An offline, open-source Android file manager with X-plore's workflow — dual-pane tree browsing, archive-as-folder, app manager, root access — on the latest Android stack with a Material 3 Expressive UI.
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Real capture on a OnePlus 7 Pro (Android 16). Select in one pane → Copy to… → the other pane is the default destination.
- X-plore broke on Waydroid over the past half-year; I needed a replacement.
- It's the LLM era — if a tool doesn't fit, build your own.
- Software with dangerous root powers should be open-source, fully offline, and
collect nothing. XFiles has no
INTERNETpermission and no analytics.
Grab an APK from Releases:
vX.Y— stable, cut wheneverversionNameis bumped.nightly— a single rolling prerelease, refreshed on every push tomain.
Requires Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer. On first launch, grant All files access (the app deep-links to the system page). Or build it yourself.
X-plore's signature: two independent panes — side-by-side on wide screens, a swipeable pager on phones. Folders expand in place as a tree with indent guide lines, and each pane carries its own floating breadcrumb pill.
Archives sit in the tree like any other folder — the breadcrumb descends straight into
project.zip.
Images and video poster frames render inline. Video frames are extracted once at thumbnail size and disk-cached, so they are instant after a restart, with a play badge and an icon fallback while loading.
Multi-select via right-edge checkmarks. Copy/move/extract go to an explicit
destination chosen in a full-screen folder picker — it defaults to the other pane, but
you can browse anywhere and make new folders — or use Copy to…/Move to… from the
long-press menu. Plus delete, rename, new folder.
A background engine drives it all with progress (the wavy Expressive indicator), cancellation, and Skip / Overwrite / Keep-both conflict resolution.
Creation deflates every entry across all CPU cores (commons-compress
ParallelScatterZipCreator, STORE for already-compressed media). Extraction runs one
ZipFile handle per worker off a shared queue. Zip-Slip guarded; falls back to
single-threaded streaming when temp space is tight.
Long copy/move/zip/extract operations keep running when the app is backgrounded, shown in an ongoing notification with a Cancel action and a wake lock. The service self-stops when idle.
Browse zip/jar/apk, 7z, tar(.gz/.bz2/.xz) and rar read-only; extract by copying out; APK install shortcut.
Installed and system apps in two groups, with real icons, version/package badges and rich details. Install, launch, uninstall, or copy an APK out to share an app as a file.
Expand an app and you get everything that belongs to it in one place: a Components
node broken down into activities / providers / receivers / services, plus base.apk and
every split_config.* APK — each one expandable, because an APK is just a zip.
Drill into a category and each component shows its class name and its real manifest
state — exported / not exported, enabled / disabled. Launch activities, create
shortcuts, and enable/disable components where the system permits.
Off by default. Turn on Root access in Settings and a Root entry (/) joins the
storage roots — with a separate Read-only switch that blocks anything needing root
to write, so you can go look without being able to break your system.
What you get is the real filesystem — /data opening up to adb, anr, app,
app-private, dalvik-cache, none of which a normal app can even list. XFiles browses
it as superuser via su: list/read/write/mkdir/rename/delete under /data, /system, …
Files stream through su cat / cat >, so the app's own viewers can open protected
files. Falls back to a read-only / view when su is unavailable.
The settings screen carries the rest of the preferences too — theme, dynamic color, hidden files, folders-first, sort key and direction.
An image viewer (pager + pinch zoom), a text viewer with edit/save, a hex viewer with on-demand paging, an audio player, and a custom video player (Media3/ExoPlayer) with frame-accurate stepping.
Tap the time readout to swap it for a frame counter — current frame, total, and the real frame rate — then step ±1 frame, swipe on the picture to scrub by time or frames with live preview, drag the compact control card out of the way, or go fullscreen immersive.
Live streaming recursive search with */? wildcards. Descends into archives, and
reveals results in the tree on tap.
MaterialExpressiveTheme + expressive motion, dynamic color (Android 12+),
light/dark/system, floating toolbar, LoadingIndicator / LinearWavyProgressIndicator.
True edge-to-edge: no top app bar — content scrolls under the status bar behind a
gradient scrim, with floating breadcrumb and settings buttons.
No network permission, no telemetry, no accounts, no ads. Every permission the app declares, and why:
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE |
Browse and modify all of shared storage — the whole point of an X-plore-style manager |
READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (≤ API 32) |
Legacy read path on older Android |
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (≤ API 29) |
Legacy write path on older Android |
QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES |
The App manager lists what is installed |
REQUEST_DELETE_PACKAGES |
Uninstall from the App manager |
REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES |
Install an APK you copied out, including split .apks bundles |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS |
Show the progress notification for long operations |
FOREGROUND_SERVICE, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_DATA_SYNC |
Keep a copy/move running when backgrounded |
WAKE_LOCK |
Don't sleep mid-operation |
INTERNET |
Not requested. The app cannot talk to the network at all |
That last row is enforced by the OS, not by policy — verify it yourself in
AndroidManifest.xml or with
aapt dump permissions on the APK.
| Layer | Choice |
|---|---|
| Language / UI | Kotlin, Jetpack Compose (BOM 2026.06.01), material3 1.5.0-alpha23 (Expressive APIs) |
| Build | AGP 9.2.1 (built-in Kotlin, no KGP), Gradle 9.4.1, compileSdk 37 / target 37 / min 26 |
| Architecture | Single module, MVVM + StateFlow, manual DI composition root (di/Graph) |
| Persistence | DataStore Preferences |
| Media/Images | Coil 3 (GIF, custom fetchers: app icons, disk-cached video thumbnails), Media3 ExoPlayer |
| Archives | java.util.zip, commons-compress (+xz), junrar |
Note: material3 is pinned to 1.5.0-alpha23 because the Expressive APIs are
internal in the 1.4.0 stable release.
app/src/main/java/app/local1st/files/
├── core/
│ ├── fs/ XEntry model, XId id scheme, XFileSystem + FsRegistry,
│ │ Local/Archive/Apps/Root filesystems, RootShell (su), storage roots
│ ├── ops/ OperationEngine (copy/move/delete/compress + conflicts)
│ ├── search/ recursive SearchEngine
│ ├── prefs/ DataStore settings
│ ├── thumb/ Coil fetchers: app icons, disk-cached video thumbnails
│ └── util/ formatters, mime/category mapping, intents, APK install/inspect
├── di/ Graph (composition root) + GraphInit wiring
└── ui/
├── browser/ PaneController (tree state machine), PaneView, EntryRow
├── main/ MainViewModel, MainScreen (dual pane + floating toolbar), PermissionGate
├── dialogs/ rename/new-folder/delete/zip/details, ops progress + conflicts
├── viewer/ image / text / hex viewers, audio player, frame-accurate video player
├── search/ search overlay
├── settings/ settings screen
├── appinfo/ app details overlay
└── theme/ MaterialExpressiveTheme setup
Entry ids are URI-like strings: file:///abs/path,
zip:///abs/archive.zip!/inner/path, apps://package.name, root:///abs/path.
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apkRequires JDK 17+ and an Android SDK with platform 37. On first launch grant "All files access" (the app deep-links to the system page).
A self-hosted GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml)
builds a signed APK on every push to main:
- The build number (
versionCode) increments each run (github.run_number). versionNamelives inversion.properties. While it's unchanged, each push just refreshes a single rollingnightlyprerelease with the latest build. BumpversionNameto cut a new stablevX.Yrelease.- Signing keys/passwords come from repo secrets:
KEYSTORE_BASE64,KEYSTORE_PASSWORD,KEY_ALIAS,KEY_PASSWORD. The runner needs the Android SDK.
GPL-3.0-only. A file manager that can be handed root deserves a licence that keeps every future copy open — if you ship a modified XFiles, ship its source too.
This is a study/clone project inspired by X-plore File Manager; it shares no code or assets with the original.