Can I run Apps from External Drive?

[ramus88]

Hey everyone,

New MBP user here. I have SSD and low storage so I am thinking of moving larger, less used application into my external hard drive.

Items I am considering are Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto, Pages, Numbers, and various Adobe softwares except Acrobat and Flash player.

Can I just drag and move these into the external hard drive and plug in the hard drive whenever I would like to use them?

How can I tell if an app is able to be functioning like this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Intell]

Yes you can do that. Most of the applications within the Applications folder can be moved and launched from anywhere.

 

[simonsi]

I have an SSD boot drive and another internal 1TB HDD, I moved larger/less used Apps to the 1TB HDD and used a symlink to the standard Apps folder. That way you still see and launch ALL Apps from the Applications folder or Launchpad but you save the space on the SSD at the cost of normal HDD launch times when you do use those Apps.

Works great, no reason why this wouldn't work with the Apps on an external drive.

 

[maflynn]

As others said, its possible. I've done it, in times past.

 

[Fishrrman]

The apps should -run- without problems -- the only glitch I could see is where some might require a software-based password or key that will get confused when you first launch the app. This should be "fixable", however.

Also -- if you move some Apple apps out of the "Applications" folder on your boot drive, you might find that Software Update has trouble locating them when an update is available. Just something to be aware of.