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Force Apps to install to SD without Root!!

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Audiobear said:
this method certainly works! :) The only downside appears to be that applications installed pre-modification and then subsequently moved to the SD card don't seem to be updated via the Market - at least not to the SD card. But a re-installation seems to work fine. So all in all, a good tip.
Click to expand...

So when reinstalled the apps can be updated through the market?
 
I have used this method and it has helped me no end to cl4ear up some space on the internal memory. I do however seem to still get a lot of apps installing on the internal memory and i have to move them manually. Is this normal? Its not too much of a problem but it just means i have to keep an eye on every download to see where it has ended up.

Thanks

Nath

I am using froyo btw on a non branded desire.
 
I get some apps defaulting to the internal memory too, most go to the SD though so I'm just happy to get all that extra space back :)
 
redlinezak said:
I have used this method and it has helped me no end to cl4ear up some space on the internal memory. I do however seem to still get a lot of apps installing on the internal memory and i have to move them manually. Is this normal? Its not too much of a problem but it just means i have to keep an eye on every download to see where it has ended up.

Thanks

Nath

I am using froyo btw on a non branded desire.
Click to expand...

Yup it all just depends on the app. Some may insist on internal only such as google maps, others automatically go to internal but can be moved like you say and others (most) have no preference and so since this method is applied will just go onto sd card from the beginning.

So in other words, yes - this is normal.
 
kureka said:
C:\AndroidSDK\tools>adb shell
$ pm setInstallLocation 2
pm setInstallLocation 2
Error: unknown command 'setInstallLocation'
Click to expand...

After the last step: 'pm setInstallLocation 2' I have got the following error:
'unknown command' "setInstallLocation"?

what should i do? can anyone have me?
Thanks.
 
kureka said:
C:\AndroidSDK\tools>adb shell
$ pm setInstallLocation 2
pm setInstallLocation 2
Error: unknown command 'setInstallLocation'
Click to expand...

After the last step: 'pm setInstallLocation 2' I have got the following error:
'unknown command' "setInstallLocation"?

what should i do? can anyone have me?
Thanks.
 
lykimhout said:
After the last step: 'pm setInstallLocation 2' I have got the following error:
'unknown command' "setInstallLocation"?

what should i do? can anyone have me?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Are you running 2.1 or 2.2? This error appears on 2.1 as the command doesn't exist. You must be running 2.2 to switch the default install location afaik.
 
wow.. i'm running 2.1? so how can i update it to 2.2 on Wildfire ?
or does any way to install app to SD card by default ?
thank.
 
Many thanks, followed this guide last night. All went smoothly and i now have around 100 apps and still have 77mb free of internal memory.
 
shauny13 said:
Many thanks, followed this guide last night. All went smoothly and i now have around 100 apps and still have 77mb free of internal memory.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but may I ask, how on earth is that possible? I performed this procedure successfully and now nearly all of my apps are on the SD card with the exception of Apps Organizer and Gtasks, and I'm left with roughly 14MB internal memory and a chronic 'low memory' warning. I'm down to less than 40 apps because I've had to keep uninstalling apps, even those on the SD card, to make room since even those have a footprint on the internal memory. But even then, I realize there's no way those footprints can take up that much space. I clear caches frequently and I'm still at a loss as to what to do.

Anyone know what's up?
 
Ghibli said:
Sorry, but may I ask, how on earth is that possible? I performed this procedure successfully and now nearly all of my apps are on the SD card with the exception of Apps Organizer and Gtasks, and I'm left with roughly 14MB internal memory and a chronic 'low memory' warning. I'm down to less than 40 apps because I've had to keep uninstalling apps, even those on the SD card, to make room since even those have a footprint on the internal memory. But even then, I realize there's no way those footprints can take up that much space. I clear caches frequently and I'm still at a loss as to what to do.

Anyone know what's up?
Click to expand...

Do you know, I couldn't agree more. Don't get me wrong, I love android and I much prefer my desire to all the iPhones that are out there. But come on HTC - sort it out! If you don't want to use internal memory and make users use micro sd cards then fine, but at least come up with a solution....

On a slightly more productive note, I did some research and apparently, these come shipped with about 133ish mb free. I'm now down to 21mb. So i'm going to try something. Unfortunately, my micro sd card corrupted randomly for some reason. So I'm going to take the opportunity while ive lost everything anyway to do a complete restore back to factory default. Do my process for moving to sd, and see what happens. Maybe, and hopefully it will be better if I move to sd out of the box. There is no way my 30 or so apps use up that much. No way. In total, they took up about 50mb or so with the footprint alone, when the files themselves / app was on the sd card. So hopefully, assuming I begin with 133mb, I should have about 70 left. Ill let you know how I get on.
 
The force move does not help. Most of my apps still got installed to phone and some can not be moved to SD at all like Hungry Shark. Some like Talking Tom and 4teh Birds leaves a huge amount on phone when moved.

This is really pissing me off re my desire. Whats the point of have a smart phone if you can not install as many apps as you want. I think HTC completely disregarded the inability of android to install to SD when they made this phone. 133 mb for god sake!! WTF!! My old Nokia had about 5 gb of space for apps!
 
ok i have used force move to sd for a couple of weeks now, and i would like to revert back to normal.
any help ?
10x
 
thanks for your reply, but to tell you the truth i forgot how i did it the first time, some more help would be very helpful :)
 
mckacid said:
thanks for your reply, but to tell you the truth i forgot how i did it the first time, some more help would be very helpful :)
Click to expand...
If you look at the 1st. post of this thread, just follow the same instructions and add what I posted. ;)
 
nicknefarious said:
Hey all,

Can anyone help me out here... I am trying to do this on my non-rooted HTC Desire using Ubuntu Lucid 64-bit.

When I try to run the
Code: 
./adb devices
command in a terminal after navigating to the tools directory where adb is located it returns an error message saying If I try the command
Code: 
./adb root
to restart the daemon in root mode again it also returns an error This happens when I run execute any of the adb commands. How do I pass myself the permissions for the device so I can execute the commands?

Any help here is much appreciated.

Big cheers,

Nick
Click to expand...


You have to start the daemon as root.

so first make sure there is no "adb" process running in the background.
ps | grep adb

if there is, kill it.

NOW...
sudo adb devices

i had the same problem. i started the adb daemon as a plain user. and once the daemon was running as a plain user, it did not have permission to access the device. subsequent commands (even as root) are then passed on to the underprivileged daemon.

the proper thing to do would be to open up the devices, but i was too lazy to try an figure out which devices to open up with chmod, so i just killed everything and started over as root.
 
i have changed the location like told but still my phone memory isfilling up and secondly in the application manager i dont get any option to move to sd card in any application.how do i know that this changing location has worked?
 
Sheshnag said:
The force move does not help. Most of my apps still got installed to phone and some can not be moved to SD at all like Hungry Shark. Some like Talking Tom and 4teh Birds leaves a huge amount on phone when moved.

This is really pissing me off re my desire. Whats the point of have a smart phone if you can not install as many apps as you want. I think HTC completely disregarded the inability of android to install to SD when they made this phone. 133 mb for god sake!! WTF!! My old Nokia had about 5 gb of space for apps!
Click to expand...

I cannot agree more!!
And HTC just shrugs it off, if that isn't bad enough they ship it with crappy software like HTC sync which is about as usefull as an underwater dartboard!!
This is seriously irritating and a move to iPhone, heaven forbid, might just be on the cards! :mad:
 
nicknefarious said:
Code: 
adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
everything worked and I was able to relocate all those apps that are OK to be relocated to SD.
Click to expand...
i tried it also but it showned me below error
Code: 
cutiyar@cutiyar-laptop:~/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools$ ./adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
error: insufficient permissions for device
cutiyar@cutiyar-laptop:~/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools$
 
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