Ability to move app from Android phone to SD card

Some apps like Atom can be moved from the phone’s device storage to external SD card.

Monzo can only be installed on the device and can not be moved to the memory card (disregarding any possible jailbraking of the phone by rooting the device).

With an increasing number of apps storage space on a phone can be at a premium particularly with all the preinstalled Google bloatware that can’t be uninstalled (without rooting the phone and potentially breaking the warranty) so it would be good to install or move the app to any SD memory card and not be restricted in this way

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I am unsure of the build of the :mondo: app but there are a number of reasons that stop sd card storage.

This page details these but if Monzo required these it may not be possible.

Thanks. Interesting read.

It would be good though if Monzo found a way

Just looking at a range of financial apps:
Supercard 40KB
Handelsbanken 10.85MB
Bitcoin Wallet 14MB
Curve 17.61MB
Nordea 23.08MB
CaxtonFX 24.78MB
bPay 27.43MB
Monese 49.42MB
Monzo (beta) 67.65MB

The interesting thing is the size is not in a proportionate ratio to the extent of their abilities, for example Handelsbanken is a full app with international and national payments but smaller than a bitcoin wallet that just shows how many bitcoin you have. Nordea is a full banking app whereas CaxtonFX is just a prepaid card.

If Monzo are unable to write an app that can go on SD card storage instead of the device, then all efforts should go to keeping the code tight and compact rather than end up with an oversized app.

There it is.

Account Managers
Your accounts created with AccountManager will disappear until external storage is remounted.

Also, the size complaint applies partially to iOS too, Monzo is fairly big mostly because of all those video assets that are only seen in the queue or in special feed items. All those looping videos add up.

IMO, these should all be loaded after app installation as required using something like iOS on-demand resources or the Android equivalent. That way the app can also mark them as purgeable once the user gets their card so the system can reclaim the space if it is put under storage pressure.

To place my opinion on this thread specifically, unless you’re a large game, it really isn’t worth the effort as a developer of putting your whole app on removable, potentially slow storage. Especially as the whole platform moves away from supporting this as a first class option.

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There is room for improvement but we have to keep in mind a number of things here.
The app is still young on Android and so the developers have a lot to work on like those lovely new features. Also that size of the app, while an important factor like performance, is non functional and so it is understandable to have new features prioritised over these during the early days.

Taking a look at my installation a large amount of space is taken up by video files. I am unsure of the contents but likely for a quick start and to avoid using external services these were included natively rather than streaming. These may be removed later but we will have to see!

Other than that some of the space is artwork which is provided in native sizes to give better resizing. I could take a further look but the quality of the graphics on the app are fantastic, so I can understand why we have big sizes for images on different sized devices.

Took a quick look at the video, it seems to infact be an animation for the waiting list. However I am not familiar with the webp framework by Google so couldn’t view the full thing.
But interesting for me to learn about a new format!

Try opening them in Chrome. That should be able to view all webP and webM files. Animated webP files use the same codec as a previous version of webM but with no audio track.

Alternatively, try and grab the iOS IPA file and extract it as a zip, then view the package contents on the .app to find the same videos in more widely compatible formats.

We’re actually working this week on cutting down the APK size :slight_smile: It was a result of prioritising speed over polish to get the app out at the time and we’re now able to go back and make it much more efficient. Watch this space!

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Is that another 1.2 tease?

Great work @tristan! :smile: amazing to see how fast these topics get answered!