When y'all get a make new phone out of the box, information technology always gives you peak performance. Simply this may be short-lived once photos, apps, files, and updates accumulate and hog system resources.

I of the best ways to bargain with an Android telephone that tends to feel sluggish over time is by expanding its storage using an SD carte du jour. This picayune device, the size of your thumbnail, has been around for more than than two decades and tin can agree large amounts of information depending on its chapters.

Their capacities range from 128MB up to 1TB depending on the type of SD menu. Be sure to bank check the maximum microSD card capacity your device supports before you get one.

While nosotros'd similar all phones to come with unlimited storage, that's probably not in the offing any time soon. Plus, your telephone won't magically motion all your files and images to the SD card once yous insert it. You need to set it up to hold your files, apps and media. This way, you'll costless up precious storage space on your phone's internal memory.

Not all Android phones support microSD cards though. Some also require you lot to ready the SD card as internal storage before migrating data.

How To Transfer Files To An SD Menu On Your Android Phone

  • Transfer files from Android internal storage to SD card
  • Transfer images from Android internal storage to SD card
  • Change default camera storage to SD bill of fare
  • Transfer apps from Android internal storage to SD card
  • Storage alternatives

Note: We've used the Samsung My Files app for the instructions beneath on a Samsung Galaxy S8+ (running Android Pie), just they should be similar for most Android phones.

Transfer Files From Android Internal Storage To SD Card

The do good of saving your files to your SD card or other external storage for that matter, is that yous can swap them to a different device. This is particularly helpful when you want to share data with another device, upgrade your own device efficiently, or movement files to long-term fill-in or storage.

To move your files from your telephone'southward internal retentiveness to an SD carte du jour, use your phone's File Manager app (in our instance, it'due south My Files).

Using File Manager

  • Open File Manager or My Files from its location on your telephone.
  • You'll encounter a list of the unlike file categories and the storage options available on your telephone. Tap the Documents folder.
  • At the upper right side of the screen, tap Menu (three vertical dots) to bear witness a drop-downward listing of actions.
  • Tap Edit and select All the files, or cull individual files y'all desire to movement.
  • Tap Move.
  • Go back to My Files using the Home icon, and tap SD Card. Tap the desired location on the SD card and select Movement Here. If you lot're unsure, you can ever tap Cancel to start over.
  • Your phone will offset moving the files to the SD carte du jour. Exercise this for any other files you'd like to move to the SD bill of fare.

Note: If your phone doesn't have a pre-installed file manager app, like Samsung's My Files app, you lot can download and install a third-party app to help you with this.

Transfer Images From Android Internal Storage To An SD Carte du jour

Practice you need to make room for your precious memories? You can move all your images from your telephone's internal retentivity to the SD card.

  • Open My Files (or your File Director app) and tap Internal Storage.
  • Tap DCIM to open it.
  • Find Camera and long-press on information technology.
  • Tap the Carte du jour (three vertical dots) icon at the top and tap Edit.
  • Tap Movement on the lower left side of the screen (the position of this menu depends on your device). Go back to My Files using the Home icon, and tap SD Card.
  • Tap DCIM. If yous don't take a folder labeled DCIM on the SD card, tap Create binder and label it DCIM, so tap Done to set off the transfer.

Annotation: While you can assign your images to be transferred to the SD card, non all phones let yous assign screenshots to capture and salve on SD. In this instance, y'all'll accept to keep copying and moving your screenshots to the SD card so they don't fill upwards your phone.

Change The Default Camera Storage To SD Card

Instead of having to move your images and videos to your SD card every time, you tin can alter the directories on the Camera app so that the SD card becomes the default storage location.

It'll save the media files to the DCIM folder, just you demand to confirm that your camera app offers this option first. If not, you can e'er download a different camera app from the Google Play Shop.

  • Open the Camera app on your phone. Tap the gear carte du jour icon at the upper-left side to open Settings.
  • Tap Storage Location.
  • Tap SD bill of fare (it can be labeled equally External Storage or Memory menu depending on your device)

From now on, all photos or videos you take will be saved directly to the SD menu.

Transfer Apps From Android Internal Storage To The SD Menu

  • Open Settings on your telephone and get to Apps>App Info.
  • Tap Storage and and then tap Change adjacent to the default storage. Select your SD card.

Notation: If the Move to SD bill of fare selection is greyed out, it ways the particular app you're trying to move cannot exist transferred, because non all apps tin can be moved.

Plus, not all phones allow you to transfer apps. Some won't let you move any apps to the SD bill of fare at all. This is entirely at the discretion of the app's developer or the device manufacturer.

If your phone allows you to motion apps, y'all should note that the apps won't be available on the phone if you remove the SD carte.

Storage Alternatives

If your SD card fills upward and you run out of space, you lot can use a memory card reader to move the files or images to your computer. From there, you tin can back upwards the files or images to an external drive with college capacity, or upload to online cloud storage like Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox for the long-term.