Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
Please help me with a long-term family tech support issue; Is there an easy way on Android to move WhatsApp media (if not the whole app) to the SD card rather than internal memory? Here are the constraints;
- older Samsung (S7 IIRC)
- current data/chats/etc must *not* be lost (includes departed friends and relatives)
- rooting is not an option
- Android forks are not feasible either
Bonus points if you've made this work yourself and can explain it! Thank you :)
#Android #WhatsApp #DataHoarding
One additional user requirement, which has emerged from the replies so far (thanks to all) - moving files to a computer and then removing them from the phone is not a viable option for anything except a catastrophic data loss. All the chats and media *must* remain accessible via WhatsApp, which is why I bought an SD card in the first place, assuming that it would be simple enough to point WhatsApp to it for storage, similarly to the camera app, Spotify, etc.
She previously had an off-brand Android phone which my late father had got from AliExpress or something. Only after it was broken (and unrepairable, because no-one has spare parts) and replaced did I realise the killer feature - as well as an SD card slot, it had some massive amount of onboard storage, so it simply didn't hit a wall in the face of videopocalyse
@airadam can't you move your chats to some of your computer and use some of the software available over there? There are lots of software advertised for backing up the WhatsApp chats.
@iamwaseem this is the kind of thing that a lot of dodgy sites with downloadable software *claim* to be able to do, but I'm in a "failure is not an option" space. The media also needs to continue to be accessible via WhatsApp on the phone, anything involving having an extra app present to view any of it is a non-starter. This is for my mother, who isn't technically confident and needs it to "just work". The app should really support SD storage for data like, say, Spotify does!
@airadam And the phone is pretty old which can die at any moment causing the memories to be lost. Based on this, phone can be upgraded and chats will be moving with the device if you back it up on Google drive or manually copy files from old phone to the new phone.
@iamwaseem Backup is a good point - we do use the facility built into the app already to back chats up to her Google account. This phone is already an upgrade, but the killer is that new phones (from decent manufacturers) appear to remove the SD slot altogether, so if we decided to just update the whole handset, then we'd essentially be getting ready to run ourselves into *that* brick wall.
@airadam any new phones can have decent storage which I think can help with that. You won't have to upgrade again very soon.
This was just my opinion.
@airadam easiest way seemed to either backup all WhatsApp media to cloud storage like google drive or Dropbox. There is a setting the app.
Other possibility is connecting the phone to a PC and select drive access. The go to WhatsApp media folder and copy everything on the PC.
Edit: just realised it's not what you asked.
So is it about using the storage? Saving the files or freeing some space?
@cy We use Google to back up the data as WhatsApp actually has that as a feature, though I think that's essentially for sync - so if I bodge it on the handset, I may kill the "backup" too.
We got the phone (replacement for a broken off-brand one) with the expectation that I could put a big SD card into it, point WhatsApp there instead of internal flash, and have her continue to use the app to my mum's heart's content. I didn't realise that use case wasn't supported!
@airadam you can export the lot and start afresh (I know that's not what you asked!) and media can go to sd to save space I think. Not sure about messages https://faq.whatsapp.com/1180414079177245/?cms_platform=android
@airadam@mastodon.me.uk Could you e-mail it to yourself as here, https://faq.whatsapp.com/1180414079177245/?cms_platform=android then export the e-mail to an SD card? That's only to export the static data though. Also depending on how sensitive I assume the e-mail isn't encrypted which might be a problem.
@airadam: Used to be easy, but IIRC, they've moved everything into directories which are largely inaccessible to the regular user.
@airadam
I hope you get tech help on this, but as a desperate safety measure, suggest you either copy/paste into a Word doc or screenshot the most precious messages.
I know this is an extremely laborious task, but at least you will still have them.