XFiles

An offline, open-source Android file manager with X-plore's workflow — dual-pane tree browsing, archive-as-folder, app manager, APK/AAB/XAPK install, root and Shizuku access — on the latest Android stack with a Material 3 Expressive UI.

Why

X-plore broke on Waydroid over the past half-year; a replacement was needed.

Software with dangerous root powers should be open-source, fully offline, and collect nothing. XFiles has no INTERNET permission and no analytics.

Features

Dual-pane tree browser

Two independent panes — side-by-side on wide screens, swipeable pager on phones. Folders expand in place as a tree with indent guide lines. Each pane carries its own floating breadcrumb pill. Archives sit in the tree like any other folder.

Thumbnails in the tree

Images and video poster frames render inline. Video frames are extracted once at thumbnail size and disk-cached.

File operations

Multi-select via right-edge checkmarks. Copy, move, zip and extract between panes. Delete, rename, new folder. Mounted USB OTG drives appear as pane roots. On Android 8–10, writes to secondary volumes work through a one-time SAF grant.

Add location pins document trees from other apps (RSAF, CIFS, Nextcloud) as pane roots. A background engine drives operations with progress, cancellation, and conflict resolution.

High-performance zip

Parallel compression across all CPU cores. Extraction runs off a shared queue. Zip-Slip guarded; falls back to single-threaded streaming when temp space is tight.

Foreground service

Long operations keep running when backgrounded, with notification, Cancel action, and wake lock. Service self-stops when idle.

Archives as folders

Browse zip/jar/apk, 7z, tar(.gz/.bz2/.xz) and rar read-only. Extract by copying out.

App manager

Installed and system apps in two groups with real icons, version/package badges, and rich details. Install, launch, uninstall, or copy APK out. Expand an app to view components (activities, providers, receivers, services), base.apk, and split APKs. Launch activities, create shortcuts, enable/disable components.

Package installer

Install APKs, split bundles (.apks/.apkm/.xapk with OBB files), and raw .aab files. Bundletool converts bundles on-device. Installs run in foreground service.

Root & Shizuku

Root entry (/) sits with storage roots. Read-only switch blocks privileged writes.

Two interchangeable transports:

- su — full superuser on rooted devices - Shizuku — no root required; runs at shell (ADB) privilege

Also works transparently where plain file access is denied (Android/data, Android/obb).

Viewers

Image viewer with pager and pinch zoom. Text viewer with edit/save. Hex viewer with on-demand paging. Audio player. Video player (Media3/ExoPlayer) with frame-accurate stepping and frame counter.

Search

Live streaming recursive search with */? wildcards. Descends into archives.

Open from other apps

Opt-in toggles register XFiles with the system resolver for archives, images, and videos.

Material 3 Expressive

MaterialExpressiveTheme with expressive motion, dynamic color (Android 12+), light/dark/system, floating toolbar, and loading indicators. True edge-to-edge: no top app bar.

Languages

18 languages, following system language.

Permissions & privacy

No network permission, no telemetry, no accounts, no ads.

Disclaimer

XFiles is an independent, open-source project. Inspired by X-plore File Manager; shares no code or assets with the original. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any third-party services. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0