Kindle Android App Now Lets You Store eBooks on Your SD Card
Amazon just released a new update for the Kindle Android app in Google Play today. There’s no new feature listed in the "What’s New" section, but it does show this teaser notice:
What’s new
In the coming weeks, you will see the following:
* Download books to your SD card to save storage space on your device. Go to Settings to get started.
What this means is that we will finally be able to store our Kindle ebooks on an Android device’s external storage (SD card, microSD card, etc).
Just to double check, I checked my phone, and the updated app does include a setting in the Kindle app which gives it permission to access the phone’s storage (see screenshot at right). I clicked yes, and the app asked if it could move all 8 or so of my current Kindle ebooks to my phone’s microSD card.
This is going to be very useful for anyone who reads a lot of comics or textbooks in their Kindle app; in fact, I have to wonder why it took so long for Amazon to offer such a basic feature. I would have loved to have it on my old phone, which had so little storage to spare after bloated app updates that I desperately needed to store files on the microSD card.
Why is it the most useful features always arrive several months too late?
Thanks, Randy!
Google Play via Android Police
Comments
Xavier Basora December 6, 2018 um 2:55 am
Nate,
Very interesting. About time too. I have a 8 Gb tablet and I resent how programmers think I have unlimited space.
I hope the Kindle for Samsung will aso have this feature so I can transfer them to my big microsd card 🙂
xavier
Steve H. December 6, 2018 um 8:46 am
That’s a useful feature. Thanks for reporting it.
Vikarti Anatra December 7, 2018 um 2:35 am
This is great feature for me(which I enabled on all devices as soon I got update).
I do have some audible audiobooks in pairs with kindle ebooks. Their sizes are 300 Mb..1+ Gb.
I sometimes use Kindle app’s immersive mode so this mean that audible’s version must be downloaded by Kindle app, to limited device storage (Audible app allows to store them on microSD long ago).
Allen Hingston December 29, 2018 um 4:17 pm
I hope this is how to contact you with questions about Kindle. I cannot find the answers using Google. I have Kindle on my PC and on my Android. I have purchased 69 Kindle books but have many more books from other sources. I tried emailing books from my PC to my Kindle app, following the directions from Amazon Kindle. It works and it doesn’t work. I cannot send a zip file larger than 20 MB though it says up to 50 MB. Many times it tells me a book or zip file is too large for the server. It even rejected a 16 MB zip file.
Having managed to move a number of third-party books, mostly .amz to my phone, now I can’t get rid of them even if I wanted to. Following directions again, I delete them but the cover stays and in a second or two they download again likely from the email. Unless I can delete the email with the ebook files, I cannpot get rid of the books. Where are the email files? I cant find them
Thank you so much and Happy New Year
Linda February 13, 2019 um 6:28 pm
Thanks for the info. Worked just fine!
Dora Smith November 21, 2019 um 11:31 pm
It is now November 2019. I can’t find any option to save books to my sd card. I swear I COULD until I upgraded to Android 9!
Nate Hoffelder November 22, 2019 um 8:22 am
I just installed the Kindle app on my new Android phone, and I can’t find this feature either.
I think they removed it.
Matthew Jessick December 2, 2019 um 7:52 am
Kindle app settings, "Storage & Documents", "Download to SD Card". The setting says "Save new documents to the external SD Card". And, while changing the setting, it even presents an option to "transfer library" to the SD card!
Nate Hoffelder December 2, 2019 um 10:13 am
I don’t have that option menu on my Samsung smartphone
Nick February 11, 2020 um 2:06 am
I tried to transfer books to my SD card from my Samsung tablet. It apparently transferred approximately 4 books. Now I can’t find out how to get them back. I can’t find any links to bring them back and I can’t find them on the SD card. Any help would be appreciated