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Is my device full, or have my apps been moved to the SD card?

S

simpler

Member
Last fall I got a Samsung Galaxy S5. Recently I used the App Manager to move some biggrr apps to the SD card and free up space on the internal drive. App manager said the apps were moved, and Storage said that space had been freed up.

But the Google Play Store gives a different message. I can't download any updates, let alone new apps, because the Play Store says the device is almost full. It won't give me the option of moving apps to my brand-new 100GB SD card, only of uninstalling them.

What to do?
 
How much space do you have left on the phone? There is a minimum amount that must be free before it will let you install or update apps. The amount varies between phones, but I would think you probably need at least 500 MB internal space free (it's irrelevant how much you have on SD, I'm afraid). If you are less than that then that will be your problem. However, being short of space would not stop you moving apps, so there's something else going on there.

Can you just clarify slightly, because you seem to have said 2 different things in your post:

1) You recently used the App Manager in the phone settings to move apps to SD.

2) The phone won't let you move apps to your brand-new card.

You see why this is confusing me: it could move apps before, but now it cannot. Is this the same card you previously moved apps to? If it isn't, did you move them back to the phone before swapping cards? Just copying the visible contents of an old card to a new one probably won't get the bits of the apps that were moved, which are in a carefully hidden folder, so that might have caused problems (easy to tell: those apps would be broken).

Just for the record, moving apps actually only moves part of the app, and only some apps can be moved anyway. So we're just discussing apps that have a "move to SD" button in the App Manager (and it's only the App Manager that can move apps, unless you have rooted the phone).
 
What I've noticed is whenever you update apps you have to move them to the SD card again afterwards. So, apparently the phone needs to have the free space on internal storage to update them because, like I said, you have to move them back afterwards. I'm not sure if it's a bug or it's by design but from my research unlike older versions of Android all phones running 6.0 with SD cards have this issue. You'll need free space to update the app on internal and then you can move them back. It's pretty lame and makes moving apps that are updated often to the SD card basically useless.
 
App manager should notify when a moveable app has been updated.

Whenever you getting to the point that google tells you that you're out of space you really only have 2 choices;. 1-remove some seldom used apps and do some spring cleaning on your phone or ; 2-its time to upgrade to a higher capacity phone.
 
Just offhand, a S5 comes with either 16 or 32GB of internal storage so if you're at the point where you're seeing internal storage messages you're definitely getting your money's worth out of your phone. If you're running low on storage space, moving apps around might not be the most optimal way to open up more free space. Apps in general don't require a significant amount of storage, at least relatively. Things like high res photos and videos, music files, and other media files are typically the space hogs. Do you have a lot of things stored in your internal storage? You might be getting more benefit by migrating your photo, video, and music libraries to your microSD card if you haven't already.
Samsung includes a basic file manager app that you can use to transfer files between your phone's internal memory and your card. Look for the 'My Files' app in your app menu. You might also install this 'DiskUsage' app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&hl=en
It gives you a graphical image of what's stored on your phone and might aid you in seeing just what to look for.
 
I certainly prefer to spring clean my phone. My S5 is still fairly basic when it comes to my app requirements. 32 gb MSD card installed simply stores my personal information.
Haven't felt the need to move any app information over to it yet.
IMG_20180310_144254.jpg
 
PitCarver said:
App manager should notify when a moveable app has been updated.

Whenever you getting to the point that google tells you that you're out of space you really only have 2 choices;. 1-remove some seldom used apps and do some spring cleaning on your phone or ; 2-its time to upgrade to a higher capacity phone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I put all my photos and videos in my SD card, all you have to do is go into storage, then internal storage, and find the videos and photos, then hold down on them and tap each one, then press 'move' and move it to the SD card.
 
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