You just got a new Tecno phone, and you’re installing all the apps you need. Moments later, you receive a system warning that your phone will become unusable soon. You pop in a memory card, expecting it to expand the available memory. You’re set to continue installing your apps, but the system warning won’t leave your phone.
You’re confused, and you need to learn how to make SD card default storage on Tecno. You’re in luck.
In this post, you’ll learn how to make your SD card the default storage disk on your Tecno phone.
How To Make SD Card Default Storage On Tecno
Before proceeding with the steps in this guide, you should check to make sure that you can do all of these on your Tecno device.
To check, you’ll have to verify if your device is running on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or later. There is a workaround for Tecno phones running on older Android versions, but this particular method requires Android 6, at least.
If your phone is running Android Marshmallow or later, here is how to make your SD card default storage on Tecno.
- Insert a blank SD card into your Tecno Android device.
While this operation doesn’t explicitly require a blank SD card, it’s best to use a blank or empty SD card. If you use an SD card with any information on it, you’ll lose it anyway.
- Open your device settings.
The settings icon on Tecno phones is a gear-shaped icon that varies depending on the exact model of your Tecno phone. If you got a phone from the past three years or newer, it should be a blue gear icon.
- Scroll down and select storage. This will list all the storage devices connected to your Tecno phone. Usually, it should only list ‘Internal Storage’ and ‘SD Card.’
- Select the SD card to bring up a list of setup options. From the menu, tap ‘Format as Internal.’ This will bring up a warning that the process will erase all of your information.
If you’re okay with this warning (you should be), tap ‘Erase and Format’ to initialize the operation.
This process could take some time, depending on your phone’s speed and resources. Reboot your phone once you see a confirmation message confirming the success of the process.
And you’re done. Your SD card will now be formatted as an internal storage disk, and apps will be installed on it by default.
However, you should never remove your SD card from your phone after formatting it as internal storage. If you do, some of your phone’s functions could stop working.
If you must remove the SD card from your phone, you should format it as an external SD card first.
How to change the default write disk on Tecno phones
You cannot format an SD card as an internal storage device on Tecno phones running Android versions older than Android 6.0.
However, you can still use your memory card as a supplementary storage device. Instead of formatting it as an internal storage device, you can make the SD card the default write to disk instead.
When you make your SD card your default write to disk, your photos and videos will automatically save to your memory card. Also, files that you download to your device will automatically save in the Downloads folder on your SD card and not on the internal storage.
This is identical to formatting your SD card as an internal storage device, albeit you can’t install apps on your SD card, even if it’s the default write disk.
Here is how to change the default write disk on your Tecno phone.
- Open the settings app as instructed in the preceding method. In older Tecno phones running Android 5.1 or older, the settings app should be a gear-shaped gray icon.
- Scroll down a bit and tap ‘Storage.’ Scroll down a bit and find ‘Default Write Disk.’ Under this tab, tap ‘External SD Card.’
Of course, this process requires a functioning SD card. However, unlike the first method, all the data on your SD card will remain intact.
Recall that your SD card will henceforth work as a supplementary storage device. Your apps will still be on your device’s default storage.
How to make SD card default storage on Xender
While Nearby Share has gained popularity amongst Android users, muscle memory still directs Tecno users to Xender whenever it’s time to share large files.
There is a problem, however. All files received on Xender automatically save to the device’s internal storage and not the usually larger SD card.
If you have a spacious memory card and you’ll like to make the default storage for Xender on your Tecno phone, here is a quick guide.
- Open the Xender app on your phone and open the side menu. You can open the side menu by tapping on the Xender icon with three dots arranged vertically.
You can also open this menu by swiping from the left side of the screen.
- Tap ‘Settings’ and change the download location to a location on your SD card. You might be required to confirm this change at a system level.
Also, if you have formatted your SD card as an internal storage device, you cannot make it the default storage disk on Xender for obvious reasons.
Conclusion
It’s always a frustrating experience when you have hundreds of gigabytes on your SD card, and your Tecno phone still prompts you for insufficient storage space.
Fortunately, you’ve learned how to make SD card default storage on Tecno. If you think your photos and videos are eating up your storage space, you can change the default write disk to your SD card. However, if you have many heavy apps, you should consider formatting your SD card as an internal storage device.
One warning: once you’ve formatted your SD card as an internal storage device, you cannot use it on other phones without reformatting it.