Apps which I moved to SD card are missing and can't be downloaded again

[Android Central Question]

Hi guys, I have a Samsung Galaxy S9 and I recently bought a SD card to store my photos and stuff. I'm really bad at all this tech stuff so I read most of the tech stuff online and realised that apps can also be stored on the SD card. I moved some of the bigger apps such as games over to the SD card by switching them to SD card storage (biggest mistake ever). After that, all the apps which were switched were grayed out and I couldn't even remove them.

I googled online and finally managed to remove the grayed out apps (I forgot how I did it but they were gone) so I tried to download them again but this kept coming up: “You cannot install this app because another user has already installed an incompatible version on this device”.

I tried to unmount my SD card and mount it again, reformat my SD card, delete cache on my phone, uninstall updates on my Samsung Experience Home, etc and brought my hp to Samsung Centre (in Singapore) but to no avail. The CSO told me to just do a factory reset. Is there any way around this?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Go to Settings>Apps -- do you still see those apps listed as being installed? If so, are you able to uninstall them from that menu? Or is there an option to Move to Phone Storage?

The SD card might be the culprit -- it could be counterfeit or otherwise defective. Install SD Insight to see if the card is genuine or counterfeit. Counterfeit cards are programmed to report more storage than they actually have, and if you try saving more than the card can actually hold, then files can start getting corrupt. (Be aware that SD Insight might not work on all Nougat or above devices.)

If it's a valid card, then go to Settings>Storage, Unmount the card, remove it, and insert it into your computer. Can the computer read these files? Backup as much as you can right now, then run chkdsk to look for bad sectors: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...guide-using-chkdsk-fix-corrupted-sd-card.html.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

I just followed link to SD Insights, says my S9+ us not compatible and when I clicked on the link to the authir/developer, got Not Found.

Pulled?

 

[B. Diddy]

I think the problem is that the app no longer can get the proper permissions in versions later than Nougat, which is a shame. I suggest it anyway because I'm not sure if it's universally incompatible with Nougat and above, or if it's on a device-by-device basis. I don't know if there's any app that works similarly.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

Thanks. Looks like that is their only app. At this point I'd like to see apos say clearly out front, supports 8.x or above.

Also, why cannot Google sort by - date updated, review. Even review points can be "fudged" and not reliable. Being able to show only spps with 4.0 rating or higher too.

Best SD card maintenance app? And must support UFS 2.1 or higher. Or something.

 

[B. Diddy]

SD Maid always gets good mentions, and it looks like the dev also provides a lot of support.

 

[jgreg02]

was SD card encrypted?