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TF/SD card storage help needed

G

GKL

Member
I can have about 13GB of storage free on my TF card on my tablet but still have some apps say there is not enough space when you try to download and install them from Googleplay.

I then uninstall a few of my most seldom used apps just to be able to install a new app.

Are tablets set to default to install apps on the (limited) built-in internal storage instead of the much larger TF card ?

If so, is there a way to change things so apps will automatically install on the TF card ?

I heard there are some apps that will not work from a TF card, but I would think that most apps should be able to work from a TF card.

This is an area I am fuzzy on so any clarification would be really appreciated !

Thanks !
 
GKL said:
Are tablets set to default to install apps on the (limited) built-in internal storage instead of the much larger TF card ?
Click to expand...
ALL Android devices install to internal storage by default. There is however a trick to change the default location, which is described in this post. You will need to set up ADB on a computer in order to do this.

In fact installing apps to removable storage (microSD) has never been well supported by Android. It was introduced in 2.2, and expanded a bit in 2.3, but only ever moved part of the app and none of the app's internal data. It was deprecated in Android 4.0, though some manufacturers retained or re-introduced the feature in some of their devices.

It was always up to the developer whether the app could be (partially) moved, so whether an app could in principle work on SD or not, the developer might choose not to support this. As moving apps to SD is not widely supported any more it may be that fewer app developers bother with this these days - I don't know, just speculating here. It always had the problem that apps which need to run at startup would not work when moved to SD, so for example widgets will break if you move the corresponding app (they'll work for a while, but the first time you reboot the phone they will not restart).

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) is reported to include the option to fully incorporate the removable card as part of the device's storage, which will allow fully installing apps to SD for the first time. The price of that will be encrypting the card, and of course many devices will never receive Marchmallow since it relies on the manufacturer deciding that it's worth them providing the update.
 
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Hadron said:
ALL Android devices install to internal storage by default. There is however a trick to change the default location, which is described in this post. You will need to set up ADB on a computer in order to do this.

In fact installing apps to removable storage (microSD) has never been well supported by Android. It was introduced in 2.2, and expanded a bit in 2.3, but only ever moved part of the app and none of the app's internal data. It was deprecated in Android 4.0, though some manufacturers retained or re-introduced the feature in some of their devices.

It was always up to the developer whether the app could be (partially) moved, so whether an app could in principle work on SD or not, the developer might choose not to support this. As moving apps to SD is not widely supported any more it may be that fewer app developers bother with this these days - I don't know, just speculating here. It always had the problem that apps which need to run at startup would not work when moved to SD, so for example widgets will break if you move the corresponding app (they'll work for a while, but the first time you reboot the phone they will not restart).

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) is reported to include the option to fully incorporate the removable card as part of the device's storage, which will allow fully installing apps to SD for the first time. The price of that will be encrypting the card, and of course many devices will never receive Marchmallow since it relies on the manufacturer deciding that it's worth them providing the update.
Click to expand...

Thanks for explaining all that. I guess it would be nice if device manufacturers would simply make internal storage a minimum of 16 or 32 GB, surely it would not add that much to the overall cost of the device.

My old tablet from some years ago has 4 GB internal storage, a tablet I ordered last week has 8 GB internal storage, so with double the space I should be ok with the new tablet, the old tablet I might mostly use as a web cam or web cam viewer.
 
Yes, I think that when Google dropped app to sd support in 4.0 they were assuming that the devices would include adequate storage, though looking beyond their own noses would have told them it would never be that simple.

6.0 should fix that, but only several years after the fact.

There is another possibility, but it involves rooting the device, partitioning the sd card, then using an app or script to move apps to the partition and link to it from the internal storage (so to the device it looks like they are still on the device). But I can understand why people might not want to do all of that.
 
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