Move to SD Card Greyed Out

[orange turkey]

Hello Android Community,

Manufacturer: Alcatel
Model: A571VL
Software: 5.1.1
Not rooted

I recently purchased a new Alcatel phone, which is the exact same model as my old one. On my old one I could move any app to SD card except ones that were bundled with the phone. With this new phone I cannot move ANY third-party apps because every single app shows "move to SD card" greyed out.

What I've tried: removing SD card and then restarting phone, then inserting SD card again. I still get "move to SD card" greyed out. I tried going into developer territory and that was a mistake: tap build number 5-10 times and get force allow apps on external storage. Didn't find it. Anyway, I know nothing about rooting my phone and that seems too deep for my technical skills, but it has been suggested during my research.

Can the community offer some guidance? It's not about some app developers not wanting you to fiddle with their widgets. This is about every single third-party app I've downloaded not able to be moved to the SD card. One final thought: I'm using the SD card from my old phone. Could it be that I need to get a new SD card for this phone?

Thanks for all thoughts and prayers as this non-nerdy Alcatel user struggles to overcome this challenge. A few Novenas would be even better (that's for all you Catholics out there, who may attend morning mass and offer up a prayer for my sanity to be kept intact) ; )

 

[Hadron]

I'm surprised you could move any third party app with your old phone, because this requires the developer to support it and many do not (increasingly so with many phones not having SD cards and Google dropping support for this feature back in Android 4 - it's been retained or added back by many manufacturers, but isn't a core feature of the OS any more). Hence I'd always expect there to be a significant fraction of user-installed apps that cannot be moved.

The one thing you could try is installing adb on your computer, enabling usb debugging on the phone, connect via USB, check adb is working and talking to your phone using the comment "adb devices", and if that finds the phone and responds use the command "adb shell pm set-install-location 2" - that sets the default to "install apps to SD". You'll have to move any you already have installed by hand, but it might fix whatever is blocking it.