Spotlight: Link2SD for Android lets you move apps and app data to your external microSD card

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read
Where Google doesn't let you store apps and app data on your microSD card, apps like Link2SD come to intervene. Link2SD is an application manager that enables one to easily manage apps between internal and external storage, provided they have a rooted Android device.

The app has an extensive list of supported features. However, four of them aren't making it into the free version, and these are "Link internal data of apps to SD card", "Link external data and obb folders of apps and games to SD card", "Link dex files of the system apps to SD card", and "Auto clear cache service." They are found in Link2SD Plus, which costs a reasonable $1.99.

That aside, to say that the free version delivers the goods would be a criminal understatement! Here are some feature highlights to consider - "force move" to move any user apps to SD even if the app won't support it natively; set default install location of apps (internal or external); bloatware removal; convert apps between system apps and user apps; reboot manager; make app shortcuts; and there's tons more where that came from.To those curious about how the whole thing works, Link2SD basically treats a secondary partition on your SD card as another segment of internal storage. apk files, dalvik-cache (.dex) files, lib files and internal data files are moved onto this partition, which the OS mounts on boot, creating a "symbolic link" in the original location. This preserves the file structure that the system expects, but the bulk of the data is moved to the SD card.That said, Link2SD does not create the second partition - you have to take care of that yourself. You can use any partition manager, but you need to use a non-FAT file system (ext2, ext3, ext4 or f2fs) on the second partition in order for things to work. This is only needed for linking apps, however. If linking obb and external data is what you're after, the second SD card partition is optional. Link2SD is available in some 40 languages, and you get most of the app in ad-supported free. If you want to enjoy SD card freedom on Android, you need look no further.

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