Download Mac Apps To External Storage

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

May 26, 2020  The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

  1. Is there any way to download and store app bought from the App Store in an external hard drive. In the case of Xcode (and Lion), what you are downloading is an installer. If you run the installer from /Applications/ then it is deleted after it finishes installing.
  2. Jul 24, 2017  If you install or move apps to an external drive like an SD card or USB drive and unplug it from your computer, the apps on it won’t function anymore. Reconnect the storage to the computer and everything will work normally again. This is why you aren’t allowed to move built-in apps to different storage locations.
  3. Take advantage of read and write access without having to reformat your external drives, both on Windows and macOS. View Support Information Download for Windows Download for Mac (10.10 and Up) Download for Mac (10.6-10.9).
  4. They all stay compiled into one 'App' file. Taking advantage of this, we can move all of our hefty apps and support files over to an external drive to free up space on the built-in drive, and in short, speed up your system. Choosing an External Drive. The best external drives for Mac computers are undoubtably G-DRIVE ones. They're reliable.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.

Download mac apps to external storage drive

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.


Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

  • Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  • Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  • Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Mac External Drive

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

Download Mac Apps To External Storage Software

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Download Mac Apps To External Storage Mac

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

  • Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.
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External storage refers to file storage that is not on internal storage and not exclusively accessible to the app that is responsible for the file. The primary purpose of external storage is to provide a place to put files that are meant to be shared between apps or that are too large to fit on the internal storage.

Historically speaking, external storage referred to a disk partition on removable media such as an SD card (was also known as portable storage). This distinction is no longer as relevant as Android devices have evolved and many Android devices no longer support removable storage. Instead some devices will allocate some of their internal non-volatile memory which Android to perform the same function removable media. This is known as emulated storage and is still considered to be external storage. Alternately, some Android devices may have multiple external storage partitions. For example, an Android tablet (in addition to its internal storage) might have emulated storage and one or more slots for an SD card. All of these partitions are treated by Android as external storage.

On devices that have multiple users, each user will have a dedicated directory on the primary external storage partition for their external storage. Why is my mac software update so slow. Apps running as one user will not have access to files from another user on the device. The files for all users are still world-readable and world-writeable; however, Android will sandbox each user profile fromthe others.

Reading and writing to files is almost identical in Xamarin.Android as it is to any other .NET application. The Xamarin.Android app determines the path to the file that will be manipulated, then uses standard .NET idioms for file access. Because the actual paths to internal and external storage may vary from device to device or from Android version to Android version, it is not recommended to hard code the path to the files. Instead, Xamarin.Android exposes the native Android APIs that will help with determining the path to files on internal and external storage.

This guide will discuss the concepts and APIs in Android that are specific to external storage.

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Public and private files on external storage

There are two different types of files that an app may keep on external storage:

  • Private files – Private files are files that are specific to your application (but are still world-readable and world-writable). Android expects that private files are stored in a specific directory on external storage. Even though the files are called 'private', they are still visible and accessible by other apps on the device, they are not afforded any special protection by Android.

  • Public files – These are files that are not considered to be specific to the application and are meant to be freely shared.

The differences between these files is primarily conceptual. Private files are private in the sense that they are considered to be a part of the application, while public files are any other files that exist on external storage. Android provides two different APIs for resolving the paths to private and public files, but otherwise the same .NET APIs are used to read and write to these files. These are the same APIs that are discussed in the section on reading and writing.

Private external files

Private external files are considered to be specific to an application (similar to internal files) but are being kept on external storage for any number of reasons (such as being too large for internal storage). Similar to internal files, these files will be deleted when the app is uninstalled by the user.

The primary location for private external files is found by calling the method Android.Content.Context.GetExternalFilesDir(string type). This method will return a Java.IO.File object that represents the private external storage directory for the app. Passing null to this method will return the path to the user's storage directory for the application. As an example, for an application with the package name com.companyname.app, the 'root' directory of the private external files would be:

This document will refer to the storage directory for private files on external storage as PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE.

The parameter for GetExternalFilesDir() is a string that specifies an application directory. This is a directory intended to provide a standard location for a logical organization of files. The string values are available through constants on the Android.OS.Environment class:

Android.OS.EnvironmentDirectory
DirectoryAlarmsPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Alarms
DirectoryDcimPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/DCIM
DirectoryDownloadsPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Download
DirectoryDocumentsPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Documents
DirectoryMoviesPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Movies
DirectoryMusicPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Music
DirectoryNotificationsPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Notifications
DirectoryPodcastsPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Podcasts
DirectoryRingtonesPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Ringtones
DirectoryPicturesPRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/Pictures

For devices that have multiple external storage partitions, each partition will have a directory that is intended for private files. The method Android.Content.Context.GetExternalFilesDirs(string type) will return an array of Java.IO.Files. Each object will represent a private application-specific directory on all shared/external storage devices where the application can place the files it owns.

Important

The exact path to the private external storage directory can vary from device to device and between versions of Android. Because of this, apps must not hard code the path to this directory, and instead use the Xamarin.Android APIs, such as Android.Content.Context.GetExternalFilesDir().

Download Mac Apps To External Storage Iphone

Public external files

Public files are files that exist on external storage that are not stored in the directory that Android allocates for private files. Public files will not be deleted when the app is uninstalled. Android apps must be granted permission before they can read or write any public files. It is possible for public files to exist anywhere on external storage, but by convention Android expects public files to exist in the directory identified by the property Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory. This property will return a Java.IO.File object that represents the primary external storage directory. As an example, Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory may refer to the following directory:

This document will refer to the storage directory for public files on external storage as PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_STORAGE.

Android also supports the concept of application directories on PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. These directories are exactly the same as the application directories for PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and are described in the table in the previous section. The method Android.OS.Environment.GetExternalStoragePublicDirectory(string directoryType) will return a Java.IO.File object that correspond to a public application directory. The directoryType parameter is a mandatory parameter and cannot be null.

For example, calling Environment.GetExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DirectoryDocuments).AbsolutePath will return a string which will resemble:

Important

The exact path to the public external storage directory can vary from device to device and between versions of Android. Because of this, apps must not hard code the path to this directory, and instead use the Xamarin.Android APIs, such as Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory.

Working with external storage

Once a Xamarin.Android app has obtained the full path to a file, it should utilize any of the standard .NET APIs for creating, reading, writing, or deleting files. This maximizes the amount of cross platform compatible code for an app. However, before attempting to access a file a Xamarin.Android app must ensure that is it possible to access that file.

  1. Verify external storage – Depending on the nature of the external storage, it is possible that it might not be mounted and usable by the app. All apps should check the state of the external storage before attempting to use it.
  2. Perform a runtime permission check – An Android app must request permission from the user in order to access external storage. This means that a run time permission request should be performed prior to any file access. The guide Permissions In Xamarin.Android contains more details on Android permissions.

Each of these two tasks will be discussed below.

Verifying that external storage is available

The first step before writing to external storage is to check that it is readable or writeable. The Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageState property holds a string that identifies the state of the external storage. This property will return a string that represents the state. This table is a list of the ExternalStorageState values that might be returned by Environment.ExternalStorageState:

ExternalStorageStateDescription
MediaBadRemovalThe media was abruptly removed without being properly unmounted.
MediaCheckingThe media is present but undergoing a disk check.
MediaEjectingMedia is in the process of being unmounted and ejected.
MediaMountedMedia is mounted and can be read or written to.
MediaMountedReadOnlyMedia is mounted but can only be read from.
MediaNofsMedia is present but does not contain a filesystem suitable for Android.
MediaRemovedThere is no media present.
MediaSharedMedia is present, but is not mounted. It is being shared via USB with another device.
MediaUnknownThe state of the media is unrecognized by Android.
MediaUnmountableThe media is present but cannot be mounted by Android.
MediaUnmountedThe media is present but is not mounted.

Most Android apps will only need to check if external storage is mounted. The following code snippet shows how to verify that external storage is mounted for read-only access or read-write access:

External storage permissions

Android considers accessing external storage to be a dangerous permission, which typically requires the user to grant their permission to access the resource. The user may revoke this permission at any time. This means that a run time permission request should be performed prior to any file access. Apps are automatically granted permissions to read and write their own private files. It is possible for apps to read and write the private files that belong to other apps after being granted permission by the user.

All Android apps must declare one of the two permissions for external storage in the AndroidManifest.xml . To identify the permissions, one of the following two uses-permission elements must be add to AndroidManifest.xml:

Download Mac Apps To External Storage Space

Download mac apps to external storage for computer

Note

If the user grants WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, then READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is also implicitly granted. It is not necessary to request both permissions in AndroidManifest.xml.

Download Mac Apps To External Storage System

The permissions may also be added using the Android Manifest tab of the solution properties:

The permissions may also be added using the Android Manifest tab of the solution properties pad:

Generally speaking, all dangerous permissions must be approved by the user. The permissions for external storage are an anomaly in that there are exceptions to this rule, depending on the version of Android that the app is running:

For more information on performing runtime permission requests, please consult the guide Permissions In Xamarin.Android. The monodroid-sampleLocalFiles also demonstrates one way of performing runtime permission checks.

Granting and revoking permissions with ADB

In the course of developing an Android app, it may be necessary to grant and revoke permissions to test the various work flows involved with runtime permission checks. It is possible to do this at the command prompt using ADB. The following command line snippets demonstrate how to grant or revoke permissions using ADB for an Android app whose package name is com.companyname.app:

Deleting files

Any of the standard C# APIs can be used to delete a file from external storage, such as System.IO.File.Delete. It is also possible to use the Java APIs at the expense of code portability. For example:

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