I only have 8gb in my phone, but i have a 32gb SD card. Can NewsBlur use that to store content? How do i tell it to do so?
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The app doesn’t know anything specific about your storage setup. It obeys your device’s configuration as to where it should be installed, where data should be stored, and where cache data (like images) should be stored. If your ROM/OS offers a way to configure any of those three, the app will comply like any other.
that’s a bit of a cop out, to be honest. Many other apps allow you to select where the app is installed, and whether to use the system cache or another cache folder. As it stands, newsblur uses 2GB of storage on my device, and i can’t move it to the SD card.
ojiikun, could we move image storage to SD and story storage to flash? Stories need to be on the primary drive for reasons of speed (afaik). But images might not have to be. Is this an easy change?
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> other apps allow you to select where the app is installed
While some apps can tell the newer Android devices they are safe to move to removable storage, Android won’t let it happen for apps that need to run a reliable background service like NewsBlur needs for syncing. The app install itself (about 1MB) and story data (usuall 1MB-25MB) will not get an option to move from the system-specified location.
> newsblur uses 2GB of storage on my device
Are you certain you are running the newest version? We fixed a bug a few weeks ago that was preventing image cache cleanup from correctly working on all devices. If it isn’t fixed in the main version, try the Beta. The only reason you should have that much data being used is if you have tens of thousands of unread stories, many of which are seriously image-heavy. If you can reproduce that much storage use on the Beta, let us know, it is probably a bug.
> could we move image storage to SD
It is technically possible, but there are a few factors that make it a nontrivial implementation. That storage path can disappear at any time (plug your device into your laptop to charge? cache disappears. same for swapping SD cards). It can also have extraordinarily poor performance, which requires a lot more testing with known-bad or slow cards.
This is also a feature of somewhat limited impact. In our userbase, 36% of users aren’t running an OS version that can gracefully move cache to removable storage. Hardware-wise, none of our users’ top 5 most common devices even have SD card slots. If massive storage use is a problem, it should be fixed in a way that benefits more than a tiny subset of app users.
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Like all nice-to-have features, if this support ticket gets the votes (and comments), then we can bump it up. At the moment Android has a number of higher priority tickets, but sometimes these smaller features get picked up.
i have about 6k unread items, most of them have at least one image. I tend to store them up until i’m going on a long journey without internet access and “feast” off them for a few hours. good discussion, thanks. I have version 4.2.0b1 if that helps. see attached. 
but 64% are using an OS that can move cache to removable storage 
I think some users would like the option - it’s certainly a common feature on other “caching” apps.
thanks for the interesting points about the challenges.