Using "pm setInstallLocation" to free up phone storage

If you are running Android 2.2 and above, there is a simple way to free up more phone storage without rooting the device.

First you need to download and install the Android SDK. Now this is not as scary as it sounds. It is actually a pretty standard installer, and it will come it handy later if you plan on doing more hacking on your Android device. The reason for installing the Android SDK is to use a command-line utility in the SDK called "adb".

Next you need to download and install the USB driver for your device. If you using an Android device from one of the major manufacturers, this page should help you locate the driver.

Now select "Settings" on your Android device, then "Applications", then "Development", then make sure "USB debugging" is checked. After you have done that, plug the device into the USB port on your computer and make sure all necessary drivers are properly installed.

Open a command prompt and "cd" to the Android SDK folder. Then type "adb devices":

> cd \android-sdk-windows\platform-tools

> adb devices

You should see your device in the list of attached devices. If not, the USB driver for your device is not properly installed.

Now, issue this command:

> adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2

This lets you move applications that do not have A2SD support to external storage. The usual caveats apply i.e. you should not attempt to move widgets, input methods, live wallpapers etc. to the SD card. And system apps like Google Map etc. cannot be moved. But otherwise, eveything else is game, and you can free up quite a bit of phone storage by moving previously unmovable apps. In addition, every app you install from now on will go automatically to external storage (some of which you may have to manually move back to phone storage).

The nice thing about this method is you can easily revert the changes by issuing:

> adb shell pm setInstallLocation 0

The permissible values are:

0 - auto (default; OS decides where to install)
1 - force internal (forces apps to install on phone storage)
2 - force external (forces apps to install on external storage)

In fact, if your phone is already rooted, there is a free app called Move2SD Enabler in the market that does this in a nice GUI.

The limitation to this approach is that you are constrained by what you can move. Android's native A2SD only move application files, not library and data files, so some phone storage will still be used. However, for most users, this approach should free up enough phone storage with a minimum of fuss and complexity.

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How to check "Phone storage" usage?

If you are getting the "Phone storage low" warning from your Android device, the easiest way to find out how much phone storage is left and what is taking up all that space is to use DiskUsage.

When you first run it, it will ask if you want to view "App Storage", or "Storage Card". Select "App Storage", and it will scan and display a simple but effective visualization of your phone storage.

The above is a visualization of my Nexus One phone. It shows that I have 196.2MB internal storage, of which 13.6MB is taken up by system data, 140MB is taken up by applications, and I have 42.7MB free. When the free space reaches 10+MB, you will start getting "Phone storage low" warnings.

A click on the second or third columns lets you zoom into further so that you can explore the storage utilization of the various applications:

This shows you the applications that are taking up the most storage. So they should be the first ones to target when trying to increase the amount of free phone storage.

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Why do I get "Phone storage low" warnings on my Android device?

On an Android device, there is internal storage and external storage.

Internal storage is non-volatile NAND memory built into the device itself. It is also referred to as "ROM" on some spec sheets. Think of it as the "C:" drive on the PC where the Windows OS is located, and all other applications are installed. As such, not all internal storage is freely available to the user. After accounting for the system files (i.e. Windows OS), only the remainder can be used by applications. This free space is known as "Application storage" or "Phone storage". For example, the Google Nexus One has 512MB internal storage, but only 190MB phone storage.

External storage is the microSD card that you plug into the device. This can be as large as 32GB on most devices.

The "Phone storage low" warning occurs because earlier Android devices typically come with very low internal memory (192MB~512MB). Every application (and the data it creates) goes into phone storage and very soon it gets filled up, even though the external storage is practically untouched.

From Android 2.2 (Froyo), an application can write to a new API (A2SD) to let the OS move parts of it to external storage. However only parts of the application is moved, leaving substantial portions of it (libraries, data, cache) in phone storage. So over time, phone storage still gets clogged up.

The Apple iPhone decidedly does not have this problem because it comes with large internal storage (and does not support external memory cards anyway). With the latest Android devices (eg. Nexus S), Google seems to be moving in this direction as well. With 8 or 16GB of internal storage, phone storage low warnings should be a thing of the past.

For older devices, there are a few workarounds which I will explore in later posts. They range from the simplest (running a simple command) to the most difficult (flashing a custom ROM). Alas, from a user's point of view, these workarounds do not help achieve the holy grail, which is fully automatic and transparent storage management. But they will have to do for those of us struggling with low phone storage.

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