[APP][2.1+] FX File Explorer Dev Thread (5.0: Material Design UI, Wi-Fi Direct Xfers)

[APP][4.1+] FX File Explorer Dev Thread (7.0 released)


Hello all,

This is the ongoing development thread for FX File Explorer. I greatly appreciate feature suggestions, bug reports, and general feedback!

FX intends to be an uncluttered, everyday-usable file manager for Android. The primary development goal has been to create the same level of usability, intuitiveness, and efficiency as that offered by the file manager on your desktop computer.

Local file management features of FX are free, including the root features, indexed search, cleaning tools, usage view, non-encrypted archive creation/extraction, the text editor, and all other viewers (e.g. script exec, binary viewer, image viewer). The network/cloud stuff and media-specific stuff (e.g. browsing music by album, editing playlists) is a paid add-on called "FX Plus".

The free version of FX is not a "Lite" version or some kind of watered-down demo. There is no advertising in FX. And there is no user-tracking, phoning home, or any other "doubleplusungood" stuff of any kind in FX.

FX Connect Demonstration

A demonstration of FX connect. Phones are paired together using NFC by opening FX and touching their backs together. Transfers take place over a high-speed Wi-Fi Direct connection.

Home Screen

The "Home Screen" appears when you first open FX. The idea of the home screen is that you create bookmarks to the folders you actually use, rather than milling through the garbage every app places in the root folder of your SD card.

One last note regarding the free-vs-plus stuff: The features shown in the "Media" and "Internet and Network" sections are part of the "FX Plus" add-on, while everything else is free. And another note: the home-screens below have every option turned on: you can use the "View" menu to customize what is shown.

• The first image shows a default home screen.
• The second image shows the home screen configured with a translucent dark theme and view mode set to "Icon". The translucent dark theme uses your default system wallpaper (or optionally an alternate wallpaper of your choosing).

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Directory Browsing

These screenshots show FX viewing a directory. The one on the left shows the Material Design Teal theme, the one on the right uses a translucent theme.

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Windows and Split View

FX supports multiple (unlimited) windows, with the ability to view one or two at a time.

• The first screenshot shows the window menu, which is accessible by tapping the slide-out icon in the upper left corner or sliding your finger from the left edge of the screen to the right.
• The second screenshot shows the split view mode. You can enter this mode from the window menu by tapping "Split View", or by dragging the path bar from the top of the screen downward.

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Root / Developer Features

FX supports root access. Root access requires an add-on, but the add-on is free.

Root access is kept entirely separate from normal file browsing, and can optionally be protected.

Developer features include:

• Root access may be secured via PIN, Password, or Warning; secured access can be enabled for viewing or only for modifications
• Remount filesystems as read/write or read-only
• Disable System Apps
• Root Usage View
• Recursive Search
• Modify permissions
• Change Ownership/Group, with Android-based design (e.g. select an app-specific user by app name; see screenshot)
• Symlink Creation (relative and absolute)
• Shell Script Execution, with support for creating launcher shortcuts to execute scripts [NR]
• Explore APK Contents [NR]
• View Android Binary XML Files in Text Viewer [NR]
• View any file in Binary Viewer [NR]
• MD5/SHA1 Checksum and Composite Checksum Calculation/Comparison (checksum directory structures, optionally with UNIX permissions, [NR])

Items marked with [NR] do not require root, but may offer more functionality when root is available.

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Text Editor

FX includes a full-featured text editor. It can edit local text files, edit files as root, and edit files on remote hosts (with FX Plus add-on). Features include:

• Undo/Redo with History (able to undo/redo multiple times)
• Cut/Copy/Paste
• Pinch-to-zoom font scaling
• Proportional and fixed fonts, word wrap can be enabled/disabled
• Optional shortcut bar can be enabled to provide arrow keys and fast access to undo/redo
• Jump to line number, beginning/ending of file
• Find text within documents
• File browsing for Open/Save As
• Enable/disable autocorrect
• Multiple color schemes
• Save/load files in different character sets

Plus Add-On

All features demonstrated above are entirely free. The Plus Add-On is the paid component of FX, and adds additional features:

• Application management: browse user, system, or all installed apps
• Browse installed apps by permission (e.g. find all apps which require GPS location or Internet access)
• (Root Access Required) View /data usage by application, disable any application
• AES-128/256 Zip Encryption/decryption; browse inside encrypted zip files/folders, view text files, images, audio and video files without ever writing decrypted version to media
• Browse all Images, browse images by folder (e.g. Camera folders on different media/SD cards)
• Browse camera Videos or all videos on device
• Browse Music by Artist, Album, Playlist, or view all music
• Browse ringtones, podcasts, notifications, and alarm sounds
• Create playlists, add albums/tracks/artists/playlists to playlists, reorder playlists via drag-and-drop
• Bluetooth FTP and Bluetooth Pairing within FX (pushing files via Bluetooth does NOT require FX Plus if your device supports it)

FX Plus adds support for the following network/cloud services:

• SMB (Windows Networking), supports network browsing (SMB1 and SMB2)
• FTP, including FTP-S and FTP-ES; browsing local network supported via mDNS
• SSH, including public key, password, and interactive authentication; browsing local network supported via mDNS
• WebDAV, including WebDAV over HTTPS; browsing local network supported via mDNS
• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Box
• SugarSync
• Microsoft OneDrive
• OwnCloud (by creating a WebDAV connection)

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Current Play Store Version

To get the current version (5.x) from the Play Store, simply click here:
Download via Play Store

Beta Testing

FX can be beta tested by either downloading APKs directly (links will be posted in this thread) or via the FX beta channel on Google Play. At any given time, there may or may not be a release in the beta channel. (There won't be a release when a beta has just been pushed into production).

To join the Google Play public beta test and receive automatic updates:

Step 1: Join this Google+ community: https://plus.google.com/communities/101301040394875566704

Step 2: Visit this page to opt-in for beta testing: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/nextapp.fx
Beta APKs are also posted in this thread.

Step 3: Get FX from the Google Play Store: Download via Play Store

If you'd prefer to download an APK directly:

Go to the last page of this thread and grab a beta APK by clicking a download link: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1253399&goto=newpost

APKs of FX are archived here:
http://android.nextapp.com/fx

Notable versions:

• FX 2.3.0.8, r2108: last release of the 2.x series. http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r2108/FX_r2108.apk
• FX 3.1.0.4 r3122: last release of 3.x series http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r3122/FX_r3122.apk
• FX 4.0.6.0 r4040: last release of 4.x series http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r4040/FX_r4040.apk
• FX 5.1.x.x r5140: last release of 5.x series http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r5140/FX_r5140.apk
• FX 6.3.0.1 r6301: last release of 6.x series http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r6301/FX_r6301.apk

Root add-on:
The root add-on is available for direct download here: http://android.nextapp.com/fx/FXRoot.apk
(Root features may now be enabled directly via settings.)

FX 4.0 Beta Release (4.0.0.11)

This is not yet in the beta channel. I intend for this to move there within a couple of days, but would like to get some initial feedback here first.
Update: Now in beta channel (APK also available directly below)

New features include in 4.0 (vs 3.1) include:

• Material Design UI Overhaul
  • New themes featuring Material Design colors
  • New default icon theme
  • New Material Design animations
• Updated List View Appearance
• Image Viewer Updates
  • Horizontal image flipping
  • Next/Previous image preview when flipping
  • Zoom in/out animation when entering/exiting image viewer from file listings or image album views
• “Recently Updated” catalog (available on home screen)
• Storage Access Framework support
  • Enables Android 5.0 (Lollipop) users to write to MicroSD cards (without root access)
• Root Support for Android 5.0

Test release notes:

• YOUR THEME WILL BE RESET to the default material design version. You can change it back, but I want everyone to see the intended "stock" behavior first.
• You can turn off directory navigation animations (sliding effect) separately from general animations via the preferences. The directory navigation animations are on by default.
• Streamlined linking of MicroSD card to Storage Access Framework is not yet available. Writable MicroSD support is available under Android 5 by tapping the homescreen’s menu, selecting “Connect to Storage”, selecting the MicroSD card, and then adding a bookmark.
• Notifications are not Material Design
• Miscellaneous other items are not yet implemented correctly in material design (e.g. Bluetooth on/off switch, network status lights…)
• The compressed archive icon and possibly a few others are in dire need of replacement.
• New image viewer has some outstanding issues with regard to animation in certain scenarios (e.g. cloud/network)
• Looks best on Lollipop, but still works on a five year old Droid 1 running 2.1 (Eclair).

Screenshots:

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DOWNLOAD LINK: http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r4011/FX_r4011.apk

In the event that you want to revert to version 3.1, that APK is available here: OLD VERSION -->http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r3122/FX_r3122.apk <---OLD VERSION

FX is back on the Play Store

The APK is the same one which was uploaded a few months ago, i.e., no modifications whatsoever have been made.

I managed to get hold of a real person, and it was corrected immediately.

Very sorry for the inconvenience of all this.

FX development has been ongoing, but somewhat slower than I'd like. Google's late behavior has been fairly frustrating to me. Recently FX was banned for a week for containing an "ad" which actually turned out to be caused by just showing a link to a free and open source theme that could be downloaded (the Faenza icon set). Its Google Drive support was temporarily disabled from Google's side, and it was extremely difficult to get it reinstated. Then it was threatened to be banned for containing an "illegal icon" that had been in place for at least five years (the one that said "NO ADS").

I realize they're trying to clean up the Play Store, but they're throwing good apps out with the bad. And when you get flagged for "violations", there's basically no way to explain yourself (and often there's no way to even understand what they're talking about, because you're already in total compliance with their policies to the best of your knowledge). I still love working on FX but the behavior of Google is downright demoralizing, especially when incredibly privacy-invasive apps seem to face no such penalty.

In better news, FX 9 is mostly beta ready. You can try out a preview release now if you'd like:

http://android.nextapp.com/fx/r8903/FXmicro_r8903.apk (micro version, no FX+ capabilities or video playback)

Please note this one is a beta-preview and thus not in the beta-channel on the Play Store. Hope to release a real beta there (and here) very soon.

--- Release Notes ---

• Updated full-screen content-centric user interface.
  • Major updates to UI for edge-to-edge usage of screen.
  • Dimmed content now scrolls under header/navigation bar.
  • Improved aesthetics on phones with gesture-navigation enabled (content drawn to absolute bottom of screen)
  • More compact menu/path listing
  • Monochromatic header bar (vs early Material Design "two-tone" header)
  • Long press context actions now appear on item ("open with" and "details")
  • Always dark views (e.g. images and video listings) now appear with dark headers
  • "Fancy" headers like Web Access/FX Connect now overlay header bar.
  • New default theme, theme updates.
• SMB v3 support (courtesy of the awesome SMBJ open source lib that FX uses).
• SSH EC-25519 support
• Android 11/12 "Manage all files" permissions is now used where applicable.
• Targeting SDK 31 (Android 12).

Removals:

• Translucent themes (may be re-added at some point in future, possibly only for home screen)
• Minimum SDK is now 21 (Android 5.0). FX v8 can still be downloaded for very old devices (SDK 16-19, Android 4.1-4.4)