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disclaimer: of course I can move apps which allow that, using "manage applications" menu.

There are apps, some stock ones and some downloaded, that for some reason don't have the "movable to sdcard" flag set. Is there a way to move them anyway without preventing them from working (as long as the sdcard is on, of course).

Yes there might be a good reason for them to be in the internal memory, I'd like to try moving them anyway if possible.

Phone is a Nexus One with stock android 2.3.6 unrooted — I guess I'd either have to root it or to install cyanogen or whatever?

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    For more info on why default Android doesn't allow some apps to be moved to SD, see this previous question: Why doesn't Google allow apps to be written to the SD card?. Short answer for "can you move apps that don't allow it", yes but you need to be rooted, and aware there are downsides, I'll leave the long answer to someone who's done it.
    – GAThrawn
    Commented Jan 24, 2012 at 17:27

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Yes, you can move any apps that don't normally allow it, including system apps, if you have root. Note that most apps that doesn't allow moving usually do not allow it for a good reason, so if you force move you may get crashes and other stability issues. You need an app2sd application that uses root, like this: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.droidsail.dsapp2sd

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Applications that came installed with the system usually do not allow moving to the SD card (some may have good reasons). You can deal with this as follows (following this guide):

  • adb shell, then su - to get root access (you'll need to have this set up separately using something like Superuser)
  • pm uninstall -k followed by the package name
  • Then install the application from the market, in which case you should be able to move it to the SD Card.
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If you would like a turn-key solution instead, use Link2SD: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buak.Link2SD

Its exponentially better than App2SD, however, the downside is that your phone needs to be rooted for it to work. Furthermore, you will also need to create a second partition on your SD card which has to be using the ext file system.

It can force 100% of an application's data (apk/dex/lib/data/cache/obb/data(ext)) to be located on the second partition of your sd card. You can even FORCE convert a "system application" to a "user application" and vice versa to trick the phone into changing the way it treats and considers and application.

The only major disadvantage of Link2SD is the fact that you need a Class 10 SD card of a good brand in order to stay equal in terms of speed and performance as compared to the phone's internal memory. Otherwise, if you use one of the more common Class 4 or 6 SD cards, applications will load noticeably slowly.

Working Example

https://i.sstatic.net/RBNMT.jpg

on a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S (Internal 1 GB/512 MB (320 MB user available))

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