How to move applications to the memory card Xiaomi Redmi 9

Owners of Xiaomi Redmi 9 smartphones often face a situation when the built-in storage is overflowing, and the system insistently demands to vacate space. Standard volume of 32 or 64 gigabytes in modern realities may not be enough, especially if you actively use messengers, navigators and play heavy projects. Built-in memory fills up faster than you can notice, and this begins to slow down the entire MIUI operating system.

Fortunately, Redmi 9 supports microSD card installation, which provides additional opportunities for expansion, data and application transfer allows you to offload the system partition and speed up interface response, but this process is not always obvious and requires understanding the nuances of the Android shell in conjunction with MIUI.

In this article, we will take a look at all the ways you can move content, from standard settings to advanced methods through ADB. You will learn why some applications can’t be ported to the standard means and how to get around these limitations.

Preparation for the transfer: map selection and formatting

Before you start manipulating system files and applications, you need to make sure the medium you use. Not every microSD card is suitable for installing applications, since the read and write speed of budget models can be critically slow. The speed class of the card directly affects how quickly programs will start after they move.

It is recommended to use UHS-I cards or higher, with a speed class of at least 10 (Class 10). If you insert a slow card, you may notice that applications have become loaded longer, and games will appear friezes. This is because the internal memory speed of a smartphone is much faster than that of cheap microSDs.

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Buy memory cards only in trusted stores, as there are a lot of fakes in the electronics market that show the wrong volume and quickly fail.

Once you buy a card, you need to format it correctly. Put a microSD in your Redmi 9 slot and wait for the notification of the new card. Go to the storage settings and choose formatting. It is important to understand that this process will delete all data that may already be on the media.

The standard method of transfer through the MIUI settings

The Android operating system installed on Xiaomi Redmi 9 provides basic memory management functionality. However, MIUI sometimes hides some options or makes them less obvious. First, let's try to move applications in a standard way, without using third-party software.

Go to the settings menu of your device and find the "Applications" section, where you will need to select "All Apps" to see the full list of installed software, find the program you want to move, and click on it to open detailed information.

Within the menu of a particular application, look for a memory or storage button. If the developer has provided this option, you will see an active button, Change or Move to the SD-Click on it and confirm your actions. The system will transfer the necessary files.

• 📱 Open Settings and go to the Application section.
• 📂 Select the desired application from the list of all installed programs.
• 💾 Click on Memory and select the option to change storage location.
• ✅ Confirm the transfer and wait for the process to end.

It's worth noting that this method doesn't work for all programs, and many modern applications, such as Instagram, Telegram, or bank clients, block the ability to migrate to external media for security and stability reasons, in which case the move button will be inactive or absent.

Adoptable Storage (Advanced Memory)

There's a more radical but effective method that turns your memory card into a full extension of your smartphone's internal memory, called Adoptable Storage, which when activated, encrypts the card and combines it with your internal storage, allowing you to install any application, even those that don't normally carry.

It is important to understand that on Xiaomi Redmi 9 this feature can be hidden by default depending on the version of MIUI. To activate the option to select the type of memory when formatting, sometimes you need to enter special commands via ADB or the presence of root rights.

When formatting a card, select "Use as internal storage" mode, and the system will warn you that the card will be formatted and cannot be used on other devices without a repeat procedure.

⚠️ Note: After activating Adoptable Storage, it is strictly forbidden to remove the memory card without pre-mounting in the settings. This will lead to a malfunction of applications whose data is stored on the card, and possible loss of information.

If the standard menu doesn’t offer you to choose the type of card usage, you may need to activate a hidden feature through the developer menu or special commands, which allows you to bypass the manufacturer’s restrictions and force the system to consider the card as part of the system partition.

Transfer of multimedia and cache of popular applications

Even if you can't transfer the body of an app itself to a memory card, you can free up significant space by moving its data.Messengers and social media tend to accumulate gigabytes of cache, photos and videos that take up precious space in internal memory.

On WhatsApp, for example, you can change the way you save media files. Go to the app settings, select Chats and then "Chat Backup" or "Data Storage." There you can specify the path to the SD card. Similar settings are available in Telegram (Data and Memory section) and Viber.

For the camera and gallery, the procedure is even easier. Open the Camera app, click on the menu icon (three strips or gears) and find the save settings. Switch the switch to Save on SD-Now all new photos and videos will be automatically written to external media.

This approach allows you to keep the system running as the applications themselves remain on fast internal memory, and heavy files go to the map, which is the optimal balance between the performance of the Redmi 9 and the storage capacity.

Advanced methods: ADB and third-party utilities

For users who aren’t afraid to experiment, there is a method of forcing applications to be ported via USB debugging and a computer, which requires connecting a smartphone to a PC and using the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) toolkit, which allows you to activate hidden system functions.

First, you need to activate the developer mode on your smartphone, and then go to About Phone and quickly click on the build number (MIUI version) seven times, and then a new option will appear in the settings menu, "Developers" and you need to turn on "Debugging by USB" inside it.

adb shell pm set-install-location 2

The command above switches the preferred location of application installation to external storage, 0 returns automatic selection, 1 returns internal memory only, 2 returns external memory, but it is worth remembering that this is a global setup and can affect the stability of some system processes.

• 💻 Install the drivers. ADB on your computer.
• 🔌 Connect Redmi 9 to PC via high-quality USB-cable.
• ⌨️ Enter a command in the terminal to change the priority of the installation.
• 🔄 Restart the device to apply changes.

There are also management applications like Link2SD or App2SD that can help with memory management, but they often require superuser rights to function, which can take away your warranty and disrupt banking applications.

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Use of the ADB-Teams are a powerful tool, but it requires caution. A team error can cause the system to run in an unstable way, so write down changes before making them.

Optimization of work and frequent problems

After you migrate apps, you may find that some widgets stopped updating or games started crashing out, because the memory card is slower than internal flash memory. Android may incorrectly prioritize processes, considering the card to be secondary storage.

To minimize risks, avoid putting critical system applications and programs on the map that you use in the background all the time, and it is better to leave your alarm, calendar or launcher in internal memory for instant response.

⚠️ Note: Memory cards have a limited resource of rewriting cycles. When applications that constantly write logs or cache are active, the card can fail faster than with conventional photo storage.

Check the status of your memory card regularly. Xiaomi's storage settings have an error check feature. If you notice more frequent cases of your phone hanging or files disappearing, it may be time to replace the card with a better model.

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