[AC Question]

I am not too familiar with android. Got my 8 year old autistic grandson a special tablet for autistic children as Christmas present; and other relatives purchased Thomas train, Super Why and Disney Cars games/apps for it. It is helping him so much and making such a difference. However, the Cars game, which is his favorite, recently updated and since then he keeps getting message not enough memory to run it - he is devastated. It came with the standard memory and an internal SD card. I have purchased an external SD card as Easter present and tablet recognizes it is there with 16 gb but the game still get message of not enough memory. Can you please help this 63 year old grandma fix this problem (without losing his beloved games) before my grandson returns to my home for Easter?

[anon8380037]

Hello. Welcome to Android Central.

Depending on the app / game it should move a little or a lot of it if you instruct it to. The main app will remain on the device, but create links to where chunks of the rest of the app is located on the sd card.

So if you need to change cards or wipe it, it's best to move any app segments back to the device first. Sadly some cards can fail quickly or corrupt. If you have a genuine SanDisk or Samsung card they are the best, but hopefully any card will last a year or more. My Kingston lasted 18 months.

So go to Settings, look for Apps or Applications Manager, scroll across to the All (or even SD Card) column, find the game alphabetically, touch to open the App Info screen, and you will find a Move to SD Card option. If it is greyed out, that app is not designed to work with an SD Card.


This is what it looks like on a Samsung:

[Rukbat]

My Kingston lasted 18 months.

SanDisk cards are warrantied for 10 years - and getting one replaced is trivial on their site. Worth the few extra bucks, if you ask me. (I have SanDisk cards [somewhere - haven't seen them since I moved] that had 2 digits in the size and MB after the number - that still work. Kind of too small for anything these days, but the cards last a lot longer than the warranty. I like a product that's still working when it becomes an antique like me.)

If it is greyed out, that app is not designed to work with an SD Card.

More exactly, there are parts of the app that will make the app malfunction if any parts are on the SD card, and the developer is aware of this, so s/he doesn't allow the app to be moved. (Some code just won't run from the SD card, and if the app depends on that code, it either runs from internal storage or it doesn't run. There's nothing anyone can do, except redesign Android to run all apps from the card [which has been done for come devices].)