Best File Explorer for Android

One of the nice things about Android is that you can get access to the filesystem if you want to, which is something a lot of geeks like myself tend to want to do. If you are using a non-rooted phone, however, the files you have access to will be quite limited, but users who take the extra step to root their devices will gain unrestricted access to all of the files on the device.

The Solid Explorer file manager is a great way to access the files on your device, and it will work with your device regardless of whether you have rooted it. If you haven’t rooted it you’ll be limited to what you have access to, but Solid Explorer adds a lot of other benefits that will still make it worth while. The best part is the full access you’ll get to network drives, FTP servers, and cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive. By having it all integrated into a single app you can easily copy and paste stuff between the local and remote locations with ease.

Take a look at some of the key features offered by Solid Explorer:

1. Two independent panels for browsing
2. Drag and Drop inside and between panels
3. FTP, SFTP and SMB/CIFS clients
4. File sharing via FTP
5. Support for ZIP, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 and RAR archives
6. Creating ZIP and TAR archives
7. Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive
8. Bookmarks
9. Root access
10. Indexed search, also available from the system (that means that you can search for files from the Google Search widget/app)
11. Detailed file and directory information

Here’s what Solid Explorer supports in terms of connecting to remote locations, such as those on your local network as well as various cloud storage services:

I highly recommend trying out the app if you haven’t already, but I should point out that it’s labeled as a “Beta” version so there could be some unexpected bugs. From my perspective I’d say it has felt incredibly polished and I’ve never run into any issues, and as of right now the app is free. I’m not sure if the developer will start charging once the Beta period is done.

Solid Explorer on Google Play (Android only; Freeware)