Review: Readdle brings Documents to the small screen

Readdle has finally brought their popular Documents iPad app to the iPhone and iPod touch with the latest update. The iPhone version has all of the features you would expect in a file management app and a few extras.

The main file manager window displays all of your files in a grid or list sorted by name, date, or size. You can create folders, zip and unzip archives, and view a variety of file types from this view. PDFs, plaintext files, audio, pictures, and more can be added to your collection. The audio player works when the app is in the background so you can continue listening to your music.

Your most recently used files will accumulate in a special folder automatically so you can find them again easily. A search feature on the main page allows you to search any file by name, but you can also enable an indexing feature lets the app search the contents of your documents as well.

Any file can be moved to your iCloud storage and synced across all of your devices. This provides a great solution for keeping your files in sync without worrying about the potential security implications of a third-party service hosting your files. The iCloud tab functions much like the main file browser.

If you prefer not to use iCloud, Documents also supports a wide variety of cloud storage services—ten of them, to be exact—including support for custom FTP servers. You can also connect directly to a computer on the same Wi-Fi network via Bonjour. The “Wi-Fi Drive” allows you to manage your phone’s files from your computer like you would with a regular USB drive.

My favorite feature of Documents for iPhone, though, is the web browser. It functions almost exactly like the browser found in 1Password 4, even down to the animation that it uses when sliding open. The Documents web browser has a built-in downloads manager that allows you to grab any file from the Internet and save it to your phone or iCloud storage. It also supports bookmarking favorite pages, although it can’t read your iCloud-synced Safari bookmarks. I did notice that one a few occasions the browser ignored any input and just sat there, but it seems to be a fairly rare issue and force-quitting the app fixes it just fine.

Documents for iPhone is a fantastic file browser, especially considering the fact that it’s absolutely free. If you’ve already got the iPad version, just install the latest update to get the universal version.