Android File Manager - Browse, Copy, Delete, Zip, View Files And Directories

Android phones come with default File Manager but for pro users it is not sufficient. If you are used to desktop computer's file manager then you would naturally look for something equally powerful. Here you would get to learn about one of the powerful and user friendly Android File Managers.

ASTRO - An Android File Manager : This is one of the best file managers around. You can try a free version of it by downloading it from Android Marker or App store of your choice right away. It is powerful and at the same time simple to use. It comes with many features which you would need or must to have. When you launch ASTRO first time it will ask you to accept the licence terms and once accepted you can start using it.

Android File Manager Home : When you start it first time and after accepting license terms you would see the home folder contents.

Android File Manager - Home

The default home folder / directory is "/sdcard" but you are free to change the home folder by going to preferences and setting it to folder of your choice.

Notice the small up-arrow at right hand top corner of the screen. You can tap this arrow to show or hide the main toolbar that is displayed at top. You can see that there are left and right arrows at side of the toolbar. This indicates that you can drag the toolbar to scroll it to see more toolbar buttons.

Just tap the "Home" button at any time to come back to home folder. "Up" button is to go one level up in the directory hierarchy. Tap any of the folders displayed below the toolbar to browse the contents of that folder. If you tap any of the files then this Android File Manager opens that file for viewing using the app associated with that file type.

Android File Manager - Multi Selection : If you tap the third button on the main toolbar, that is "Multi" then File Manager goes into multi-selection mode.

Android File Manager - Multi-Selection

You can notice that the toolbar changes in multi-selection mode. It provides the actions that you can perform with multiple selections of files or folders. For selecting the multiple folders for performing operations on, just tap those folders one by one. For example, in above screenshot "documents" and "download" are selected by tapping those folders one after another. You can perform batch operations on selected folders like copy, move, delete or zip. Tap "Cancel" button at left of the toolbar to exit from the "multi" mode.

Android File Manager - Search : When you tap the "Search" button on main toolbar then you would see the search screen of Android File Manager with wide range of search criteria.

Android File Manager - Search

As you can see in screenshot above, you can search the files by name and by text contained in files. You can select the directory name to search. You can define if directories should also be searched by checking ON "Include directory names'. You can also decide if sub directories should also be searched and search should be performed in case insensitive way.

If you scroll the search screen then you would find more search criteria like "Name does not contain", "size greater than" or "size less than" certain kilobytes, "Older than" and "Newer than" specified days. With these many powerful search options you can quickly search the file or folder that you are looking for.

Android File Manager - Sort : You can tap the "Sort" button on main toolbar to sort the folders and files as you want.

Android File Manager - Sort By

As shown in screenshot above, you can sort the files and folders by "Name", "Date", "Size" and "Type" by selecting the appropriate radio button. You can tap the "Ascending" or "Descending" button to decide the order of sorting.

Android File Manager - Grid or List View : When you tap the "View" button on main toolbar then it will display the popup screen with various choices as shown in screenshot below.

Android File Manager - Views

Here you can choose either "List" or "Icons" to display the folders in List or Grid view. You can additionally tap "Set Directory Options" button to select from options "Show Thumbnails", "Show File Details", "Hide File Extensions", "Show Hidden Files" and "List Directories First".

Android File Manager - Tools : This Android File Manager comes with additional useful and powerful tools. You can press the menu button of your Android phone to display the menus. Then tap "Tools" menu to display the following popup screen.

Android File Manager - Tools

As displayed in the popup menu, there are three tools which you can launch from here - "Application Manager/Backup", "SD Card Usage", "Process Manager".

With Application Manager/Backup tool you can manage the apps installed on your Android phone. You can uninstall unwanted apps or take the backup of apps so that you can install them again when required.

Using SD Card Usage tool you can quickly inspect how much storage space of your SD Card is consumed by which folder.

You can use the Process Manager to check which different types of processes are running on your Android phone. You can kill the running processes that you don't want using Process Manager.

So go to Android Market and get this powerful Android File Manager. After you install this file manager on your Android phone then you would find house keeping of your phone's storage space is very easy task.

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