Looking to make space on your phone? You can Move Android Apps to SD Card to quickly free up space and improve your phone’s performance. If your phone has a memory card slot, then the solution is easy. A microSD card is a cheap way of expanding your phone’s storage.
You can move apps to an SD card to free up space, rather than removing apps on your phone. But before you move any apps keep in mind that Memory cards are slower than the internal storage. So you may notice slightly worse performance for resource-intensive apps.
How to Move Android Apps to SD Card
Android Marshmallow introduced changes to the way Android phones can handle memory cards, and these changes trickled down to the latest version of Android such as Android 12, and the way it handles memory card storage.
You can now set microSD cards to work as internal storage. Instead of having internal and external storage existing as separate spaces, Android views the card as an extension of your built-in space.
Data and apps can write to either as needed, and it all happens seamlessly. As a result, you don’t need to worry about where your apps are stored.
- Insert the card into your phone. When the New SD Card notification appears, tap Set Up.
- Select Phone Storage on Android 9, or Use as Internal Storage on older versions. Alternatively, go to Settings > Storage, select the card, tap the menu button, and select Storage Settings. Tap Format as internal.
- On the next screen, tap Format SD Card, or Erase & Format. This will wipe your card.
- On Android 9 and newer, you’re offered the chance to move your content—including apps—onto the card. It also shows you how much space you’ll save. Hit Move content to complete.
This feature is called Adoptable Storage, and it requires you to keep your card in your phone permanently. The card is also encrypted, so you cannot put it in another device to copy the data.
The big downside to adoptable storage is that all Android phones are different, so some manufacturers choose not to offer it on their devices. If you don’t have it, then you’ll have to move your apps to your SD card manually.