How to move apps to external SD card on a non-rooted Android 4.4.2? I have an  Acer Iconia One 7 tablet running Android 4.4.2. I've plugged an external SD card in it,  and kind of expected that I could now "save" my data, such as my apps, pictures and videos, onto this SD card. The most easy solution I found was this button (which I don't have):

(Click the image to enlarge it)



After going through some forums, the most used solution I ran into is rooting your device and using some kind of app which makes the SD card writable.

My problem with that is, it's not user friendly at all, plus you might break the device (and lose your warranty). 

Is there any user-friendly or one time setup way, to make it so that you can move your apps to the SD card or make the SD card the standard install location  without having to root your device?
With Kitkat your chances for a "complete solution" without rooting are pretty much zero: the Android project has definitely screwed up here. No apps get full access to the external SD card, which rendered a lot of them unusable:


file managers: you cannot use them to manage your external SD card. In most areas, they can only read but not write
media apps: you cannot retag/re-organize your media collection any longer, as those apps cannot write to it
office apps: pretty much the same


The only place 3rd party apps are allowed to write on your external card are "their own directories" (i.e. /sdcard/Android/data/&lt;package_name_of_the_app&gt;). The only ways to really fix that require either the manufacturer (some of them fixed it, e.g. Huawei with their Kitkat update for the P6) – or root (see my list of Other storage media tools for examples.

If you do not want to go the latter way (rooting), and the former way (fix by manufacturer) is not available, you can only do minimal things on Kitkat:


use app2sd (which seems to be available on your device) to swap-out parts of your apps. This requires the corresponding apps to explicitly support App2SD, and only will "swap out" parts of the apps themselves; other parts of the app, including all its data, will remain in internal storage
set your "default install location" to your SD card (see: Installing to SDCard by default). This will automate App2SD for all your new installations.


Apart from that, you could only hope and wait for a Lollipop update – which will not completely fix the issue, but at least slightly defuse it.

As long as you don't hit any storage limits, you might be mostly fine. Nevertheless, I recommend you already familiarize yourself with potential solutions for the day your data "hit the roof", so you won't be forced to "act in a hurry" then.

Further readings:

Other Questions with answers on "kitkat sd-card write" on our site, especially: Workaround for Android 4.4 not being able to write to SD cards?