Chances are that if you use a smartphone from Samsung, Huawei or some other Android device maker, it already comes with a decent stock file manager app pre-installed. Even the Android One and Android Go devices that we used to find lacking in this department now have something worth looking at.
However, if you maybe desire some more features, like say, the ability to view files which may not necessarily be locally stored but are on some remote location like a server on your local network or on a cloud service you use, it’s pretty normal to look beyond the stock file manager app. When it comes to these, there is no shortage of options.
There is the Solid Explorer that I have been pretty much swearing by for several years now and there are several other decent options as well that will make it easier to get to the root level (as long as you know what you’re doing) and more. While the likes of Solid Explorer may be paid apps that you may not necessarily consider if spending Kshs 500 on a file manager app sounds ridiculous (no, not that one), there are lots of free options.
One of the most solid options (if you’ll excuse the pun) that I have recommended frequently over the last 2 years and which has been a pleasure to watch grow has been Xiaomi’s own file manager app.
It’s easy to use thanks to featuring an interface that is already familiar to Xiaomi users and which Huawei users may also be fairly at home with and doesn’t have much of a learning curve. Despite being a Xiaomi app, it works on just about any device and is not just limited to the Chinese device maker’s own units. It also easily integrates with Share Me (previously known as Mi Drop – like AirDrop, get it? – Xiaomi’s own wireless file sharing service). Oh, and it has a dark theme. To avoid many words, it just works. Install it from the Play Store (see link below) and you’re good to go.
Even better, the latest version of the app introduces a feature that a lot of users who want to do more than view their local files will find handy: cloud service integration. Sure, at the moment that only means one service, Google Drive, but that is a good start. We can hope for more additions from there for those of us that are heavily reliant on other competing services like Microsoft’s OneDrive or Dropbox.
Yeah, the Google Drive app, which is pre-installed on most devices, will do just fine but does it hurt to have an option? Especially one that is baked into something you already use/can use for other things as well?
As noted already, there are other file manager apps that do this very well. Heck, even Samsung’s own file manager does this for multiple cloud services. It is just nice to see Xiaomi’s app join the fold, finally.
