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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Chrome for Android on SD card

Ever since I installed Chrome for Android the 'low space' notification started to pop out every now and then. At first I thought that I simply installed too many applications to the phone memory. So I moved one or two larger ones to the SD card and everything was alright. At least for a while.
The annoying notification would pop out again sooner than I would have hoped. So I transferred more apps to the SD card and the problem would go away. For a while, again. After some time this behavior became suspicious and I decided to see what was causing it.
The applications that were SD-ready were not that big to cause the problem. I even installed an app to diagnose space usage on the phone. That was even more confusing because it did not show any indication on why the low space would be reported at all. There seemed to be enough free space on the phone memory. I simply moved some more apps and was done with it.
Or so I thought. Now when the notification popped out again and I was not willing to move more apps it became really annoying. However, I also noticed that the notification mostly appeared while I was using Chrome for Android. I checked where Chrome was installed and, rightly, found that it was in the phonephone's internal memory. All 70 MB of it! 48 MB was the application and 23 MB the data. Mostly cache, I guess. Which is kinda OK since caching should save a lot of network traffic when browsing from the phone. But keeping ever increasing caching on the phone was threatening to use up all the available space there.
Chrome for Android was not listed as 'movable to SD' so moving it to the external memory was not supported by default. Titanium Backup to the rescue! This awesome app provides an option to move any app to the external storage. Not without a huge red warning, of course, but I was willing to give up Chrome otherwise anyway and was willing to risk system lockdown. That would, at least, provide an excuse to flash the latest Cyanogen Mod ROM. But no. The app simply obeyed and moved Chrome and related data to SD card without a hiccup. Chrome works just fine from external memory. Browsing works, bookmarks are there, and even the Chrome service starts and runs without problems. That was my only concern, whether the service would run. Secretly I was hoping that it would not, leaving the system with one less service to run in the background. I really don't understand why an Internet browser needs a background service running but that's a topic for another story.
So, yeah, 70 MB freed from the phone and an example set for other large apps should they not behave. :)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

whats the program u used? i have he same problem

Alen's Australia said...

I used Root Explorer the first time and now Total Commander can do the same after an option is enabled to use root rights.
Both programs have simple options for creating links.

strucky said...

Moving was also possible with Link2SD app (free) with root access of course. Seems to work fine.

Titwan said...

I have used Link2SD, it works so perfect on S3

Anonymous said...

Using link 2sd gives me an error for installation failure due to invalid location of chrome-1.apk

Hints? The phone is rooted

Santhosh said...

If you are ready to root your mobile then go ahead use Link2SD or Titanium backup or even root explorer !!

But remember you are rooting your phone ! so your warranty void !!