{"id":245365,"date":"2026-05-13T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/my-new-favorite-android-file-manager-is-way-better-than-googles-default-and-its-free\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:15:07","slug":"my-new-favorite-android-file-manager-is-way-better-than-googles-default-and-its-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/my-new-favorite-android-file-manager-is-way-better-than-googles-default-and-its-free\/","title":{"rendered":"My new favorite Android file manager is way better than Google&#8217;s default &#8211; and it&#8217;s free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/this-android-file-manager-is-the-best-ive-tried\/\">My new favorite Android file manager is way better than Google&#8217;s default &#8211; and it&#8217;s free<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/this-android-file-manager-is-the-best-ive-tried\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/this-android-file-manager-is-the-best-ive-tried\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-13 16:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Jack Wallen\/ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3> ZDNET key takeaways <\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Material Files is a well-designed Android file manager.<\/li>\n<li>This app blows away the competition.<\/li>\n<li>Material Files is free and can be installed from the Play Store.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve tried so many Android file managers over the years. I&#8217;ve seen those that look good but lack features, those that have too many features and a pleasing aesthetic, and those that look terrible and don&#8217;t have enough features.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a tiresome journey, one that eventually had me giving up and sticking with the default. Until now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>7 apps I use to lock down, encrypt, and store my private files &#8211; and most are free<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recently, I stumbled upon Material Files, which is an open-source Android app, and I almost instantly proclaimed it the perfect Android file manager. It looks native on my Pixel 9 Pro and has exactly the right amount of features. When you open Material Files, you would think that it was built by Google specifically for Android, but it&#8217;s not.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s so great about Material Files?<\/h2>\n<p>Material Files is developed by Hai Zhang and, to my surprise, is free to install and use and has no pesky in-app purchases. How can this be? Well, it is, and I&#8217;m not about to look this gift horse in the chompers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Your Android phone is getting agentic powers with Gemini Intelligence &#8211; here&#8217;s how and when<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Material Files features bookmarks, remote connections, a built-in FTP server, connection options for FTP, SMB, and WebDAV, the ability to have multiple windows open simultaneously, select all, open in terminal, copy path, share, filters, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it has everything a good file manager should. Now you might be wondering why a good file manager has me doing a happy dance. One of my biggest issues with so many file managers is the lack of SMB support.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I keep a Samba server running on my network, so I can easily save and open files from any machine. Most Android file managers lack the ability to connect to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/this-android-file-manager-is-the-best-ive-tried\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My new favorite Android file manager is way better than Google&#8217;s default &#8211; and it&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/8f9a49b970a6bc8f595697a8e5c5b6bb5485dc92\/2026\/05\/13\/e81457da-60a6-4d44-8346-29ecc92ac3fa\/materialfileshero.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,72],"class_list":["post-245365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-pixel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245367,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245365\/revisions\/245367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}