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I'm looking for an app that will allow me to move most (if not all) of my applications to the SD card really easily. The actual Android application manager takes too much work to go to each application and manually move it.

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Are you looking for a method that will determine whether the app supports being moved to the SD card? – Matthew Read♦ Mar 3 '11 at 1:01
No, preferably an app that simply moves a filtered list of applications to the SD card and keeps everything on the SD card as much as is possible. – TK Kocheran Mar 3 '11 at 19:52

4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Take a look at SD Move and SD Watch. They don't automate the process for you (I don't think automation is possible), but SD Move will give you a color coded list of what applications you can move over, and SD Watch will alert you when you install a new app whether or not it can be moved to the SD card.

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They're what I use and I like them. SD Watch is especially useful because it alerts you on install if the app can be moved, and I install (and uninstall) a lot of apps. – Al Everett Mar 3 '11 at 15:50
up vote 2 down vote

You can use the pm command (via the debugger or a terminal app) to move packages around. I don’t know whether or not this needs root access.

$ pm list packages -f
package:/mnt/asec/cx.hell.android.pdfview-1/pkg.apk=cx.hell.android.pdfview
package:/data/app/uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc-1.apk=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc
package:/mnt/asec/com.google.android.apps.androidify-1/pkg.apk=com.google.android.apps.androidify
package:/system/app/GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk=com.google.android.syncadapters.contacts
package:/data/app/com.isecpartners.android.manifestexplorer-1.apk=com.isecpartners.android.manifestexplorer
package:/system/app/GoogleBackupTransport.apk=com.google.android.backup
package:/data/app/org.fdroid.fdroid-1.apk=org.fdroid.fdroid
...etc...

Those packages which start with /data/app are candidates to be moved. Use

pm install -r -s /data/app/org.fdroid.fdroid-1.apk

which will reinstall it on the SD card (preserving the data). You could script this.

If an app does not want to move, use

pm setInstallLocation 2

to force it, but be warned that this can disable widgets and notifications for apps that aren’t expecting it, and that you should set it back to 0 unless you want every future app to go on the SD card.

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Helpful for sure, I could write a script to run on boot which would move a filtered list of applications to the SD card if they aren't there already. – TK Kocheran Mar 3 '11 at 19:54
up vote 1 down vote

App2SD both notifies you when apps can be moved to the SD card, and provide an interface to do so.

Also there is a way to refine app2sd to allow more apps to move to SD card instructions here -

http://www.bongizmo.com/blog/moving-all-android-apps-to-sdcard-apps2sd-froyo/

I was able to follow except that it didn't indicate precisely what to enter in terminal, so I got stuck there - if anyone can advise on what should be typed in, would be helpful.

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up vote 0 down vote

AppAdmin

The screenshots don't show the "Move" option if you Google it.

It's useful for backups and restores too. A great piece of kit

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