File Magic
Default Basic Controls
- single tap: enter directory or view file
- long tap: show actions
- stroke left: go to parent directory (Android 1.6+)
- stroke right: go to previous (child) directory (Android 1.6+)
- stroke left bracket: go to root directory (Android 1.6+)
- stroke up from bottom of screen: directory-specific controls, search access
- long-press call/search button: toggle select mode
Press Menu / Controls to change these and see what others are available.
Toolbar
The toolbar is a sliding drawer which is accessed by sliding up
the screen from the very bottom (or dragging on the triangular handle).
It is used to:
- control the preferences which are specific to the
current directory and it's subdirectories
- swap between browse mode and search mode
Actions
File actions are accessed by long-tapping on a file or directory. Some
actions require some further explanation.
Audio Sample
Plays a short extract from near the start of an audio file.
It requires that Tasker is installed.
Delete
Deletion of a directory is done recursively, meaning the directory and all
of it's contents, including subdirectories, are deleted.
Encrypt/Decrypt
These actions protect files with a high level of security. They require that
Tasker is installed.
Hide/UnHide
Hidden files are those which are prefixed by a '.'. In general, these will not
show up in the standard applications such as Gallery. Hide/UnHide add and remove
the '.' to/from the filename of the selected file or directory.
See the application Preferences if you wish to be able to see these hidden files
after hiding them.
Lock/Unlock
The Lock action assigns a passcode to a file so that it cannot
be accessed or modified without re-entering of the passcode. Unlock
removes the lock.
This is not high-security protection, it is only meant for casual protection
e.g. as a child-lock.
If the same passcode is used for several files, entering the code for any
of them allows access to the others.
The passcode is cleared if File Magic is exited, or the screen turns off.
Rename
Rename changes the name of a file to a new one within the same directory i.e.
you cannot move files/directories to other directories.
Share
Android versions prior to 2.0 only support sharing of a single file at once.
Zip/UnZip
These actions use Tasker to zip or unzip a file. Zip files with directory structures
can be handled, but not zip files with nested zip files within them.
File Selection
Selecting Files
There are several options for selecting/deselecting files:
- enter select mode (long-tap call button) and single-tap the files,
then exit select mode
- long-tap on an item and choose Select/DeSelect from the list
- configure double-tap to toggle file selection (Menu / Prefs / Controls)
Copy/Move File(s) To A Different Directory
- select the files (see above)
- move to the target directory
- select Menu and Copy Selection Here or Move Selection Here.
Perform Actions on Multiple Files
- select the files (see above)
- long-tap on any of the selected files
- select the desired action.
The action will be performed on the files one-by-one. If a file in the selection is
inappopriate for the selected action, it will be skipped silently.
Selection Notes
- you can select files from several different directories
all at the same time.
- using double-tap: a slow double tap is needed. You have around half a second for the
second tap. If the second tap is too quickly
after the first it will likely result in a file view instead of selection.
- directory copies are recursive i.e. all subdirectories and their
contents are copied as well.
- in select mode, the (triangular) toolbar handle turns orange
as an indicator.
Preferences
Some extra information on some preference options.
Cache Image Thumbs
If enabled, thumbnails of any images displayed will be cached on the SD card for
reuse, so that the second time a directory is visited loading is much faster.
This is most noticeable with very large images or directories containing lots of
images.
The thumbnails are relatively small and the space used should barely be noticeable
considering the capacities of modern memory cards.
The cache is cleared completely whenever File Magic is started with this setting disabled.
The cache directory is /sdcard/.filer/icache/
.
Custom Tasker File/Directory Actions
If Tasker is installed,
you can specify here an action to be added to the long-tap action list. When the action
is selected, the correspondingly named Tasker action will be carried out on the file or directory
(by Tasker).
Custom directory actions are only shown when a directory is long-tapped, file actions only
when a file is long-tapped.
You define the effects of the task in Tasker's, the selected file location is referenced
by the variable %PATH.
As an examples, you could
- enter a custom file task called Backup here
- create a directory called
file-backup
on the SD card.
- go to Tasker and create a Task called Backup with action
Copy
,
From %PATH To file-backup
Now, whenever you long-tap a file, you would be presented with the Backup option
which would make a copy of the file to the directory file-backup
.
Skin: Toolbar Icons
If Tasker is installed, you can use it to
change the icons displayed in the toolbar.
First use Tasker to download the icon set you want, then the name of
the icon set will be available when you tap on the icon in the
Skin Preferences screen.
Directory Preferences
You can use the toolbar to dynamically change attributes for the
current directory and it's subdirectories. When you return
to the directory, the settings will be as you left them the previous
time.
An important rule is: a directory will use it's parent (not
necessarily it's direct parent) setting for an
attribute (e.g. Landscape Columns) unless it has it's
own setting.
The toolbar icons behave as follows:
- Picture Frame: toggle displaying of icons
- N: toggle displaying of file names
- N long-tap: sort forward/reverse by document name
- Dot: toggle displaying of document-type extensions
- Dot long-tap: sort forward/reverse by file extension
- #: toggle displaying of file sizes
- # long-tap: sort forward/reverse by file size
- -: toggle displaying of system status bar
- Magnifying Glass +/-: zoom in/out
for the current display orientation (portrait/landscape)
- X: remove preferences for this directory (parent
settings will be used from now on)
The orange icon label indicates which sort is currently being applied to the
files in the directory.
Search
Search is accessed via the Search icon on the toolbar. It is a filename
search, it does not search within files.
A maximum of two keywords can be entered, which should be contained in, or at the
start or end of the searched-for file. The two keywords can be combined with
or, and or and not.
If a keyword is all lower case, it will match case-insensitively e.g. cat will match
Cat or cat. If a keyword contains any upper-case letter, it will match
case-sensitively e.g. Dog will match only Dog, not DOG or dog.
You can long-tap on a search-result entry just as in normal browse mode, though fewer actions
may be possible.
A single tap on a directory in the search results switches to browse mode for that directory.
You can toggle backwards and forwards between browse mode and search mode without losing results.
Known Bugs / Limitations
- thumb fast scrolling section indicator becomes invisible after a rotation
- when starting up in a directory with 2 locked parents, only the lock for
the closest parent will be requested
- after editing of a text file, the directory summary info is not updated
- when interrupted during the action dialog for a zip entry, upon restart
the zip info is lost
- no cumulative subdirectory info is available for zip file entries
Licenses
ColorPickerDialog used in Menu / Skin is Copyright (C) 2007 The Android Open Source Project and
distributed under the terms of:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0