Help solution for storage problems

[Android Question]

Does anyone know of an app that lets you select less frequently used apps to store them on the sd card and automatically returns them to internal memory when used ? The idea is that certain apps including personal data are moved to the sd card so you can have a lot more apps than previously possible. Of course, the apps on sd card can not become active and will take a little time to be copied back to internal memory everytime you want to start them, but i'm thinking of apps like travelplanners that you don't use daily.

 

[scary alien]

No app that I've heard of does this

The main issue would be that you'd need root (permissions, ability, capability) to accomplish this--the closest you could come would be something like Titanium Backup, which can backup and restore your apps and data--but that is certainly not something that's integrated into the launcher, etc. to fit what your proposing (i.e., of restoring when next used).

 

[tube517]

Scary, I know absolutely nothing about Tasker but could that be done with Tasker?

(I have Tasker and got in on sale on Google Play but have never used it yet. Had to snatch it when it was cheap)

 

[scary alien]

Well, I'm sure you could uninstall and re-install without root, but you cannot (to my knowledge) carry over the app's associated "$HOME" files/data (/data/data/<package name>) with it on the reinstall (like TiBu does/can).

In fact, you can't even do a "generic" pm (package manager) app disable/enable without root permissions/powers to simply freeze/thaw (disable/enable) an app.

The Android infrastructure is just not setup to allow the en masse move of a particular app and it's related/associated data "on-the-fly".

It's not a bad idea at all, but it would also be a bit resource-intensive even to implement this with root.

 

[Fox Mulder]

The best you can do is root and use the paid version of Link2SD to move selected apps and their data to the external SD. Selectively moving apps back and forth is not an option either natively or with an app, and even if you could do this it would be very disruptive increasing the chance of crashes and data corruption as well as accelerating the wear on your SD card.
Or, if your phone is really that short on storage to make you think about this, it may be time to look at new phones with more internal memory.