When you go a brand new phone out of the box, it always gives you peak performance. But this may be brusk-lived once photos, apps, files, and updates accumulate and sus scrofa system resources.

1 of the best means to deal with an Android phone that tends to experience sluggish over time is by expanding its storage using an SD menu. This little device, the size of your thumbnail, has been around for more than 2 decades and tin concord large amounts of data depending on its chapters.

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

While we'd like all phones to come with unlimited storage, that's probably not in the offing any fourth dimension shortly. Plus, your telephone won't magically move all your files and images to the SD card once yous insert information technology. You need to set up it up to hold your files, apps and media. This way, you'll gratuitous upward precious storage space on your phone's internal memory.

Non all Android phones support microSD cards though. Some also require you to fix the SD carte as internal storage earlier migrating data.

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

  • Transfer files from Android internal storage to SD carte
  • Transfer images from Android internal storage to SD carte
  • Modify default photographic camera storage to SD bill of fare
  • Transfer apps from Android internal storage to SD carte
  • Storage alternatives

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

Transfer Files From Android Internal Storage To SD Bill of fare

The benefit of saving your files to your SD card or other external storage for that thing, is that y'all can bandy them to a dissimilar device. This is specially helpful when you want to share information with another device, upgrade your own device efficiently, or motility files to long-term backup or storage.

To move your files from your phone's internal memory to an SD carte, use your phone's File Director app (in our instance, it'due south My Files).

Using File Director

  • Open File Manager or My Files from its location on your telephone.
  • Yous'll see a listing of the different file categories and the storage options available on your phone. Tap the Documents folder.
  • At the upper right side of the screen, tap Card (three vertical dots) to show a driblet-downward list of actions.
  • Tap Edit and select All the files, or choose individual files you want to move.
  • Tap Movement.
  • Become dorsum to My Files using the Home icon, and tap SD Card. Tap the desired location on the SD menu and select Movement Here. If yous're unsure, y'all tin always tap Abolish to beginning over.
  • Your phone will start moving the files to the SD menu. Do this for any other files yous'd like to motility to the SD card.

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

Transfer Images From Android Internal Storage To An SD Card

Do you need to make room for your precious memories? You lot can move all your images from your phone's internal retentiveness to the SD card.

  • Open up My Files (or your File Manager app) and tap Internal Storage.
  • Tap DCIM to open it.
  • Find Photographic camera and long-press on it.
  • Tap the Bill of fare (iii vertical dots) icon at the top and tap Edit.
  • Tap Move on the lower left side of the screen (the position of this bill of fare depends on your device). Go back to My Files using the Home icon, and tap SD Card.
  • Tap DCIM. If you lot don't have a folder labeled DCIM on the SD card, tap Create binder and label it DCIM, and and then tap Washed to set off the transfer.

Notation: While you can assign your images to be transferred to the SD card, not all phones let you assign screenshots to capture and salve on SD. In this case, you lot'll accept to keep copying and moving your screenshots to the SD card so they don't fill your phone.

Change The Default Camera Storage To SD Menu

Instead of having to movement your images and videos to your SD card every time, you lot tin alter the directories on the Camera app then that the SD carte du jour becomes the default storage location.

It'll save the media files to the DCIM binder, but yous need to confirm that your photographic camera app offers this choice first. If non, you can always download a unlike photographic camera app from the Google Play Shop.

  • Open the Camera app on your phone. Tap the gear card icon at the upper-left side to open Settings.
  • Tap Storage Location.
  • Tap SD card (information technology can be labeled as External Storage or Retentivity card depending on your device)

From now on, all photos or videos you lot take volition exist saved straight to the SD card.

Transfer Apps From Android Internal Storage To The SD Card

  • Open Settings on your telephone and go to Apps>App Info.
  • Tap Storage and then tap Alter side by side to the default storage. Select your SD menu.

Note: If the Movement to SD card option is greyed out, it means the detail app yous're trying to move cannot be transferred, because non all apps can be moved.

Plus, not all phones allow you to transfer apps. Some won't permit you lot motility any apps to the SD card at all. This is entirely at the discretion of the app'southward developer or the device manufacturer.

If your phone allows you to motility apps, you should annotation that the apps won't be available on the phone if yous remove the SD carte du jour.

Storage Alternatives

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