Privacy policy

Effective 30 October 2026

Fileglow is a file manager for Android made by Marko Zanoski. A file manager can see your files, so this policy explains exactly what Fileglow does with them. The short version: your files stay where they are, on your phone or on the servers you add. Fileglow collects nothing and sends nothing to us. There is no account, no advertising, no analytics and no server of ours.

Your files

Fileglow asks for All files access (on Android 11 and later) or the storage permissions (on Android 7 to 10) so it can show, open, copy, move, rename, zip, unzip and delete files in any folder, when you ask it to. It reads a file only to show it, preview it or do the job you started. It does not scan, upload or index your files for anything else.

To show what fills your storage and your recent photos, Fileglow reads Android's own index of media files (MediaStore) on your phone. Thumbnails of photos are made on your phone and kept in memory only.

When you use Sort photos (Pro), Fileglow reads the date and the GPS position stored inside each photo or video you sort, and names the nearest town from a list of places built into the app (from GeoNames, CC BY 4.0). This happens on your phone. Nothing is looked up online and no position is kept after the sort.

What Fileglow keeps on your phone

In its own private storage, which other apps cannot read:

• Your settings. Your look and theme, sorting and view for each folder, text size and trash settings.
• Jumps and pins. Which folders you open most, and the places you pinned to Home.
• Network shares. The shares you add with Pro: their name, address, port, user name and password. Passwords are encrypted with a key held in Android's keystore. For SFTP, each server's public key is kept the first time you connect, so a changed key can be refused.
• Your purchase. Whether Pro is unlocked, so the app knows without asking Google Play every time.

Files you move to the trash go to a hidden folder named .fileglow-trash on the same volume, with a small note of where each came from, until you put them back, empty the trash, or the time you chose runs out. Files from a share opened in another app are copied to Fileglow's cache on your phone for that app to read.

Fileglow turns off Android backup, so none of this is copied to a cloud backup.

What leaves your phone

Fileglow uses the internet for two things only:

• Network shares you add (Pro). Fileglow connects straight to the SMB, SFTP or FTP server you entered, to list and move files there. Your user name and password go only to that server. Nothing passes through us. Note that plain FTP sends passwords and files unencrypted, as the FTP protocol does; prefer SFTP where you can.
• Google Play. To buy Pro and to check that it is unlocked, through Google Play Billing.

Nothing else is sent anywhere. Fileglow works fully offline for the files on your phone.

Your launcher's theme

When Phosphor or Hyprtile is your home screen, Fileglow asks it for its current theme on your phone: colours and the names of the look. The launchers answer only Fileglow and the Keyglow keyboard. Nothing about your files is shared.

Sharing with other apps

When you choose Open with, Fileglow hands that one file to the app you pick, with permission to read it. No other app gets access to your files through Fileglow.

Permissions

• All files access (Android 11 and later), or read and write storage (Android 7 to 10): to work on your files.
• Internet: only for the network shares you add and the Google Play purchase.
• Photo locations (Android 10 and later): asked only if Sort photos finds no GPS in any photo, since some phones hide it. It lets Fileglow read where a photo was taken, from the photo itself.

Fileglow never asks where you are: it has no location, contacts, camera, microphone or phone permission.

What we do not do

• No accounts and no sign in.
• No ads and no advertising identifiers.
• No analytics, crash reporting or tracking libraries.
• No cloud of ours and no AI service.
• No selling or sharing of data, because we do not collect any.

Payments

If you buy Fileglow or Pro on Google Play, Google handles the payment under its own privacy policy. We receive no card details and no personal data from that purchase beyond what Google Play shows every developer in sales reports.

This website

This site uses no cookies, no analytics and no outside fonts or scripts. The file browser demo on the home page runs in your browser with example folders and sends nothing. The site is hosted on Vercel, which keeps short server logs to run and protect the service.

Children

Fileglow is a general audience app and is not directed at children under 13. It collects no personal data from anyone.

Deleting your data

Everything Fileglow keeps is on your phone. Remove a share in Network shares, empty the trash from the Trash screen, clear the app's storage in Android settings, or uninstall the app. Uninstalling leaves your own files and the trash folders in place; empty the trash first if you want those gone. There is nothing on our side to delete.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about privacy: zanoski.marko@gmail.com (write an email)