- Open source: Lightweight, clean and secure.
- Material Design: Follows Material Design guidelines, with attention into details.
- Breadcrumbs: Navigate in the filesystem with ease.
- Root support: View and manage files with root access.
- Archive support: View, extract and create common compressed files.
- NAS support: View and manage files on FTP, SFTP and SMB servers.
- Themes: Customizable UI colors, plus night mode with optional true black.
- Linux-aware: Knows symbolic links, file permissions and SELinux context.
- Robust: Uses Linux system calls under the hood, not yet another ls parser.
- Well-implemented: Built upon the right things, including Java NIO2 File API and LiveData.
edit: double bonus points because it is available on the privacy centric/open source app store Fdroid.
With Simple Mobile Tools being sold to an adware company, there is one less good file manager out there. I always preferred Material Files since I first came across it, but if you're still on Simple this is a good time to make the switch.
Well I missed this happening. I use the calendar, notes, music player (from F-Droid, so hopefully those versions will stay clean) and I loved them because they do exactly what they need to do.
Thank you for the heads up.
Material Files also provides the ability to easily open DocumentsUI for browsing Android/data.
I also enjoy Material Files' README, particularly https://github.com/zhanghai/MaterialFiles#why-material-files (a clear articulation of "Why" is always informative) and https://github.com/zhanghai/MaterialFiles#inclusion-in-custo... (clear guidance to upstreams seems relatively uncommon, helps shed light on ecosystem dynamics otherwise invisible to me anyway).
Android linter does check that access to APIs added in newer versions is gated behind a version check, for example. But frankly I feel like compatibility with any Android version less than 4 (or even 5) is in practice a non-issue, simply because there are no users with such ancient Android. And the few that would use such devices are so far and between that any issues don't surface
Everything is extremely "spaced" for no apparent reason.
Thank you very much!
The reason I'm using it over the default file manager of my phone or others is that it's open source. It's a matter of trust.
I install from F-Droid because if an app is both there and on Google Play it's pointless to give Google an easy way to know what I'm using.
F-Droid got much better lately. Strange things don't happen anymore on updates.
it saddens me that it got removed.
Material UI file explorers have too much wasted screen space and unnecessary slow animations, lack of bottom positioned controls etc. and it makes managing files slow and frustrating.
I read a campus-wide study carried by a university. It showed new students don't know about such things as files and folders, they just think their computers (think smartphones) are just a dump of files. So I guessfunctional file managers aren't a priority anymore.
(I did buy it way back when)
Handily beats most of the paid file managers on Android and is one of the first things I install on all Android devices I have.
I used to get it from F-Droid but I'm very thankful that the author took the time to put it on the regular app store as well, it's very convenient!
I don't know why USB support is so bad on Android, transferring thousands of small files is unbearable. Maybe some devices have better support? Maybe it would work better if I used ADB?
So, sadly pointless now. I'm stuck with the default file manager.
Tested in Samsung Note 10 Lite, recently upgraded to Android 13.
Definitely in my go-to set of android apps from fdroid I use. Generally Google is disabled on my phone's now.
Just kidding. The reason is that I started the project mostly because I wanted a file manager with proper Material Design, and it's very unlikely that I (or AOSP) adopt a completely different design system.
Naming is hard, and I already have to implement file management :P