How to Move Installed Apps to Another Drive in Windows 11

What can be moved — and what cannot

The Move command exists only for UWP and WinUI apps installed from the Microsoft Store: they are packaged, self-contained, and Windows knows how to relocate them safely. Classic desktop programs (Win32) — everything from Photoshop to older utilities — register themselves in the Registry, scatter files across Program Files and AppData, and break if you drag their folder elsewhere. For those, the Move entry in Settings is greyed out, and that is a feature, not a bug.

The honest size picture: Store apps are usually small, while the multi-gigabyte offenders are typically Steam and Epic games, Adobe suites and similar desktop software. So a realistic plan combines three moves — Store apps through Settings, games through their launcher, and new desktop installs pointed at D: from the start. That combination covers practically everything a typical PC has installed.

• Store apps — Settings → Apps → Installed apps → ⋯ → Move, done in two clicks
• Desktop programs — no Move button; reinstall to D: or change the path in the installer
• Games — Steam, EA app, Epic and Xbox all have a built-in per-game Move function
• Future installs — Settings → System → Storage → Where new content is saved sets the default drive
• Manual folder moves — never: shortcuts, Registry entries and uninstallers all break

Moving a Store app, step by step

Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps, find the app in the list (the search box at the top narrows it fast), click the three dots on its right and choose Move. A small dialog shows the current drive and a drop-down listing every other internal drive — pick the target, press Move again, and Windows copies the app and its data across; a few hundred megabytes take well under a minute. Nothing else changes: the Start menu entry, pinned tiles and the app's saved state all survive the move intact.

Two conditions are worth knowing. The target drive must be an internal, always-connected drive formatted as NTFS — the Move dialog will not offer a USB stick or SD card, because an unplugged drive would leave the app stranded. And if the app is not from the Store, the three-dot menu simply has no Move entry, which takes you to the next section.

Desktop programs: reinstall, launcher move, or junction

For a desktop program the clean route is a reinstall: uninstall it, run the installer again, and when it offers C:\Program Files as the destination, click Browse and point it at D:\Program Files\<name> instead. Your settings usually survive, since most programs keep them in AppData or the Registry rather than the install folder. For games, skip all of that and use the launcher instead — Steam: Settings → Storage → add a second library folder on D:, then right-click the game → Manage → Move; the EA app, Epic Games Launcher and the Xbox app have equivalent commands that move dozens of gigabytes without redownloading.

To stop C: from filling up again, set the default save location once: Settings → System → Storage → Advanced storage settings → Where new content is saved → New apps will save to → D:. If a stubborn program offers no choice of path at all, the last resort is a directory junction that redirects its folder to D: — covered in the symbolic links article. After a round of uninstalls and reinstalls, a cleanup pass with a tool like Kleaner PRO clears the leftover folders and caches the old installs left behind.

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