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Help SD Card Apps Greyed Out, Can't Open

K Mehta

Lurker
Nov 7, 2019
4
1
Screenshot_20191107-223512.png
I had moved some selected apps to SDCard. Due to some network issue, I rebooted my phone and all those apps (those in the SD Card) have now greyed out. I cannot open them, clicking on it shows "app not installed". These apps really had my important data with them. Please help!
The icons appearing are as shown in the picture below.
 
Looks like the card isn't mounted, or perhaps didn't mount in time for the apps to load. Can you see the card at all? Have you tried rebooting again?
He
Looks like the card isn't mounted, or perhaps didn't mount in time for the apps to load. Can you see the card at all? Have you tried rebooting again?
Hi..thanks for bothering! yeah I've tried rebooting many times, didn't work. It is mounted, I can see all pics, music and other files except these apps.
 
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What makes this tricky to debug is that the system goes out of its way to make it hard for you to see the "moved" apps on the sd card. They will be in a hidden folder .android_secure, but even if you set your file browser to show hidden files it will most likely show that folder as empty no matter what the reality is. Trouble is my last 2 phones haven't had SD cards, so I can't remember this stuff at the level of detail needed to really help investigate this. The behaviour is what I'd expect if the parts of the apps that had been moved to SD are inaccessible ("moving an app to sd" actually only moves part of it, but if that part can't be accessed the app is unusable). What I can't say is whether the bit that was moved to SD has been deleted or whether the folder is not being linked. The problem is that without root it might be hard to learn more or do anything about it. Can only hope that someone who has used this system more recently than me can think of something.
 
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Try using the Play Store app to reinstall those now greyed-out apps. There's a good chance that the saved data for each of those apps still reside in their respective folders in the internal storage. (When you're 'moving' apps to an microSD card, it's still matter where not everything relative to the app gets moved over. It's actually a situation where parts of the app have to remain in the internal storage while other parts reside on the card.)
This same situation occurs if you've forgotten that you've moved some apps to your card and later remove the card. The apps in question need to be reinstalled to function again because parts of them are no longer accessible.
As to why you're having this problem after rebooting, how did you 'move' those apps? Using the Settings menu in your phone or using a third-party app you installed?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobond.mindicator&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intsig.camscanner&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobisystems.office&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thinkyeah.galleryvault&hl=en_US
 
Upvote 0
Try using the Play Store app to reinstall those now greyed-out apps. There's a good chance that the saved data for each of those apps still reside in their respective folders in the internal storage. (When you're 'moving' apps to an microSD card, it's still matter where not everything relative to the app gets moved over. It's actually a situation where parts of the app have to remain in the internal storage while other parts reside on the card.)
This same situation occurs if you've forgotten that you've moved some apps to your card and later remove the card. The apps in question need to be reinstalled to function again because parts of them are no longer accessible.
As to why you're having this problem after rebooting, how did you 'move' those apps? Using the Settings menu in your phone or using a third-party app you installed?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobond.mindicator&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intsig.camscanner&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobisystems.office&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thinkyeah.galleryvault&hl=en_US
Heyy.. that really worked. Thank you so much
 
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