Android: Not enough memory for apps? Move non-moveable apps to sd card!

Insufficient storage for Android apps? Move apps which you think are non-movable to your SD card (like Google Drive, YouTube, Maps, some keyboards like Swype + Dragon) and save space on your internal storage. To do this, you will need to download Android SDK Tools and execute only two commands in Command Line / Shell console.

  1. Download SDK Tools for your platform (if you have downloaded and configured platform-tools please go to 7.)
  2. Visit site and choose latest SDK Tools only (link to latest when I wrote this tutorial: http://dl.google.com/android/installer_r22.6.1-windows.exe)
    download sdk tools
  3. Install downloaded package. Please remember install location of SDK.
  4. Confirm that you would like to open SDK Manager after installation or go to installed folder and open SDK Manager manually.
  5. In SDK Manager window select only platform tools and google usb driver entries.
    platform_tools_sdk_managergoogle_usb_driver
  6. Accept license and click Install
  7. After successfully installation you will find a new platform-tools folder in you  SDK directory.
    with_platform_tools_folder
  8. Open Command Line using Windows Start button and type cmd and go to SDK install location/platform-tools
    cmd_sdk_root
  9. Connect your Android device via USB to computer
    • adb devices
  10. After that (if you your device has been listed) check your default app installation location:
    • adb shell pm getInstallLocation (Android <4.0)
    • adb shell pm get-install-location (Android 4.x)

      Results: (0: phone, 2: external)

  11. If you get 0 (phone) you need to change default install location to external (2)
    • adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2 (Android <4.0)
    • adb shell pm set-install-location 2 (Android 4.x)
  12. That’s all! Now you can move your heavy apps to external storage and also new apps will be always installed on your SD card.

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