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How to Clear the MicroSD Notification on Galaxy S7, S7 Edge

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Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge have a microSD card slot for owners to expand storage to download apps, or add games, music and videos. It was one of the most requested features since being removed last year, and now it’s back. However, we’re getting lots of complaints about the Galaxy S7 microSD card notification staying in the pulldown bar. Here’s how to clear or remove it.

On February 23rd Samsung officially announced the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, and the release date was March 11th. Many users received it early, tossed in a 128GB microSD card, and are enjoying the big new screen, water resistance, and everything it has to offer.

Read: How to Take a Screenshot on the Galaxy S7

As small and simple as it sounds, we’re seeing multiple complaints about the microSD card notification and users asking how to remove it. And for those who’ve cleared it, the notification keeps re-appearing randomly throughout the day. There’s an extremely simple solution to both of these problems, so read on to learn how to clear the Galaxy S7 microSD notification.

Galaxy-S7-sd-notify

The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge only come with 32GB of internal storage, and about 23GB is available out of the box as pre-installed apps, software, bloatware, and Samsung’s user interface all take about 8GB. As a result millions of owners added a micro-SD card, and keep seeing the notification shown in our image above.

No question is silly or stupid, and as simple as this is to remove, it isn’t common knowledge for everyone. If you’re seeing the “SD card, For transferring photos and media” notification on your Galaxy S7, and eject or explore buttons below it, just swipe to clear the notification.

The phone is telling owners a microSD card has been installed, and tapping the notification only opens a file browser to see, explore, and manage what’s on the SD card. It doesn’t go away. Just like any notification, simply swipe it away and it’s gone for good. Once you reboot the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge this notification will reappear. Swipe it away again, and you’re all set. Some users are complaining they looked through settings for an hour trying to remove it, when all that’s needed is a swipe to clear it like any other notification.

However, countless complaints all over forums, comment sections and Twitter keep mentioning this notification appears again, at random, throughout the day. We’re not experiencing any issues like that, but for those that are, here’s a quick fix. Format the microSD card inside the phone.

Instructions

The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge use a microSD card slightly different than a computer or camera, and formatting the card inside the phone will set up the file system properly so this notification doesn’t appear anymore. We’re seeing most complaints with 128GB or 200GB cards. Here’s how to fix it so it doesn’t come back.

1. Backup your MicroSD card: Plug the Galaxy S7 into a computer and copy the content to a folder or the desktop
2. On the Galaxy S7 navigate to: Settings > Storage > SD Card
3. Select SD Card, click FORMAT

S7-microsd-format

This will completely erase anything on your micro-SD card, so we’d recommend doing it first before you transfer any content to it. The Galaxy S7 will format the card to a file system that works best for smartphones, and you’re all set.

Now simply plug the Galaxy S7 back into a computer and copy all the contents back to the micro-SD card, and you’re all done. Users can also transfer apps and games from the phone to the microSD card to free up space using the how-to guide below.

Read: How to Move Apps or Games to the Galaxy S7 MicroSD Card

Once you’ve formatted a MicroSD card inside the Galaxy S7 this notification should only appear once each time you restart the smartphone. Simply swipe away the Galaxy S7 microSD card notification and continue on with your day.

We are seeing a few reports that this notification is still appearing for some, so make sure the microSD card is properly installed in the microSD card slot, and slowly slide it into the phone for a safe and secure fit. Enjoy the Galaxy S7 and its premium design, IP68 water resistance, and the expandable storage. Drop us a comment below with any other questions, concerns or problems you may be facing.

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43 Comments

43 Comments

  1. xgman

    03/15/2016 at 9:02 am

    This doesn’t work at all. It keeps coming back no matter what. Even if you unmount it, 10 min later back again.

  2. Gwendolyn

    03/15/2016 at 6:45 pm

    Dears….!m­­­­­­­­­y f­­­­­­­­­r­­­­­­­­­i­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­­­d’s s­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­p-s­­­­­­­­­i­­­­­­­­­s­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­r m­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­k­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­s $73 /hr o­­­­­­­­­n t­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­e c­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­m­­­­­­­­­p­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­r . S­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­e h­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­s b­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­n w­­­­­­­­­i­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­t w­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­r­­­­­­­­­k f­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­r 9 m­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­s b­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­t l­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­s­­­­­­­­­t m­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­h h­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­r p­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­y c­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­c­­­­­­­­­k w­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­s $18519 j­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­s­­­­­­­­­t w­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­r­­­­­­­­­k­­­­­­­­­i­­­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­­­g o­­­­­­­­­n t­­­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­­­e c­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­m­­­­­­­­­p­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­t­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­r f­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­r a f­­­­­­­­­e­­­­­­­­­w h­­­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­­­u­­­­­­­­­r­­­­­­­­­s.
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  3. ROSS M LOGAN

    03/17/2016 at 6:00 am

    This didn’t work for me either. I have done the sd card format 2-3 times already. So annoying!

  4. Shelley Frick

    03/17/2016 at 8:15 am

    This didn’t work for me either. It keeps coming back AND my apps that have been transferred to the SD card are greyed out under the main “App” list as though the SD card has been removed. I master reset my phone, inserted the SD card, formatted it, and retried. It’s fine for a few hours, then does this all over again. I then power cycle and it fixes it for another hour or so, then does it again. I’m so stumped. (I have the Galaxy S7 Edge with a Samsung 128GB SD card).

  5. Joseph Iacono

    03/17/2016 at 11:21 am

    Hey,

    I think the issue is with the Samsung Launcher. I replaced it with the Google Now launcher and I no longer get these notifications.

  6. xgman

    03/17/2016 at 12:34 pm

    Nah, Nova launcher here and no difference… I may swap for another S7 and see if it persists. It really bothers me t\o the pint of ditching the sd card altogether. I wish the S7 came in 64 in Verizon/USA..

    • Joseph Iacono

      03/17/2016 at 12:38 pm

      It’s probably moving a bit inside the phone. Try a very tiny piece of clear tape along top.
      I did that as well.
      I noticed it happens more when in my pocket and moving frequently

      • john adams

        03/17/2016 at 1:05 pm

        A piece of tape? On a brand new $700 phone? No way.
        This is happening all day on mine as well. Frustrating.

        • Joseph Iacono

          03/17/2016 at 1:07 pm

          Not on phone. Take out card slot. On there and the place back in.

          • Jose Martins

            03/28/2016 at 12:28 am

            Gonna try that as a temporary solution but I highly doubt it will fix the problem. Either way, I’m bringing my phone back if this persists.

  7. xgman

    03/17/2016 at 1:20 pm

    I tried tape a few times. No difference really.. I wish I could figure out what’s going on though. My theory is some units that have contact problems.

  8. xgman

    03/17/2016 at 1:32 pm

    Call and make cases with Samsung. Multiple cases is the only thing that will possibly get them to admit to a problem and possible fix. I still may try an RMA, but it sounds iffy at best. At least I know its not the sd cards.

  9. Jeel Dharek

    03/17/2016 at 6:49 pm

    I tried tape, formating both from pc and through phone. Changed multiple sd card on my galaxy s7 edge. Still see the issue. I don’t think its Samsung launcher, I think is some kind of faulty hardware or may be some software bug on Samsung version of marshmallow. Did anyone tried fsctory restore on their device?

    • Joseph Iacono

      03/17/2016 at 7:03 pm

      I did not factory reset. I’ve been clear all day of notification. Longest so far.
      I removed the slot and made sure it was straight. I also changed to the Google launcher. Not sure. But since that, I have been clear. Fingers crossed.

      • Jeel Dharek

        03/17/2016 at 7:08 pm

        Let me try google launcher and see what happens.
        Thanks

    • Anne

      04/02/2016 at 5:36 am

      I did. Three times already. I also brought my phone to samsung they just formatted it. For a meantime seems ok but then back to that annoying notification. I think it has to do with the os what do you think?

      • Jeel Dharek

        04/02/2016 at 6:18 am

        Yes, I have got my device exchanged a couple times from BestBuy. I think its Samsung’s Marshmallow OS bug. I tried to turn off optimization for system UI under advanced battery power saving settings and it works. I don’t see notification. Also heard that this happens more for any memory card less than 128gb. So I have got best buy to give me a free 128gb samsung evo+ card for free. So far so good. Been 2 weeks now. No pop-up except when restarting my device.

  10. xgman

    03/18/2016 at 6:00 am

    A pieces of blue painters tape seems to have helped for almost a day. I’ll see what happens today. I think this may come to the contacts on the sd card not being tight enough to the inside of the phone.

  11. xgman

    03/18/2016 at 7:54 am

    Nope, remounted again. It’s a lost cause. I could try an exchange, but there is a high chance it would also have the bad contacts issue and of course the long re-setting up process…

  12. Shelley Frick

    03/18/2016 at 7:58 am

    I don’t think it is hardware related. I can restart my phone (after getting the error message and my apps on the SD card go grey, as though I removed the card), and the issue resolves itself for a couple hours. Could it in any way be related to the processing speed of the SD card, you think? I have the Galaxy S7 Edge and a 128GB Samsung Micro SD card with (I think) a 80mbps transfer rate. I’m going to call Samsung this weekend to try and get some answers. If no luck with them, I’m going to see about getting a replacement phone. This is absurd to be having this issue with such a state of the art (and expensive) device.

    • kisung

      05/05/2016 at 4:53 pm

      I got same issue, is that fixed?

  13. xgman

    03/18/2016 at 8:24 am

    Shelly, I am 99.999% sure it is that the card is coming unmounted and then remounting itself randomly. On mine it does this mostly when the phone is asleep. The most likely cause of this is bad contacts or loose fit slot etc. That said, in my previous LG G4, even at boot up I never received an sd card notification, so theoretically, that notice could be turned off in software, but if the card is umounting due to fit, then it needs a hard fix. My money is on that which means we might be better off trying t o exchange until we get one that fits better, but what a pain in the setup all over again department. Nevertheless, I think I’m going to head over to Best Buy tonight and try a different unit. This phone is too expensive to just settle….

  14. xgman

    03/18/2016 at 9:53 am

    getting an andropid security update right now. Worth a try I guess…

  15. Jeff Father

    03/18/2016 at 11:42 am

    Hey all, I had the same problem tried many different speeds/capacities of SD cards, factory wipe, SD format etc. Still nothing worked. I finally took it back to bestbuy to exchange and a Samsung Rep was there, he stated some batches of both the edge and regular s7 have “a physical malfunction with the SD slot” and the phone needed to be replaced. His face was red and wouldn’t elaborate more on “a physical malfunction”.

  16. Ivan

    03/18/2016 at 12:19 pm

    Hi there!

    I had this same issue and tried many different strategies (factory reset, changing out the SD card, formatting the SD card, etc.), but it kept unmounting itself and/or displaying the notification.

    The common thread in these notifications was that they only occurred when booting up the phone or waking it up, which made me think about Android M’s new Doze feature and whether it was affecting the System UI, which is the app that produces these SD card notifications (to confirm this, long press the SD card notification and click the settings icon and it will take you to the System UI app information).

    As such, I tried the following:

    -Go to Settings and select Battery
    -Tap More on the top right side and select Optimize Battery Usage
    -Change the dropdown menu to All apps
    -Scroll down to System UI and deselect it to de-optimize it

    Since following these steps yesterday, the only time I see the SD card notification is when I restart the phone. I have yet to see it appear at all between restarts.

    I hope this works for you!

    • Ivan

      03/31/2016 at 7:26 am

      So, back on 3/18, I tried playing with the Doze settings and while it worked for about 2 days, the unmounting situation returned and I ended up returning the phone.

      The S7 Edge is sold out everywhere around here, so while I simply wanted to exchange it, I had to return it or risk going over the 14 day return period and being stuck with a broken phone.

      Fasy forward to last night and a Verizon Wireless store had it in stock, so I swooped in and bought it. As of this morning, the exact same SD card issue has returned and I’m starting to think this might not be a hardware issue.

      Like many of you, I’ve tried all the fixes suggested to no avail. What really is perplexing is that the notification and ejection of the the card only happens for me when the phone is not active. It never occurs when I’m actively using the phone, which points to software not hardware since you’d think moving the phone would cause an issue with the SD card connection over it just sitting there on my desk.

      Here’s hoping a tech site (looking at you, GottaBeMobile.com, CNET.com, etc.) runs a story on this to finally get a response from Samsung because I don’t know about you, but the lack of answers from both Samsung and Verizon is seriously making me rethink my brand loyalty right now.

      Off to Samsung Support’s Facebook page, I guess…

  17. xgman

    03/19/2016 at 4:27 pm

    I exchanged my S7E Verizon phone for a new one and so far no notices except reboot. Fingers crossed.

  18. LHL

    03/20/2016 at 10:36 am

    I think Ivan has a good point. I tried that and It seems to have helped. I did it last night so I will see how things go for the nest day or two.

  19. LHL

    03/20/2016 at 1:15 pm

    I guess it didn’t work after all. I got the notification now several times. It was worth a try. Back to drawing board.

  20. xgman

    03/21/2016 at 11:33 am

    After exchanging the phone on Saturday, I have not had one notification other than the normal reboot one. Seems to clearly point to some defective models or at least ones with flakey contacts fitting.

  21. LHL

    03/23/2016 at 9:26 am

    Xgman, is phone still working right?

  22. Rigman

    03/31/2016 at 5:50 am

    Same issue , tried reset , formatting, tape on card tray jobs luck, returning phone . I expect better for $700 plus

  23. Dan hamby

    03/31/2016 at 8:35 pm

    This complete horsecrap. I have a Note 4 that is a year old and it just started doing this 5 days ago when Marshmallow was pushed on it.

  24. LHL

    04/01/2016 at 10:31 am

    Went on to Samsung support facebook page and had a big conversation with them. Basically all they are going to do is troubleshoot but they have no solution and they want you to send the phone in and wait a couple of weeks so they can hopefully repair it.
    I ended up exchanging mine a couple of day ago through Tmobile and it has been working great. No more notifications. I would highly recommend everyone that can to do an exchange.

  25. Josh Ludlam

    04/01/2016 at 11:32 am

    I don’t think it’s a glitch necessarily. I think i stumbled on a solution (actually found it on another website but can’t find it now).

    Seems like the System UI is mounting and unmounting the card to save battery (when not in use?)

    I made these settings changes a couple of days ago and haven’t had an issue since (notification does show up on restart, but I think that’s normal)

    Settings:
    Battery:
    More: Optimize Battery Usage
    All Apps
    Turn off System UI.

    Hope this helps!! Note: I also installed the new system up date on this and that may have been the fix as well, but this is worth a try if you’re still having problems.

  26. Kurt

    04/01/2016 at 7:55 pm

    Same problem after swiping the notification and formating the SD card

  27. Jen Sparks-Millikan

    04/11/2016 at 5:54 pm

    Trying talking your old ad card copying all the info to your computer hard drive then turn around and copy the info from computer to the new card. It seemed to work for me. I tried everythingelse I know it’s alot of steps..

  28. Jen Sparks-Millikan

    04/11/2016 at 5:57 pm

    hate spell check…. Try taking your old sd card.

  29. Nathan Elcoate

    04/19/2016 at 9:53 pm

    Just upgraded my Note 4 to Marshmallow and these messages are appearing.

  30. Michael S

    04/20/2016 at 2:34 pm

    I tried this when I first kept getting this notification, but it didn’t work out.

    BUT, then I tried going into

    Settings > Notifications > Advanced notification settings > SIM Toolkit,

    and then turning off all notification options. I thought this might work since the SIM card and SD card are in the same cradle, and so far that pesky notification hasn’t shown again (6 hours later, when it was showing every hour or so before).

    Hope it’s a permanent fix, we’ll see!

  31. J

    05/04/2016 at 1:46 am

    I had the same problem. Switched from a SanDisk card to a Samsung card and that basically fixed it. Now I only get the notification when restarting, and once I swipe it away it’s gone. No notification when you open the camera anymore either. Pretty much fixed.

  32. Ken Blum

    05/11/2016 at 10:07 pm

    Doesn’t work. 2 formats and it’s still doing it. First time I did remove it to transfer data between the computer…..2nd time I’ve only used USB cables without removing the card. Still doing it, SD monitor app is still catching bad removal errors even though Samsung’s recent update on the Verizon variant stopped the notifications.

  33. Ted Roman

    11/30/2016 at 3:03 pm

    I’m not sure what the “SD CARD Tap here to transfer media file” means. We went from a S5 that allowed us to use the USB cable to transfer photos from the phone to the laptop. Tried that with the S7 and it said NO PHOTOS. The suggestion was made to put the SD card in the phone, the person transfered the pictures to the SD card. I tried putting the SD card into the SD adapter into the laptop and it said “no images”. Put the SD card back in the phone and I can see my photos. PLEASE HELP before I lose my photos from our trip.
    Take care, Ted

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