File Manager

Review by eFreeware

If you keep files in more than one place, File Manager + is the sort of app that earns a spot on your home screen. It is a file explorer for Android that reaches into internal storage, SD cards and USB drives, and also into cloud accounts and network locations, so you are not jumping between several tools to find one document.

The app has been on Google Play since October 2015 and now sits past 100 million installs with a 4.7 average from well over a million ratings. It is free to install and supported by ads, with in-app purchases also offered. If your phone storage is a black hole of screenshots, downloads and half-finished exports, this is the kind of tool that gives you a map.

One window onto every storage location

The core job here is breadth. On the local side, the app manages files and folders on internal storage and external storage, including SD cards and USB OTG drives, so a flash drive plugged into your phone shows up alongside everything else. It also lists the applications installed on the device, which makes it a place to see what is taking up room rather than just what you have saved.

The remote side is a major part of what it offers. The developer lists Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and Yandex among the supported cloud services, and the app also reaches network-attached storage and FTP servers. That combination means a file sitting on a home NAS and a file sitting in a cloud folder can be handled in the same interface, with the same set of actions.

Those actions cover the usual ground: opening, searching, navigating folders, copying and pasting, cutting, deleting, renaming, compressing, decompressing, transferring, downloading and bookmarking. Organizing is covered as well, and bookmarking is the sort of small addition that matters once you are regularly hopping between a downloads folder, a work directory and a cloud account.

Sorting, searching and finding the space hogs

Rather than dumping everything into one long list, the app groups files by type and characteristics, with separate views for downloads, new files, images, audio, videos and documents. For anyone whose storage has accumulated across years of phone upgrades, that automatic sorting is the difference between hunting through a directory tree and glancing at a category.

Storage analysis is the other feature I would point to first. The app examines local storage to identify files that can be cleared out and shows which files and apps are consuming the most space. On a device that is always a few gigabytes from full, that is a more useful starting point than a manual sweep through folders you rarely open.

Viewing images, playing music and editing text are all handled inside the app. Whether you prefer those built-in utilities or your usual gallery and music app, having them available is convenient.

Archives, transfers and reaching your phone from a computer

Archive handling is built in, and the supported formats are worth spelling out because they are narrower on one side than the other. The app compresses files into zip archives, and it can decompress zip, gz, xz and tar files. So if you regularly unpack tarballs or gzipped downloads on your phone, this covers it; if you mostly deal in zip, it covers that too.

The app can also expose your Android device's storage to a computer over FTP, which is a practical route when you want to move files between a laptop and a phone without hunting for a cable. Recent updates have touched this area directly, including a fix for an FTPS connection error and support for pCloud.

Smaller additions in the changelog suggest attention to the details of daily file work: a date format setting, a toggle for video player gestures, a music player engine that can be switched in settings, and a temporary highlight on new files after a file operation. Copy again and return to source folder options after pasting address the repetitive part of moving batches of files around.

What you need before you start

You install it, open it, and the app immediately shows how many files and apps are on the device, which is a sensible way to start because it gives you an overview before you ask for anything specific. The interface is simple, and the feature set is broad.

The requirements that matter are about what you connect to: the app handles NAS and FTP connections. It runs on Android TV, phones and tablets, so the same tool covers a television box as well as a handheld device.

The practical caveats are the usual ones: the app is free, it carries ads, and it offers in-app purchases. That is the arrangement, and it is worth knowing before you commit your file browsing to it.

Who gets the most out of it

This is an app for people whose files are spread out. If you juggle a phone, a cloud account and a drive on your home network, the appeal is having one place where all of them appear and one set of actions that works everywhere. The storage analysis and the automatic sorting by file type suit anyone who regularly needs to clear space or track down a specific photo, video or document without knowing exactly where it lives.

It also fits the tinkering side of Android use. Managing installed apps, unpacking archives, connecting over FTP from a computer and browsing an FTP server or NAS are all collected together here. The Android TV support extends that to a television device as well.

The narrower case is someone who only ever moves a few files between folders on internal storage. Everything the app does would still work.

A capable hub for files in several places

File Manager + is a well-established, broadly capable file explorer, and the install and rating figures suggest a lot of people have settled on it as their default. The combination of local storage management, cloud and network access, built-in viewers, archive support and storage analysis is a lot of ground for one free app.

The trade-offs are straightforward. It is ad-supported and offers in-app purchases, and compression covers zip while decompression covers zip, gz, xz and tar. Cloud and remote features are part of what the app offers.

If you want a single app to browse, move, unpack and clean up files across your phone, your cloud services and your home network, this is a sensible one to install. If your file life is confined to one folder on one device, the extra reach will not mean much to you.

What's new

- Bug fixes and performance improvements. 3.8.3 - Fixed an FTPS connection error 3.7.3 - pCloud support added - Music player engine changed (switchable in Settings) - Date format setting added 3.6.8 - 'Copy again' and 'Return to source folder' are available after pasting. - Added a toggle for video player gestures. 3.6.5 - Temporarily highlight new files with a dot after file operations