Many of the early/older Mobiles that shipped the Android initial versions were released with the minimal amount RAM/Phone Storage (around 252 MB and 512 MB) which is often very low for latest applications on the Android as they keep getting updated and growing in size. To address this issue for such device users, the only option is to get the Applications moved to the SD Card storage once it gets successfully installed on Phone Storage. There isn’t any better alternate (as of this writing), than the above option.
However, using Android SDK, it’s possible to make an SD Card storage as the default location for applications install on Android devices. But this option seem to work with newest Android versions (4.x or so). The process to get this setting configured is below:
- Install Android SDK,
- Run ADB.exe located at android-sdkplatform-tools folder with below options:
- adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2 (or, new syntax,
adb shell pm set-install-location 2) - 2 represents the external storage, whether it’s an SD card or USB storage.
<li>To revert the change run the same command with below options:</li> <ul> <li>adb shell pm setInstallLocation 0 (or, <a href="http://developer.android.com/tools/help/adb.html">new syntax</a>, <code>adb shell pm set-install-location 0</code>)</li> <li><strong>0</strong> represents your device’s internal storage, and is the default.</li> </ul> <li>To verify whether the InstallLocation is successful changed, run below command:</li> <ul> <li>adb shell pm get-install-location</li> </ul> <li></li> <p>Note:  On Android 4.2.2, it’s found that even after setting the setInstallLocation  to 2, applications are being installed to Phone Storage instead of SD Card </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>Other References:  </p> <p><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/114667/how-to-install-android-apps-to-the-sd-card-by-default-move-almost-any-app-to-the-sd-card/">How to Install Android Apps to the SD Card by Default & Move Almost Any App to the SD Card</a>
