Search results now show why a file matched.
- Search results show why a file matched. Documents show a short preview with your words in bold. A file that matched by meaning only says "Similar meaning".
- Filter chips with counts at the top: Documents, Photos, Names.
- Weaker matches go in a folded "Less related" section, so the top of the list stays clean.
- A progress line shows while the app is still reading your files, so an empty result does not look like a miss.
- A "Local" label on Indexing in the menu.
- Large or broken PDFs can no longer fill your storage or stall indexing.
- Turning analytics off now stops the analytics library right away.
- No prebuilt native library in the source, for F-Droid builds.
- The privacy policy now says what the search index stores.
Known limits 6
- The first index takes hours on older phones. You can search files as soon as they are done, newest first.
- Some phones stop apps in the background. On vivo, turn on Settings > Battery > High background power consumption for Better Files. On Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme, allow Autostart and turn off battery limits for the app.
- If indexing stops, open Better Files. It continues where it stopped.
- Phones with less than about 3.5 GB of RAM search inside documents by keyword only. Meaning search and photo search need more memory.
- Scanned PDFs and password-protected PDFs are not searchable yet.
- Excel, PowerPoint and old .doc files are not indexed yet.
This is the first public beta. Some parts are not finished yet, and small fixes will ship often.
- Search runs on the phone. Your files and their text never leave it.
- The search model (EmbeddingGemma 2, about 320 MB) downloads once, after you accept the Gemma terms. Photo search needs one more download of about 110 MB.
- Analytics are off unless you opt in. See PRIVACY.md.
- Based on Material Files by Hai Zhang. Licensed under GPL-3.0. The full source, including the search engine, is in this repository.
Known limits 6
- The first index takes hours on older phones. You can search files as soon as they are done, newest first.
- Some phones stop apps in the background. On vivo, turn on Settings > Battery > High background power consumption for Better Files. On Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme, allow Autostart and turn off battery limits for the app.
- If indexing stops, open Better Files. It continues where it stopped.
- Phones with less than about 3.5 GB of RAM search inside documents by keyword only. Meaning search and photo search need more memory.
- Scanned PDFs and password-protected PDFs are not searchable yet.
- Excel, PowerPoint and old .doc files are not indexed yet.
Older releases are on GitHub.