Great Android Apps: Ghost Commander
Ghost Commander is an open source file
manager available from Sourceforge[1],
F-Droid, or Google Play (if you must).
It has a couple of interesting quirks.
One involves navigation. If you touch
a file on the left hand side of the
screen, Ghost Commander will attempt
to open it. If you touch the file on
the right hand side of the screen, the
file will be selected and you can
them choose an operation (move, copy,
delete, etc.). You can also touch a
number of files on the right side to
select a group of files and conduct a
batch operation.
The other oddity involves copying and
moving files. Ghost commander is a
dual panel file manager (although you
can set up the panels to be like tabs
and only view one at a time). When you
select a file in one panel and choose
to move or copy it, the file is moved
or copied to the location in the other
panel. So in practice, you first
navigate to the file you want to move
or copy in one panel, then go to the
other panel and navigate to the
destination directory, and then go
back and perform the move/copy
function. As noted, it's odd, but it
works well enough.
But Ghost Commander's greatest
strength is perhaps unintended. Some
time ago I wrote about keeping my
calendar, contacts, and tasks in plain
text files.[2]
Ghost Commander is the perfect app for
doing that, because it has the ability
to send shortcuts to files and folders
to the Android home screen.
So, you can create a calendar text
file, and place a link/icon for it on
the home screen.
Likewise, you can set up a contacts
text file, and place a link to it on
the home screen.
Finally, you can do the same with
folders. So you can put a shortcut
icon for a folder that you'll put your
notes in -- as separate text files --
on the home screen.
Even better, if you use a custom
launcher, like Nova Launcher, you can
rename those files if necessary, and
change the icons -- to a calendar
icon, a contacts icon, and a notes
icon. You get the idea.
And here's the best part: they'll all
open automatically with Ghost
Commander, which has a built-in text
editor.
A nice easter egg: if you have phone
numbers in the contacts file, long
press on them and options to call or
text those numbers will appear.
Install syncthing and you can keep
your plain text PIM files synced to
your other computers.
[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostcommander/
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~visiblink/phlog/20190106