When you have a lot of apps installed on your PC, try moving some of them to another location to free up space. You need to change your default install location for this. However, while attempting to do so, you may find ‘New Apps will save to’ option is greyed out. When the problem occurs, you can try these few workarounds to get your problem solved.
‘New apps will save to’ button greyed out
If the Windows 11/10 ability to easily download apps from the Microsoft Store to an alternative location other than the Windows drive fails. Try these solutions.
- Create a Symbolic link
- Clear the Microsoft Store Cache
- Format the SD card
Before you begin, you should know that Microsoft does not allow you to change the locations for all apps. Some apps that it feels are important for the OS to perform, are not allowed to be moved.
1] Create a Symbolic link
Create a system restore point first and then run the following command to take ownership of the WindowsApps folder –
takeown /F “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” /A /R
Copy (not move) the directory to the new target location. Example, D:\WindowsApps. Then, run the Command Prompt given below!
robocopy “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” “D:\WindowsApps” /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT
Once done, clear the original folder from C:\ drive via the following command.
rmdir /S “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps
Create the symbolic link –
mklink /D “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” “D:\WindowsApps”
Verify if the solution works.
2] Clear Microsoft Store cache
If you are experiencing issues with moving installed apps or new apps in Windows 10, try clearing the Microsoft Store Cache. With each app download, the Store accumulates a huge cache on your PC. As such, purging Microsoft Cache may help you resolve issues related to apps.
3] Format the SD card
If the SD card was recently installed and doesn’t have many apps, try formatting the SD card and see if it fixes the problem. You can do this by navigating to File Explorer and selecting the drive letter for your SD card, right-clicking it, and choosing the Format option.
If your SD card capacity is less than 64 GB, configure the File System to FAT32. If it’s 64 GB or higher, set the File System to exFAT and hit the Start option to begin.
Let us know if this helped you.
