WiFi File Explorer for Beginners

I sometimes forget that even though many people praise WiFi File Explorer for its simplicity and ease of use, it can actually be pretty confusing and daunting for some people to understand.  Things are only easy when you know how, so let me explain the basics behind the app so users of all abilities can make use of WiFi File Explorer.

Usually, to manage the files on your Android device (like copying photos you've taken to your PC or transferring some MP3s to your phone), you would dig out your cable and plug it into your PC.  In essence, WiFi File Explorer lets you accomplish this but without the cable!

You start by ensuring that your Android device and the PC you want to transfer files to/from are both on the same WiFi network, for example your home WiFi network.  Once they are, simply start the WiFi File Explorer app on your Android device and assuming you are connected to a WiFi network it will popup a message that gives you a web address to enter into a web browser.  At this point, go to your PC on the same WiFi network and enter that web address into your web browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc).  Make sure you enter this address exactly as the app tells you and ensure you enter it into the address bar, not into a search box.

Once you have done this, you are presented with a web page (like the one in the screenshot above) that lists all the files and directories on your Android device.  It is a pretty familiar concept to the one you are used to in other file managers such as Explorer on Windows, so it should be fairly intuitive how to use it.  As it is a web page, to transfer files from the Android device to the PC the term ‘download’ is used, and this can be achieved by either clicking the arrow to the left of the file name you want to transfer to your PC or by clicking several check boxes of files you want to transfer and then hitting the Download button.  Files are then downloaded to your PC just like when you download a file from any other web page and they are stored in the downloads directory of your PC or wherever your web browser usually saves downloads.  Conversely, to transfer a file from your PC to your Android device the term ‘upload’ is used, and this can be achieved by using the upload box to the right of the web page.  Simply select some files to upload from your PC and hit the Upload button to transfer those files to the current directory of the Android device you are viewing on the web page.

So once you have got to grips with this basic method of transferring files it should be fairly easy to work out how to do other things, like deleting files, creating new directories, moving groups of files around.  Then you can dig into more advanced features, such as setting music files as ringtones, viewing a slideshow of pictures, installing app files and setting your Android device’s wallpaper.

Finally, just to explain how the app technically works if you are interested... It actually works by setting up a small web server directly on your Android device.  This web server is confined to only the WiFi network you are on and can only be accessed by people that know the web address it is using; so don’t worry – it is NOT a publicly accessible web site.  You can also go into the app settings and set up a password to make it even more secure.  So when WiFi File Explorer gives you a web address to enter, that web address is actually made up of the IP address and port number of your Android device on your WiFi network.  And then when you connect to that web address via your PC web browser, you are connecting directly to the small web server running on your Android device (no external servers used at all and all the data is local, so you don’t get charged for any data usage).  This is presented as a set of web pages that allow you to manage your files, which is WiFi File Explorer!

I hope that helps people get into WiFi File Explorer and to understand a little about how it works so they can safely and efficiently use the app to manage their files without the need of a cable.  And please do not hesitate to email me with any further questions about the basics (or advanced features) of WiFi File Explorer.

WiFi File Explorer & the Toshiba Thrive

Some WiFi File Explorer users are finding that they experience some unexpected errors when using the app on the Toshiba Thrive Android tablet, particularly when uploading a file to the external SD card they receive a “Server I/O error” and the upload fails.  This also applies to some other devices as well, such as the WiFi US Motorola Xoom and hopefully I can use this post to explain why...

Update: I have been informed this post also applies to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7.

Many Android devices today have both internal flash memory for data storage and also an external SD card to extend that amount of storage.  Most of the time, both these areas of storage have full read and write access and so using WiFi File Explorer to upload and manage your files is no problem at all.  However, in the case of the Toshiba Thrive and WiFi US Motorola Xoom, the SD card is actually read-only when it is mounted in the device.  This means that apps can read from the SD card quite happily, but whenever an app tries to write to the SD card it will cause an error.  Fear not though, as the internal flash memory is still writeable, so you can fully utilise WiFi File Explorer with this area of storage.

So because of this, it means features in WiFi File Explorer like uploading, copying and moving files (basically anything that requires that the SD card be written to) will not work when attempting to do so on the external SD card.  In the case of the Toshiba Thrive there is one exception to this in that only the file manager app that comes pre-installed on the device will actually grant write access to the external SD card.  So there is a workaround in that you can upload a file to the internal flash memory using WiFi File Explorer and then use the pre-installed file manager app to move the file to the external SD card – a bit or a pain, but it works!

At the time of writing, I don’t know any other devices that suffer from this problem, but please leave a comment below if you discover any to inform other users.  I believe that by default in Android this is how Google have engineered it (hence why the WiFi US Motorola Xoom suffers from the problem as it is a Google Experience Device) because they have always envisaged Android devices only needing one area of main storage that needs to be written to by apps, but obviously other device manufacturers have had different ideas.  It may change in the future via an OS update (surely Toshiba will address this with the Thrive as I have seen lots of complaints about this in various forums), but for now this is how it is.

Managing Your Media With WiFi File Explorer

Most of the time when people are using WiFi File Explorer to transfer and manage files, it is often related to media-type files; MP3s, pictures, movies, etc.  This means it is quite important to understand just how Android manages those files so that they appear in the applications that use them, like the Gallery and Music applications.

So it basically all revolves around a media scanner within the Android OS that scans the file system for media-type files, and then adds any it finds to the media database on your Android device, or removes any from it that no longer exist.  This media database can then be used by Android applications to determine what media is stored in the file system and then use it within those applications, so for example, the Gallery can show all the pictures you have.

Typically, this media scanner only kicks into life when the Android device is switched on or if you take the SD card out and then slot it back in.  But also, applications can invoke the media scanner whenever they need to and WiFi File Explorer just so happens to be one of those applications!  So whenever you upload, delete, rename, copy, unzip or move a file using WiFi File Explorer it will set the media scanner off on that file so that the media database is kept bang up-to-date at all times.  So unlike some other file management applications, if you were to upload a picture to your Android device from your computer using WiFi File Explorer, it will be instantly viewable in the Gallery application ... some other file management applications don't do this so you have to turn your Android device off and on again, or take the SD card and slot it back in again ... what a pain!

In addition to perfectly and automatically managing the media database on your Android device, there are some other options in WiFi File Explorer to give you greater control over it where required.  Firstly, you have the Rescan Media button which forces the media scanner to go and rescan all the files on your device in case they have become out of sync with the media database for any reason.  And secondly, you have the the Hide Media or Unhide Media button which will either add or delete a ".nomedia" file in the current directory.  By adding this ".nomedia" file to a directory it tells the media scanner not to add any of the media in this directory to the media database, so if you had some audio files in a certain directory that you didn't want appearing in the Music application then just click the Hide Media button and they will no longer appear in the media database and so won't litter your Music application any longer.  Useful huh?  This could also be helpful if you wanted certain pictures to not show up in the Gallery application, depending on what you take pictures of ;)

But of course you don't just want to manage your media using WiFi File Explorer, you also want to consume it.  WiFi File Explorer gives you a number of ways to do this so that you can stream your media from your Android device into your web browser.  If you click the file name link of any media-type file, it will open up via the web browser into your media player of choice to directly start streaming.  Or, you can click the Media Playlist button which will give you a playlist file to open in your favourite media player on your computer so you can play a whole album from your Android device on your computer for example.  Warning: If you use the Media Playlist button, make sure you turn off the password functionality otherwise the media player using the playlist file won't be allowed access to the files via WiFi File Explorer!  

Also, if you click on the file name link or the thumbnail of a picture (or click the Slideshow button) it will bring up the Gallery Viewer which allows you to quickly scroll through all the pictures in that directory, or just hit the Play button and sit back to a slideshow of all those pictures streamed directly into your web browser.

Finally, with regards to the media database, WiFi File Explorer lets you view the contents of that database by simply clicking the Picture, Video or Music icons to the left in the top navigation bar of the web UI.   This then allows you to see, for example, all the pictures that are on your Android device regardless of which directory they may be in, just like the Gallery application on the Android device itself.  Very handy!

See, you didn't even know all that was happening in the background, and now you can see just what a good job WiFi File Explorer does with regards to your media database without you even realising.  I hope this gives you enough information so that you can go and fully enjoy all the features to get the best out of the media on your Android device.

HTC Thunderbolt Not Recording High Resolution Videos After Gingerbread Update

A few users have contacted me recently stating that after upgrading their HTC Thunderbolt to the latest Gingerbread (Android 2.3) update they can no longer record videos using my camera applications (SECuRET SpyCam/LiveStream/RemoteControl & BabyCam Monitor).  Everything worked perfectly beforehand with Froyo (Android 2.2) but specifically the Gingerbread update seems to have broken something; nothing at all had changed in my camera applications.

The good news is that video recording hasn't been completely broken in my camera applications running on the HTC Thunderbolt!  You can still record using the Low and Default resolutions - just go to Settings -> General -> Video Settings and change the Video Resolution.  It appears that HTC have just broken the High resolution setting.


If you look at the API you can see that Android specify that "Quality levels QUALITY_LOW, QUALITY_HIGH are guaranteed to be supported, while other levels may or may not be supported. "

It seems HTC forgot to adhere to this rule in their Gingerbread update for the Thunderbolt :(

I have done some testing and tried to work around this bug, but I really can't seem to find a solution.  So if you are finding that after the Gingerbread update you can no longer use the High resolution video recording option, I can only suggest that you complain to HTC customer services and report the bug with them and just continue using my applications using the Default or Low resolution settings.  If you have only just bought one of my camera applications and you are running it for the first time on the Gingerbread update then just email me and I can of course process a refund for you.

Moving Files/Directories in WiFi File Explorer

One of the first features I developed for WiFi File Explorer was the 'Create Copy' action.  All it did was copy the relevant file and paste it into the same directory with "Copy of " added to it ... not entirely useful to anyone, really!

Well, that has now changed with the latest update to the application.  Now when you click the 'Create Copy' action next to a file (or a directory now as well) you will be given a popup dialog with contains the path to wear you want to create that copy.  By default it gives the current directory, but you can specify any directory you like that you have permission to write to, or you can create a new directory by typing it into the dialog, again as long as you have permission to create it in that location.  Then when you hit 'OK' it will copy the file/directory you have chosen, paste it in the location you specified and then reload the page into that pasted location ... hey presto - copy & paste!

So now you have two copies of that file/directory on your Android device.  That may be exactly what you wanted, but what if you wanted something more akin to cut & paste?  Simple; just go back to the location of the original file/directory and delete it!

There will be another update coming real soon that allows you to also use the 'Create Copy' action on multiple files/directories that have been selected using the check boxes to make it easier to move around files/directories in batch.  In fact, by the time you read this it may even be already available!

Motorola Droid Bionic Not Playing Nicely With Camera Applications

A few users of my camera applications (SECuRET SpyCam/LiveStream/RemoteControl & BabyCam Monitor) have reported that the Droid Bionic is having trouble making use of the video recording functionality in those applications.  All other camera functionality seems to work fine (preview, taking photos, streaming) but video recording regularly fails; either creating a blank video file that cannot be played or a video that is highly distorted.

The Droid Bionic is known to have lots of issues and bugs within its camera implementation and Motorola seem to be aware of this.  This is certainly not the first time Motorola have screwed up the camera on one of their devices and probably won't be the last, but hopefully when Google complete their purchase of Motorola they will enforce stricter testing to ensure this doesn't happen again in the future.

So without getting too technical, the Droid Bionic is not accepting the camcorder profiles that it reports it is compatible with.  The native Camera app seems to be unaffected; it's just the API that the developers have to use that seems to be broken.  I have tried to work around the issue to see if I can avoid the bug, but all my attempts and testing showed that it was unavoidable (unless any others developers out there have found a decent workaround?)

So sadly, for now, I have to state that video recording is not possible with my camera applications on the Droid Bionic. You have a choice to either wait for Motorola to apply a fix for the issue, or if you have just recently purchased the application and you really wanted the video recording functionality then I can of course process a refund for you.

Just another reason that I would never recommend to anyone to develop camera based applications for Android ... there's just too many different types of cameras and bugs out there to deal with!

SECuRET LiveStream & SECuRET SpyCam Working Together

SECuRET LiveStream's main function was always to stream video and audio from the Android device's camera to be viewed in a web browser.  However, because the live stream is presented in the web browser using Java applets, it means that some browsers (those that don't support Java applets) are incompatible with SECuRET LiveStream.

The Android web browser does NOT support Java applets meaning it was not possible to stream using SECuRET LiveStream from one Android device to another.  However, now that I have exposed some new functionality it is now entirely possible to stream from one Android device using SECuRET LiveStream to another that is running SECuRET SpyCam.

So now when you launch SECuRET LiveStream and press the Start button, you are presented with the choice to stream to a web browser or to another Android device.  Selecting to stream to a web browser gives you the same instructions as before, but streaming to another Android device gives you a new set of steps to follow.  Now these steps are pretty clear and there's not much scope for me to make them any clearer, but some people are having difficulty so I will elaborate on them here...

1) You need to have a copy of SECuRET LiveStream on the device you want to transmit the stream from, and a copy of SECuRET SpyCam on the device you want to receive that stream on.  This is where most people get confused; they are two separate applications!

2) Make sure both devices are on the same network, then start SECuRET LiveStream on the transmitting device, press the Start button and select to stream to another Android device.  Keep the resultant popup on the screen or note down the settings.

3) Start SECuRET SpyCam on the receiving device and go to Settings > Remote Camera.  Change the Remote Camera Type setting to "Android Camera (SECuRET LiveStream)" and then in the lower section of the page titled "Android Camera (SECuRET LiveStream)", enter the correct IP address and port numbers based upon what SECuRET LiveStream told you in step 2 above.

4) Then in SECuRET SpyCam, return to the start screen and make sure you select "Remote Camera" instead of "Built-in Camera", then press the Start button and if you have done everything above correctly (and your network doesn't have any funny configurations on it) then you will be live streaming from one Android device to another!

Now, inevitably some people will have difficulty getting this to work as anything that uses a network as part of an architecture can be susceptible to external influences that prevent it from working.  For example, my Motorola Xoom tablet has a terrible problem with WiFi connectivity and even though it reports as saying it is connected to the network, no actual communication occurs with the network.  So when you follow all the steps above and nothing works it would be easy to point the finger at the SECuRET applications in this case; but it's actually Motorola's fault for designing a shoddy WiFi implementation!  So my point is, this does all work and it works incredibly well, but if for some reason you can't get it to work after following all the steps above correctly, then the fault lays elsewhere.  And if you do come to that conclusion then please feel free to email me and ask for some support and don't run off to leave some factually incorrect review and nonsense low rating that will help nobody at all ... I'm sure that after bouncing some ideas around we can get to the bottom of your problem :)

Two Years In And 50,000+ Applications Sold!

That was quick!  It still feels like only yesterday I sat down to write a post similar to this one this time last year.

So as the title implies, I have now been tinkering with Android applications for a little over 2 years, and in that time I have managed to convince people that those tinkerings were worth parting with cash for over 50,000 times.  Well, that's from the Android Market alone ... with sales from the Amazon Appstore, AndroidPIT and SlideME, that number is a tad bit higher (although not much higher as the Android Market still contributes by far the most sales).

This time last year I was writing about selling 10,000 applications in my first year, and so to sell over 40,000 in my second year indicates a fairly impressive amount of growth from a developer that just does this in his spare time.  But does that mean I expect it to keep growing at that rate?  The answer is probably not.  I don't do much real analytical research, I just tend to keep an eye on the trends and get a feel for the figures (I hit refresh A LOT), but the general feeling I have been getting over the last few months is that my own applications may very well have peaked in terms of daily download numbers.  Now, that peak seems to have remained very flat for my paid applications, but seems to be tailing off for the free demo applications.  Unpredictable events could of course change that trend at any time (just look what happened to WiFi File Explorer PRO when it took off), but based on my hunch and the pure amount of competition there is now, I get the feeling that sales of my applications will remain flat for a while longer and eventually tail off over the next couple of years.  However, I also have a habit of thinking it's "all about to end" if I see the slightest drop in sales ... around Christmas 2010 there was a sudden jump in sales; so who knows, it might just be the calm before the storm and all the new Ice Cream Sandwich devices that everyone gets in the next few months may take it all to another level again!

But that "tailing off" would kind of suit me.  All my applications are brimming with functionality now, and especially with the recent major updates to WiFi File Explorer and addition of full live streaming from SECuRET LiveStream to SECuRET SpyCam (and BabyCam Monitor to BabyCam Receiver) you could consider them all to be "complete".  Of course a programmer's job is never done though and I still have plenty more tweaks to make here and there, but I can only see new "feature-ettes" coming in updates from now on ... I just can't think of many new major features to add - I've already added them all!  So I like the idea of gradually winding things down; I'll still provide support of course and keep making little updates here and there, but after 2 years of spending nearly all my free time working on Android stuff, it would be nice to start spending more time with my family (which grew by one member since last year) and to enjoy the fruits of my labour.  I'm also fond of the idea that by slowly phasing out having to provide support to so many users, that I will no longer be sat at my computer screen at some ungodly hour having to answer an email from some cretinous little speck giving me abuse because my application "just doesn't work" ... er, yeah, because a 4.5 star application with hundreds of thousands users "just doesn't work", does it!?!?  I shouldn't let it effect me  because it's such a small minority really, but it's tough not to take it personally sometimes.

So, what other Android-based highlights have there been for me over the last year?  Well, having WiFi File Explorer PRO as Free App of the Day on the Amazon Appstore was certainly an experience!  It managed to get over 160,000 downloads in the one day (if only they paid just a few pennies each!) and it maintained it's 4.5 star rating (most applications lose a star or so after going on Free App of the Day as some of the Amazon reviewers are borderline retarded - "1 star - I didn't even want this app, don't know why I downloaded it").  But with lots of new users come lots of new support emails!  I was actually expecting even more emails, but it was still enough to make me think I wouldn't put another of my applications into that promotion.  As I said, it "was certainly an experience", but after getting a few additional sales the day after the promotion, it went back to the normal (disappointing) amount after that.  WiFi File Explorer PRO has been bouncing up and down in the Top 100 Paid Apps on the Amazon Appstore since it launched back in March 2011, so you'd expect it to get some good sales ... well, I'll tell you now that the daily downloads of WiFi File Explorer PRO on the Amazon Appstore tends to be around the number of downloads in just 1 hour on the Android Market!!  I know it hasn't launched anywhere outside the US yet (although it briefly did yesterday for a few hours, weirdly, before being switched off again) and the potential is certainly there for more downloads when Amazon release their Android Kindle Tablet ... but the numbers so far are simply disappointing (everyone only uses it for Free App of the Day anyway, huh?)

There's also a few interesting new opportunities coming up.  GetJar want to add some of my applications into their Free Paid App promotion, where they give away applications for free that would usually cost money on other app stores.  The developer gets a small fee paid to them by GetJar per download ($0.20) and the increase in downloads due the the premium application being free, has the potential to generate a decent amount of additional revenue ... or, it will cannibalise sales on the other app stores, and as GetJar aren't offering any DRM as part of this distribution, it makes pirating applications downloaded from there a whole lot easier!  Now the people I am in negotiations with at GetJar have suggested that this promotion will actually "elimnate piracy" (yep, that's in quotes) and it's that naivety on their behalf that makes me hesitant of entering any agreement with them.  Of course piracy is impossible to tackle anyway, and this promotion has the potential to compliment the revenue from other app stores and maybe even drive additional sales on those app stores ... it's just a risk I have to decide whether to take a punt on - any developers have any thoughts on this?

So that was one very busy, successful and productive year.  Hopefully, after all the hard work I have put in so far, then next one will be just as successful and productive, but not so busy!

Yeah right ... !