Photos and videos can eat up a large part of our mobile’s storage, although it has an easy solution. If your mobile has support for microSD memory cards, you can always move photos and videos to memory card to free up internal storage space.
Moving applications to the memory card can be problematic, but this is not the case with photos and videos. You will be able to see them later without problems and you will leave a valuable free space in the phone’s internal memory, which can be better used to install applications.
Move all photos with Google Files
If you want the process to be more or less automatic, your best ally is Google Files, Google’s file manager. If you have a new mobile, you may already have it pre-installed, but otherwise you can download it from Google Play.
Among the different options that Google Files presents you to free up space, one of them is move files to SD card. This card should appear in the tab Clean of the application. Push the button Select and release to open the list with all the photos and videos you have on your mobile. To select them all, use the box at the top. Then press Move to SD card.
Google Files will then show you a window warning you of how many items you are about to move, in which you must press Move. If this is your first time doing this in Google Files, you should give the application permission to access the SD card. The process is quite simple, because you only have to press Continue and later Allow access to memory card.
Once this is done, the photos and videos will start moving from the internal storage to the memory card. The process may take a few minutes, depending on the number of photos and videos you have on your mobile. In summary, this is the complete process to move all the photos and videos to the microSD:
Open Google Files
In the tab Cleanlook for the card Move files to SD card
Press Select and release
Select all the photos you want to move
Press Move to SD card and confirm it in the popup
If necessary, give Google Files permission to manage the microSD
Move only a few folders
If the previous process has not gone well or you prefer to do it manually, nothing prevents you from doing it the same as you would on a PC: moving folders by hand. For this you only need a normal file manager. We will also use Google Files, although you are free to use any other. The process will be similar in all cases.
In Google Files, the first thing you need to do is go to the folder you want to move. To do this, enter the tab To explore and, at the bottom, touch Internal storage. Then tap the arrow next to the folder you want to move to bring up the context menu. For example, in the DCIM folder, where it is very likely that the photos you take with the mobile camera will be saved.
In the context menu you must choose Move to, which will ask you next if you want to move to internal storage or SD card: choose the latter. Then you can move through the microSD folders to choose where you want to paste the folder. When you are in it, press Move here.
As before, the process can take a long time if you are moving a heavy folder. Repeat this process for other photo folders you want to move to memory card such as Pictures card, Video card or photo and video editing application. In summary this is the process to move some folders to the microSD:
In Google files, enter the tab To explore
Tap on Internal storage
Tap on the arrow next to the folder you want to move
Choose to move to
Choose SD Card
Click Move here