Latest Update to ES File Explorer Android App Brings Adware To Your Lockscreen (xda-developers.com)

An anonymous reader writes: ES File Explorer (Google Play link) is one of the handiest file manager apps in the post-Android Gingerbread era, and it continues to ride up on its popularity (Editor's note: Google Play listing suggests the app has been downloaded between 100,000,000 and 500,000,000 times) and functionality. Recent changes to ES File Explorer, however, are signalling its decline. The newest update might just be the last straw that breaks the camels back, as ES File Explorer now bundles in adware. This adware comes in the form of DU Battery Booster, which adds in a lockscreen on your phone and brings ads directly to your lockscreen, irrespective of your choice. There was no intimation, no choice, no changelog to mention the same; all features which are characteristic of such deceptive "Booster" apps.Plenty of users have taken it to the Google Play listing of the aforementioned app to express their grievances. "This software is getting some major bloat with a lot of features that has very little to do with file browsing in general, so going to look elsewhere for a simple file explorer without all the 'extras'," a user wrote.

Comments

Not Surprising

[jesseck]

I used to use this, because it was the best out there... but these days, and with all the pointless (to me) updates, I am close to removing it.

Re:Not Surprising

[MightyMartian]

Their promotion of other products means it's a lot bigger pain in the ass to use. Frankly, I think Google should just do the right thing and put a proper file browser in Android. But if it's going to start throwing ads on my lockscreen, then whatever utility the app may have, it's going to be deleted. There's a level of assholeishness that I just won't tolerate.

Re:Not Surprising

[war4peace]

I stopped it from auto-updating using the link below:
http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/...

I'll stick with the version I have until Kingdom's Come - or until a better app comes along.

Re:Not Surprising

[Andy Dodd]

At least in my case, the reason I used ES for a LONG time wasn't due to lack of other file browsers - ES had REALLY good built-in LAN support (such as a fully userspace SMB client that did not require the kernel SMB client support to be enabled/existent).

Re:Not Surprising

[Andy Dodd]

There's no way in hell I'm paying for this crap.

The Pro version contains the same crap that caused me to uninstall the free version, such as some snake-oil "Performance Optimizer" tool that you can't disable.

Re:Not Surprising

[Cramer]

BULL. SHIT.

Ads within the app, WHILE I'M USING IT, are one thing. Going for the lame money grab of spamming my lockscreen with worthless, bandwidth robbing shit. Well, they can rot in the hottest, smelliest part of hell.

Re:Not Surprising

[Albert Schueller]

This is a wonderful app. I push files around my home network using the ssh integration etc. Your comment motivated me to "go pro". I've been using the app for years and it never even occurred to me to buy it. For 2.99USD, it's really a pittance and the developers deserve a little compensation for a job well done. Thanks for motivating me.

Re:Not Surprising

[macs4all]

BULL. SHIT.

Ads within the app, WHILE I'M USING IT, are one thing. Going for the lame money grab of spamming my lockscreen with worthless, bandwidth robbing shit. Well, they can rot in the hottest, smelliest part of hell.

What is being missed here, and is of FAR MORE CONSEQUENCE, is that Android allows the SILENT REPLACEMENT OF THE LOCKSCREEN.

It's hard to imagine a more "one stop" way to direct someone into a "fake OS" that lures the user seamlessly from the FAKE Lockscreen right into a FAKE Password Screen, and then???

I can't even begin to fathom the security implications of being able to simply REPLACE A LOCKSCREEN with NO USER INTERVENTION!!!

Re: Not Surprising

[farble1670]

When you grow up and get a job some day, I wonder if you'll work for free?

When someone releases an app with ads, it's not free. It's ad-supported. That's how the devs get paid. Seriously, what kind of a reality distortion field do you live in where you think that software developers spend thousands of hours developing apps for free? Just to make you happy? Yeah, I said thousands of hours. This app is at least one dev's full time job. Have you ever spent thousands of hours on anything at this point in your life?

You've grown up in a world where you download pirated music and movies and get your software keys from hacker forums. When you get older and perhaps want things like a car or a wife or a kid or a house you'll have a better understanding of what's going on here.

Until then, stay out of things you can't comprehend.

Re:Not Surprising

[AmiMoJo]

They have hit the same problem that many, many apps have. The basic concept, a file manager, is actually fairly trivial and has been duplicated hundreds of times. Often it's a practice first app that new developers crank out and throw in the app store for free.

These guys got in early and made a name for themselves, but that's all they've got. A generic product that was feature complete years ago.

Other examples of this are any number of office suites, and my personal worst Nero Burning ROM.

Re: Not Surprising

[StayFrosty]

Ads in the app are one thing. Nobody is complaining about that. Taking over the lock screen and advertising to you when the app isn't open is something totally different. It's no better than the mid-2000s trend of including spyware, browser toolbars, etc... with shareware apps--scummy as hell.

FWIW, I CAN'T STAND in-app advertising at all and spend the couple of bucks on the pro version whenever one is available. Apps that don't have a pro version and insist on in-app advertising get uninstalled unless there isn't a better alternative (WIFI Analyzer, I'm looking at you!).

Re:Not Surprising

[TsuruchiBrian]

When I realized my neighborhood mechanic was sprinkling nails in the street to make money on tire repairs, it made me realize how important it is to support small local businesses. /s

Maybe it would be better to be motivated to support all the developers, who don't do stuff like this.

dammit, filesystem, you had one job

[Pseudonymous Powers]

ES File Explorer is one of the handiest file manager apps in the post-Android Gingerbread era, and it continues to ride up on its popularity

ES File Explorer's slogan should be "Because for some reason Google has some sort of policy against including a decent file manager with Android by default".

That decision has always made perfect sense to me. Just because you're writing an operating system, that's no real reason to get bogged down messing around with "files" and "directories" and stuff. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write some audio-processing software for my printer.

Re:dammit, filesystem, you had one job

[iampiti]

Well, it's pretty obvious that Google doesn't want a file manager in Android because it doesn't fit their goals. They want you to store everything on the cloud so they can datamine the hell out of it
I hate that mobile OSs give the user so little control over their own devices, they should be like a PC only smaller. And, no, that doesn't mean they should be hard to use for regular users just that they shouldn't prevent power users to use their devices as they see fit

Re:dammit, filesystem, you had one job

[thegarbz]

ES File Explorer's slogan should be "Because for some reason Google has some sort of policy against including a decent file manager with Android by default".

The policy is simple. Android by design was not supposed to care about exact files. Everything was media scanning and OS level control of where things were being saved. And quite frankly as a user myself I should not ever have to browse through a filesystem on a damn phone or tablet, save for maybe a downloads folder ... which Android provides a default store and app to access. Want to take something specific and do something with it? There's usually an app that interacts with that file format be it the PDF reader, image gallery, video player, etc, and a common method of interacting between apps was the "Share" button.

The folder structure made a lot of sense when moving my office to that new fangled thing called a PC in the 90s. It was a convenient way to conceptualise the storage of lots of files, and folders, much like the files and folders I had in my desk. Even the desktop itself is a play on that. The same level of sheer complexity does not apply to the phone, and I should not ever have to traverse a file system in that context.

Ironically enough I was a big user of ES File Explorer, but only to browse SMB shares.

I've never used ES

[jenningsthecat]

fx File Explorer has always been great for me. I use the free version - no ads. There is also a paid version with additional features. Easy, intuitive, works well as either user or root.

Oh shit - I think I just wrote a Slashvertisement ...

Re:I've never used ES

[dinfinity]

Total Commander.
https://play.google.com/store/...

It is awesome on Windows and it is equally awesome on Android.

Re:God alternative to ES?

[Golthur]

I use Amaze file manager, and have no complaints.

It's open source, GitHub is here: https://github.com/arpitkh96/AmazeFileManager.

Alternatives?

[pr0t0]

This /. story prompted me to search for alternatives, and found this which seems relevant.
http://www.guidingtech.com/536...

I've installed Solid to see how that looks. A decent ad-free file explorer is worth a couple of bucks to me.

Re:Alternatives?

[decipher_saint]

They manufactured a problem and now sell a solution, classy.

Or

I just switch to some other file manager. Done

Re:Alternatives?

[QuietLagoon]

...Maybe you should have tried the ad-free version of ES File Explorer?...

Sorry, I don't support jerks, no matter how good the product is.

.
And ES Global has just leaped to the top of my "jerks" scale with this latest antic of theirs.

Re:Alternatives?

[farble1670]

Were you paying for it prior to this "jerk" move? No? Oh I get it. This your latest excuse to not compensate the software developers that produce the tools you use. I understand now, thanks.

Re: Alternatives?

[Bing Tsher E]

I've now deleted the paid version. I wish there was an enforcablecrefund policy, but it wasn't that expensive.

Re:Alternatives?

[Desler]

And yet strangely, you seem really broken up over it. So much so that you get really really upset over it.

Re:Alternatives?

[Cley Faye]

Oh yes, they *did* something right: their app, right before all these "free updates to boost your system plz gib gib". You're telling "4.8 stars", I tell you "4.8 stars based on their previous versions".

I would not have cared if they decided to make it a paid app; I have a handful of these when they feel polished enough. I even paid for a basic SMS app that was just a "downgrade" for the recent stuff google pulled on that.

But the thing here is that they are shoddy. Consumers trust is hard to gain, and when you lose it, it's done. When you have arguably one of the best app on the market that does a lot of things well, there's one thing you don't do: start behaving like it's a chinese ripoff that exist only as an ad channel. On the point of ES File Explorer: one day, out of the blue, my phone had a notification about "removing trash to boost the performances", or something along the line. It sort of looked like a classic spam message, with no indication that this was from an app. And if dismissed, it comes back quickly. That was ES; and there was no option to disable it. Then, this "extremely useful feature" became the default screen when you open the app, prominently taking a third of the screen to encourage you to use what have all the warnings you're looking for when you look at a scam.

And now, the very same team decided to force-feed you a new lockscreen, with implications that goes well beyond the "showing ad" issue. Android might not be the most secure thing on earth, but I have slightly more trust in the stock lockscreen than in the one provided by some definitely shoddy business.

Seriously, now I've removed all of their apps, found very good replacements that don't do anything funky, even paid for one, and all is well. But I can't understand how you can think "hey, let's force spam and bloatware down people's phones, THEN make a paid version without that" when you could have just done it harmlessly.
They could make the best app ever now, I'm never trusting them again with anything.

Re:Alternatives?

[Cley Faye]

Other translation: I'm more than willing to pay for an app that I use regularly and is produced by people that have a fair amount of trust, and strangely enough force-feeding my phone with bloatware, adware and replacing basic functionalities with junk got them out of this fairly exclusive group.

Re:Alternatives?

[solidraven]

Nah you're related to them. Or you're a butt hurt app developer, either works. You fail to grasp the difference between scooping up a dog's "business" and asking if you can throw it in the trash can or doing the same and then burying the trash can with a dump truck of shit. ES File Explorer isn't so great that it gets the right to be so abusive to their users WITHOUT WARNING. Especially the latter is completely unacceptable.

Thanks!

[ArhcAngel]

I got up this morning and looked at my phone and saw the ad screen and was WTF!? because I had no idea what was generating it. I was late so I didn't have time to investigate further. Now I know what it was.

X-plore

[DiSKiLLeR]

I don't get it. What's wrong with X-plore? It's the midnight commander or norton commander style file manager for android and I've been using for some 5 years. It's amazing.

No bloat or other shit.

Never even heard of ES File Explorer before, and I guess I haven't been missing anything...

Scanning apps to make sure they're safe

[cdrudge]

It's annoyed me for a while now that it likes to scan every app I download to make sure it's "safe". I wonder if I hadn't uninstalled it just now if it would scan itself and prevent it from being installed?

I haven't seen any ads yet.

[mmell]

The instant I do, I'm just going to live without a file manager on my phone and tablet. I'll just plug 'em into a USB port and use the file manager on a host computer to do file management (because while my T-Mobile branded Samsung devices had always included a file manager, my unbranded Google Nexus 5 did not).

An annoyance - but I seldom encounter a file management issue so urgent on my Android devices that I can't wait until I have a host computer to work with. I can't handle being subject to a developer's whim regarding features and advertising on such a truly critical and fundamental application. Games? Sure. Email and calendar clients? Less so, but okay. My file manager, SSH client, word processor/spreadsheet applications? NO.

At least Linux and MS-Windows systems don't seem too interested in monetizing file managers.

never trusted them

[L053R]

I never could figure out how they made money. The seemed to offer great software for nothing until recently. If you can't figure out what the product is... it is you. That is why I paid $2 for FX File Explorer.

It's not about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

For me at least, it's not about the sticking ads in there. They're developers and they have (until recently) made a great application that was my go-to file manager for years.
The problem is that they have, without any notification whatsoever, silently added a 3rd party app to theirs. Not only that, but the app they have bundled is totally crap. It "claims" that it will boost your phone's charging rate by 20%, which is just total and utter rubbish (in my, admittedly short test, it lengthened the charging time significantly, 2hrs 50m with app running, 1hr 39m without it)

Had they:
* Chosen something less dubious, less "malware" looking/behaving
* Made any kind of notice about it on the Google Play store, or when you ran the app, or when you upgraded.
* ASKED me if I wanted to silently change my phone's lock screen

Then I'd have at least had a choice about it. As it is, this piece of crap "charging booster" screams malware, that, plus their shady install tactics shatters the trust I genuinely felt for this app and the developers. Bear in mind that the file manager itself has access to all files and folders and if you have rooted your phone it will have root access as well, this is an unbelievably poor decision from the developer(s).

Re:Hasn't replaced my lockscreen

[bdenton42]

No it actually comes baked into ES. If you accidentally tap the prominent "Charging Boost ... ENABLE" box which takes up the lower third of the ES screen it gets enabled without going to Google Play at all. And then there is no way to disable it from ES or manage application... you have to put the phone on a charger and trigger the app, then choose the gear icon in the upper right to change the app setting to off.

Re:Only APPS can app apps!

[KGIII]

I haven't seen him in a while so this is the best I can offer...

Apps are for cows. Only cows use apps. You app using cow. Mooo!!!

Here's to you, cow man!

Imma post this bitch logged in.