Moving apps to SD card

[Android Central Question]

I have a Samsung J7 Pro that is using Android 7.0. I am trying to move some of my apps to the SD card, but none of the apps that I downloaded (including those that I could move on my old Samsung S4) have an option to Move to SD card.

 

[Guytronic]

You may be able to move all apps to SD by enabling developer options on your phone.

 

[Rukbat]

Many apps don't work when moved to the SD card. Developers who know that their apps won't work from the card just turn that option off, so they don't get comments and emails about the app not working. (And, as more and more people use app-building apps, because they don't actually know how to develop apps, and as more and more of those app-building apps are written so that the apps they build can't be run from the card [because the people who "develop" the app-building apps don't really know how to write apps], the more apps you'll see that can't be moved to the SD card.)

The current trend is to make phones without external cards at all, but until then we'll be able to move fewer and fewer apps to them. (People don't realize that by doing things we're not supposed to do, we only shoot ourselves in the foot. If SD cards had always been used only for what Android intended them to be used for - pictures, music, videos, etc. - there never would have been a problem. We (those of us who didn't understand this) caused it - now we're complaining that we're not being allowed to do what we shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Google used to warn us to not expect all apps to work if they were on the SD card, and to never move widgets to the SD card but they were ignored, so they stopped warning us, they just stopped including SD cards in phones. (I wouldn't be surprised to see Android come out with no support for SD cards, whether the particular phone manufacturer includes an SD slot or not.)

 

[Guytronic]

One issue I've had by moving apps to SD via developer options is that widgets for that app will be disabled.
I'm not much of a widget user so it's no biggie for me.
All the apps I've moved over do work well.
Frankly I see no difference in performance. On my Sony Xperia which has very limited internal storage.

 

[Rukbat]

Two differences in performance, one noticeable, one not for a while:

1 - Apps will load slower from an SD card. Maybe not enough to matter, but enough to measure.

2 - Running an app from the SD card will shorten the SD card's life - marginal cards a lot more than good ones. (But most people won't complain too much if the card fails after a year or two [although I've got cards still working that are about 25 years old - anyone want a 32MB card?])