I was travelling last week with my Fiio M23, in a place without internet, and was unable to make use of Roon Arc because I’m unable to download to SD Card. It’s easily the most frustrating thing about Roon given that it’s a fairly easy feature to introduce and has huge value to users. The fact that Roon have ignored this feature request for years indicates that those suggesting Roon don’t care about their users may have a point.
Every other music app that I use on my Android FiiO device supports storing downloads on the SD card.
This feature request is now old enough that it’s walking, eating whole food, and starting to talk in complete sentences. What’s the holdup, @roon?
3 Likes
I’m sad to say that I’ve reached the point where I’m entirely re-evaluating a solution to my music needs without Roon. Not being able to bring my own music on my own device via my own network defeats the purpose of Roon entirely. I’ll sit out the rest of my subscription period, but 3.5 years for this feature is a very disappointing pill to swallow: for how perfectly Roon solves my issues when it is working - Roon isn’t built for travelers that care about hifi like me, doesn’t want people with my profile, and I will just have to be OK with that and no foul by Roon honestly. If anyone has found a better solution since, send me a message?
2 Likes
This is truly a major shortcoming of the app. I have lots of music that I would like to download to my phone when I travel. I realize that Roon Arc is designed to allow for remote access, but we may need to be able to play offline (on an airplane, in limited connectivity, bandwidth or usage constrained) or simply prefer knowing that the files are readily available without having to wait to have a connection.
The thought of requiring that all the music be stored on the phone’s internal memory rather than on an external device (I have an iPhone, so I can’t use the SD card option listed above), is extremely limiting.
It is VERY surprising that it has been requested, and that Roon has been silent on it, for so long.
I have just caught up on this thread. In the end I sold my DAP as without the ability to use the SD card it was useless to me.
Its ridiculous this isnt supported, roon seem out of touch at times.
1 Like
It was almost perfect. I was so close to buying that lifetime subscription until I saw this. Oh well, back to plexamp I go.
2 Likes
Added my vote. I’m shocked this isn’t an option already considering it was supposedly a high priority item three years ago:
4 Likes
::: I 
Roon :::
I just bought a FiiO M23 specifically to use with Roon ARC when I’m out and about, mainly for offline listening. Only now do I discover that I have to live with a total of 64 GB usable storage. That is just… wow.
It really feels like Roon’s investment in ARC has come at the cost of progress on other long-requested features—some of which I personally care a lot about. And then there’s this storage limitation, which was already prioritized back in 2022, and yet still seems to be sitting somewhere deep in the pipeline waiting for… someone?
Holy smoke, indeed.
I’ve added my vote—if that helps at all. At this point, it honestly feels like nobody really knows when or if this will be addressed. Thats my feeling though … would have been interesting to hear from Roon marketing staff why/what and how this sits in the 
/ backlog…
That said… i will (need to) adapt … and maybe give Smart Download another chance.
::: I Still Roon :::
1 Like
+1 - this honestly seems like a no-brainer, and I can’t see why this isn’t just rolled into the next release. It shouldn’t introduce much technical debt bringing it in, and will resolve a significant amount of user dissatisfaction. Any devs able to reply to this to advise why this can’t easily be done / what the 3+ year resolution time is caused by? Thanks for an otherwise awesome piece of software though 
1 Like
This is the type of feature that could be vibe coded with Claude in an hour. It’s a low-hanging fruit problem that has so many examples for how to implement that any junior level dev fresh out of college could do this in their sleep. Roon choosing not to implement this after 3+ years is them basically telling us that they have given up on ARC.
1 Like
I came to this thread after recently upgrading my DAP to an Android 12-based Hiby R4. After being concerned that I’d run into the same outcome, I was able to resolve this with System > Developer Options > Force Allow Apps on External.
The exact steps I followed are:
- Insert empty SD card (512GB) into device
- In Settings > Storage > SD card, select “Format as internal”
- Install Roon ARC from the Google Play store
- Navigate back to Settings > Apps > Roon ARC > Storage Used, select SD card
- When I Download music via Roon ARC, it is now stored to the SD card
It’s been a day or so of high usage and it’s working as intended.
Note: I saw other reports of app instability with Roon ARC when forced onto an external storage device, but that has not been my experience.
2 Likes
Any chance a dev can look at this one March 2026 please?
2 Likes
I will monitor this thread for the future, but after 4 years I don’t think this is worth hoping for. I’ve cancelled my subscription, and I’m putting my Nucleus in a cabinet for now. I had two use-cases (home music and travel), and I think in the economy of 2026, paying a hundred dollars a year for “50% good” just doesn’t make sense. I’ll miss Roon as my front-end, but there are plenty of alternatives without subscription for the home music part, and the travel solution remains unsolved for now.
1 Like
Hi,
Great work. I just tried this on the FiiO M21 and I don’t get the option to format as internal, just format. I formatted on the FiiO, do I need to elsewhere?
Thanks
Simin
Found it… just trying again
I’ve got Roon Arc on the formatted sd card but now Arc won’t open at all 
I have had Roon for a few years now. I travel extensively for work so ARC is a major use case for me. The first year it just did not get used much as I had port forwarding issues that I finally figured out about 18 months ago. This was a game changer for me. The few other issues I had seem to have been fixed with the the latest updates.
I now have ONE major issue with ARC and it is no SD Card support. Like everyone else on this thread I don’t get why this option is not available? My first smart phone with an SD Card ~15 years ago had the option to read the music from the card, that was like the entire point.
Since I hate subscriptions I got the lifetime plan soon after trying it. So I will be waiting for this feature to come at some point down the line. But like everyone else on here I don’t get why a simple feature that literally every music app I have ever used has is not in ARC. Streaming works great when you have good WiFi or great cell connection. That said any road warrior knows that there are times when you won’t have either and a lot of times that you won’t even have internet.
3 Likes
I use a Walkman with 40gb onboard storage and a 1TB SD card for expandable storage to serve my music when on the go or in the office (permitted from using WiFi for personal devices).
Roon Arc can only see 40gb of the approximately 1040gb that I have available for use which isn’t very useful, as with a totally lossless library 40gb doesn’t go very far.
Please allow users to map expandable storage in Arc in offline mode.
2 Likes
I’ve moved your post into the existing Feedback > Feature Suggestions thread.
If this feature suggestion is important to you, please vote for it by using the Vote button at the top of the thread. Thank you.
1 Like
