Install Apps on SD Card?

[JtB]

My Android phone (Motorola Milestone) has very limited internal memory plus an SD card. Just wondering if there is anyway to install Apps on the SD card rather than the internal phone memory. The problem is that my email folders use up much of the available internal memory leaving no scope for further Apps. A while back I did try installing my email folders on the SD card but the email App became slow and unreliable eventually corrupting the SD card. In the end it was easier to configure the emai App (Touchdown) to keep the email folders on the internal phone memory.

 

[rusky]

What version of android are you running? 2.1 & greater then you should have the option of moving apps to the SD Card.

 

[martint235]

I'm fairly sure there's an app in the market (called Apps2SD I think) that will also do this. Or check on XDA Developers (google it) for your phone, someone has probably come up with an improved ROM or tool to do what you want.

 

[JtB]

Thanks. I am running 2.1 but I can not find any application management facilities to move Apps to the SD card. As suggested I will search for an App to do this.

 

[JtB]

Thanks. I am running 2.1 but I can not find any application management facilities to move Apps to the SD card. As suggested I will search for an App to do this.

 

[goo_mason]

Even if you're using Android 2.2, if the developers haven't set it to allow you to move the app to the SD card, you can't. I did find a hack that lets you bypass this (if I remember, I'll look it up when I get home tonight and post the URL) and was able to move almost all of my apps to SD.

The exceptions are the Google apps that come with O/S which you still can't move, and some apps will behave strangely if moved to SD. Any apps that you're using Widgets for won;t work either as Widgets won't run from SD.

In the end, even after moving all my apps to SD, my phone had almost no internal storage left. I had to do a backup, factory reset and reinstall everything agan. Result? Where before I had 10Mb of storage left on the phone, I then had 60Mb free (and that's without moving some of the apps back to SD!)

 

[ian turner]

App2sd will shift anything it can to sd automatically.
Link2sd leaves it up to you but requires an ext2,ext3 or ext4 partition to be created on the sd card though that's easy enough with easeus partition manager on a pc.
There's a debate on the merits of both here though it's inconclusive.

 

[goo_mason]

Here's the link: http://muffinresearch.co.uk/archives/2011/02/02/android-force-moving-apps-to-an-sd-card/

 

[JtB]

Thanks.

Since its a company phone then I'm not really interested in hacks. Also, 'App2sd' is no use because I dont want to move everything and 'Link2sd' doesnt work because it needs 'root access'.

 

[goo_mason]

Thanks.

Since its a company phone then I'm not really interested in hacks. Also, 'App2sd' is no use because I dont want to move everything and 'Link2sd' doesnt work because it needs 'root access'.

App2SD alerts you to apps that can be moved - you then select the ones you want to move. There's no compulsion to move everything!

 

[JtB]

Does App2SD requite the phone to be rooted?

To be honest I'm a bit disappointed with this Motorola XT720 phone. It has very little internal memory and Motorola are not providing an update to Android 2.2. You would have thought they would have at least made provision for Apps to be installed on the SD card. What use is an Android phone without memory for Apps?

 

[goo_mason]

Does App2SD requite the phone to be rooted?

To be honest I'm a bit disappointed with this Motorola XT720 phone. It has very little internal memory and Motorola are not providing an update to Android 2.2. You would have thought they would have at least made provision for Apps to be installed on the SD card. What use is an Android phone without memory for Apps?

No. No root required.

 

[JtB]

Hum. I can see that App if I search for it with my browser but my phone can't see it at the Market.

 

[rusky]

If you can't see it in the market then it's not compatible with your phone.