ARK Navigator is the next-generation file browser built on the idea of tags.
If you never can find your files on your phone — this app is for you.
The app is in active development phase, but you can already try it out.
Just visit GitHub Actions section of this repo and select the latest main build
All information for contributors can be found at CONTRIBUTING.md
ARK Navigator is an Android app that is being designed to help you navigate seamlessly through your data (images, videos, documents, etc.) located in your phone. In short, it is a file browser with an innovative tag-based labeling and search system. The app focuses on privacy and security since you are not relying on third-party cloud services and everything is done locally and offline.
Phones have turned out to be an integral part of our day-to-day lives even though they were initially used for just sending messages and placing calls. They are far more advanced these days, allowing you to save all kinds of personal and non-personal information. For example, you might capture your favorite moments from that one-day trip to the nearby waterfalls, a picture of a restaurant that you want to try out another time, some important official documents, your resume, the research papers you have been reading, your must-read list of ebooks, the list goes on! Before you know it, your phone is flooded with images, videos, screenshots, documents, etc. and you are struggling to find something in particular. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. ARK Navigator helps you in this situation by allowing you to browse your files through an easy-to-use interface designed particularly to tackle situations like this. It allows you to add tags to your files and retrieve them easily using the tags. You can be as creative as you want with the tagging system. For example, you could mark your ebooks as read/unread, fiction/non-fiction, based on the author's name, etc. You could mark videos as watched/unwatched, short film/movie/documentary/etc., personal/public, etc.
In short, the app works this way - Bookmark the relevant folders, view contents of folder, add tags to the items and filter the items using the added tags. It's also worth mentioning that one of key features of our app is the "aggregated mode". That's what happening when you just press "navigate data" button in the bottom bar. It takes resources from all folders and presents the single resource space to the user, allowing the user to navigate this space using power of tags. Although, we are still working on performance and UX of course, selecting individual folders is faster sometimes.
Bookmark folders: To bookmark a folder, press the plus (+) button located on the right side of the app, navigate to the folder you wish to bookmark, and press the “Add root” button. Folders added this way will be listed in the “Manage Folders'' view as Root folders. Subfolders in the root folders can be bookmarked/favorited again for easier access. To do that, open “Manage Folders”, press the plus (+) button next to the relevant root folder, navigate to a subfolder, and press the “Favorite” button. Subfolders favorited like this are listed when you expand the Root folders.
View the contents of root/favorite folder: To view the contents of a root/favorite button, press the compass button located next to it under the “Manage Folders” section.
Add tags to an item: To add tags to an item, open the item by tapping on it, press the pen icon, and jot down the tags that you find relevant to the item.
Filter items based on tags: If you have successfully completed Steps 1 to 3, then you have successfully managed to add tags to at least some of the images, videos, and documents that you have in your root/favorite folders. Some tags might even be shared by multiple items. To filter items based on tags, simply open the root/favorite folder (step 2), and tap on the tags that you are interested in. All the files that are irrelevant to the selected tags will be filtered out.
This app is under development right now, with more and more features being added gradually. After the initial phase of development, the ARK Navigator should work with all kinds of files, allowing you to preview the files and manipulate them. In the future as well, you should expect advanced bookmarking that would allow you save a link to an online media resource such as Youtube, SoundCloud or Spotify.