's failing. Either of which might be the source of your problem.

Hi, this is the result. How to interpret it?
SmartSelect_20180717-223146_A1 SD Bench.jpg
 
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In my opinion the class of the card is not the issue here since the apps are recognized and run properly when launched. I think the conversations going in the wrong direction.

OP. We’re you able to do the steps I suggested in my previous post?

Clearing phone cache
Clearing the launcher/specific app cache thats been moved to SD card?
Perhaps try a DIFFERENT launcher just to test?

If you move the app BACK to main memory, does it function?

Is your phone LOCKED to your carrier or is it unlocked? Do you have any battery saving apps or aggressive power save schemes installed ?
 
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Hmmm. Interesting. The read times are very good, but those write times should be higher. Do you have the card mounted as internal storage?

It is mounted but not sure about the internal storage part... can you elaborate? Thanks

In my opinion the class of the card is not the issue here since the apps are recognized and run properly when launched. I think the conversations going in the wrong direction.

OP. We’re you able to do the steps I suggested in my previous post?

Clearing phone cache
Clearing the launcher/specific app cache thats been moved to SD card?
Perhaps try a DIFFERENT launcher just to test?

If you move the app BACK to main memory, does it function?

Is your phone LOCKED to your carrier or is it unlocked? Do you have any battery saving apps or aggressive power save schemes installed ?

Yes. I have cleared the cache of all the apps in my phone.
I did not instal any 3rd party launcher.
My phone is unlocked.
I am using power saving set to mid as provided by samsung .

Think there is a confusion here.

If apps is in internal memory, no issues at all. After apps moved to sd card using app settings, icon still ok. But if i restart phone, icons/shortcuts on HOME SCREEN is ok but icons on APP DRAWER/APP SCREEN becomes greyed out. A click on the greyed out icon however still opens the apps meaning the apps are ok only the icons are affected.
 
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In regards to the 3rd party launcher, maybe try installing one to test to see if this happens with a 3rd party launcher. I use naval launcher and i dont have this issue. I also reverted back to using the stock launcher to test , and after a phone cache reset, i dont have the icon issue. This phone i have is a tmobile variant. Stock, and locked to tmobile.

Even though when you move an app to SD card, some dat still remains in internal memory and the app is not totally off the internal storage. If you are not at risk of low on board memory, perhaps give some serious thought to moving the apps back onto internal memory.

Other than a full factory reset and re-build of your apps, theres not much else you can do. I doubt the phone has any issues, but without being able to see your phone in person and fuss with it, its going to be a crap shoot over the internet on how to remedy.

I did a cursory search online and ive not found anyone about having an issue such as yours with a current model note 8 (or even a s8), or even any current phone, so this is not a wide spread issue and maybe something specific to you.

Oerhaps turning off battery saver mode and set the phone to performance to test. If you do this, clear phone cache and re-attempt.
 
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I have turned off power savings...no deal. I have performed wipe cache partition...didn't help.

I discovered something. Under Home Screen Settings - Home Screen Layouts, i am currently on Home and Apps screens. If i choose Home Screen only then all the app icons reappear, even if i were to change back to Home and Apps screens. But if i were to restart my note again, the icons disappears again.
 
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Hmmm. Interesting. The read times are very good, but those write times should be higher. Do you have the card mounted as internal storage?
Does the Note 8 have that option? I thought Sammy normally exclude it from their flagships (presumably because they don't want the card to slow the system down and people to assume that the phone is slow).
 
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Update.

I contacted 3 friends using note 8.
2 using kingston and 1 using Samsung sd card.
3 of us using kingston had the same issue and the one using samsung sd didn't have the issue. However, i noted that this issue occured after the latest update (previous firmware no issue). Looks like memory card and probably bug in latest firmware is the cause.

Another discovery. Today i installed a new theme and the icons reappeared on the Application Screen. But after i restarted the phone, the icons greyed out again.
 
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That’s one reason why I asked if your phone was locked, or unlocked. Carriers have been known to break things when stepping on software updates, functionality, etc.

So seems the phones hardware is not an issue. Perhaps its just your carrier branded software thats messing up and perhaps a firmware update can correct. Maybe worth the time to read out to your carrier and set a ticket, especially since it happened right after a firmware update.

Are all of your friends on the same carrier ?
 
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There should be absolutely no need to move apps to SD these days.

I would advise against it.
Use the SD for large media collections such as music and photos but all the apps you can eat should fit on the phone memory. I have not filled it yet even experimenting with a plethora of VR apps that are huge.
 
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That’s one reason why I asked if your phone was locked, or unlocked. Carriers have been known to break things when stepping on software updates, functionality, etc.

So seems the phones hardware is not an issue. Perhaps its just your carrier branded software thats messing up and perhaps a firmware update can correct. Maybe worth the time to read out to your carrier and set a ticket, especially since it happened right after a firmware update.

Are all of your friends on the same carrier ?

Yeah, hardware doesn't seem to be the cause. 2 guys having the same issue are from a different carriers from mine and not using Samsung sd card.
The guy using Samsung sd card and without this issue is using the same carrier as mine.

There should be absolutely no need to move apps to SD these days.

I would advise against it.
Use the SD for large media collections such as music and photos but all the apps you can eat should fit on the phone memory. I have not filled it yet even experimenting with a plethora of VR apps that are huge.

True. However, since it was Samsung that provided the feature of moving the apps to sd card (built in), i would expect it to run properly.
 
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the apps to SD feature works just fine. its up to the individual apps themselves as to how well they will work under those conditions.

I have several apps on SD card and they all run smoothly. There are a couple of apps that squawked about being on SD so I moved those back, but overall the feature can work.

regardless, its worth mentioning that even though some apps may be ok ok the SD card, some of their data will still reside on internal memory. you can open up your app info and see which ones do that....
 
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the apps to SD feature works just fine. its up to the individual apps themselves as to how well they will work under those conditions.

I have several apps on SD card and they all run smoothly. There are a couple of apps that squawked about being on SD so I moved those back, but overall the feature can work.

regardless, its worth mentioning that even though some apps may be ok ok the SD card, some of their data will still reside on internal memory. you can open up your app info and see which ones do that....


Before latest firmware update, i had no issues at all regarding the moving of apps to sd card.
Even now, i have no issue with the apps ie although the icons are greyed out i can still access the apps. Only thing is, ALL the apps which have been moved to the sd card had their icons greyed out which is an eyesore...
 
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What happens if you move one back to the phone then back to SD? I'd expect moving it to the phone would fix the icon (at worst after a reboot), curious about whether it would stay fixed if moved back.

I remember that some of the limitations of apps on SD, such as widgets not working if the corresponding app is moved, are due to how late in the boot sequence the SD card is mounted. So I'm sort of wondering whether there is something like that going on here (a timing problem leading to the icons not being loaded). Though if that we're the case your best bet would be to report the bug to Samsung and hope they take notice.
 
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What happens if you move one back to the phone then back to SD? I'd expect moving it to the phone would fix the icon (at worst after a reboot), curious about whether it would stay fixed if moved back.

I remember that some of the limitations of apps on SD, such as widgets not working if the corresponding app is moved, are due to how late in the boot sequence the SD card is mounted. So I'm sort of wondering whether there is something like that going on here (a timing problem leading to the icons not being loaded). Though if that we're the case your best bet would be to report the bug to Samsung and hope they take notice.

If the apps were moved to sd card, the icons greyed out each time phone is rebooted/restarted. Icons reappear if i change home screen settings or if i change phone theme. But will grey out if i were to restart phone after that.

If apps are moved back to internal memory, no more greying out upon rebooting phone.
 
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