What the app can touch, and what it never does

Last reviewed: September 19, 2026

With All files access, Adinand Auto File Sorter can read and move any file in your shared storage — and it uses that only to list and move the files sitting directly in the folders you chose, into Downloads › Sorted Files. It is the broadest file permission Android grants, and a page that asks for it ought to say, in one place, exactly what it does with it — and exactly what it does not. This is that page.

The permission it holds

On Android 11 and newer the app declares MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, which Android surfaces to you as All files access. It is not granted by a pop-up: the app sends you to Android’s own settings page, where you turn on Allow access to manage all files yourself. On Android 10 there is no such permission, and the app uses the older read and write storage permissions instead.

Why a narrower permission will not do

Since Android 11, the system folder picker can no longer grant an app the root Download directory at all — nor the root of internal storage, nor the root of an SD card the manufacturer considers reliable. And the media store, which is the other route, only lets an app touch the files it created itself: a PDF your browser saved, or an archive a messaging app wrote, belongs to that app, so moving it needs a per-file permission dialog every time — or All files access. On top of that, a per-file picker consent cannot express an ongoing task that runs while the app is closed.

Google Play’s policy for this permission names the categories it is meant for — file managers, backup and restore apps, anti-virus apps and document management apps — and requires it to be the app’s core function rather than a side feature. Sorting files is the whole of what this app is. The permission, in Android’s own words.

What it uses the permission for

Listing the files sitting directly in the folders you selected — Downloads to begin with, and any others you add.
Reading each file’s name, extension, size and modification time, which is what decides whether it moves and where.
Moving those files into Downloads › Sorted Files, and moving them back again when you undo.
Reading file contents for exactly two on-device safety jobs, described below.

What it never does

It never sends a file anywhere. There is no account, no server of ours and no copy of anything off your phone. The app contains no HTTP client and no file-upload code of any kind; the only network use in it is Google Play Billing, which is how it learns whether you own Pro.
It never decides by looking inside a file. Routing is by file extension, lower-cased, and nothing else — so it never reads what is inside your files to sort them. There is no content analysis and no model doing the deciding.
It never roams your storage. Only the files sitting directly in a folder you selected are considered; the scan does not descend into sub-folders, and the folder it sorts into is never itself re-sorted. The folder your camera writes to is deliberately never offered as a preset, and a folder with no extension-bearing files in it is simply left alone.
It never removes anything to free space. It is a sorter: it moves files, which frees nothing. The one thing in it that can remove a file is the duplicate cleaner, on the copies you tick, and it keeps one copy of every file.
It never scatters your files. Everything it moves lands in one place — Downloads › Sorted Files — wherever it was found. A WhatsApp document does not stay next to WhatsApp. That is a deliberate design, and worth knowing before you add a second watched folder.

The two times it reads file contents

Both are on the phone, and neither has anywhere to send anything.

Before it could ever overwrite something. If a file arriving at Sorted Files has the same name as one already there, the two are compared byte for byte. Identical, and the file is treated as already moved; different, and it lands as name (1).ext. Matching sizes alone never decide, because two different files of the same size are common.
For the duplicate finder. It compares a SHA-256 hash of the file contents, so two files count as duplicates only when every byte matches.

The order every move happens in

Moving a file between volumes on Android is really a copy followed by a delete, and which way round they happen decides what an interrupted move costs you. Why that is true at all.

Reserve the destination name, atomically, so nothing else can take it.
Copy the file to that destination.
Verify the copy. A copy that does not check out is discarded, not kept.
Only then delete the original.

A failure at any step leaves the original exactly where it was, and the destination is never deleted at a moment when the source might already be gone. Foreground and background sorts cannot overlap: if one is running, a second request is dropped rather than queued behind it. And every sort is written into a database on the phone as it happens — a sort that cannot be recorded is abandoned and moves nothing, because a move nobody wrote down is a move you cannot undo.

The duplicate cleaner, and its 7-day trash

This is the only part of the app that removes a file, and only the copies you tick. They go to a trash folder inside Sorted Files and can be put back for 7 days, after which they are purged. One copy of every file is always kept, so a clean can never leave you with none of something. The finder needs Android 11 or newer; on Android 10 it says so rather than running a partial scan. It is free.

The other permissions, and one it deliberately does not ask for

INTERNET — used by Google Play Billing, and by nothing else.
com.android.vending.BILLING — to offer the one-time Pro upgrade.
POST_NOTIFICATIONS — for the one notification after a background run that moved something. Deny it, or mute the channel, and background sorting carries on; it just posts nothing.
RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED — so a background schedule survives a restart or an app update.
No battery-optimisation exemption. The app does not ask to be excused from Doze or App Standby, and holds no wake lock. Play policy reserves that for apps whose core function breaks without it. The consequence is honest rather than convenient: Android can stop a background run, and the app reports when it has.

And what it stores about you

Nothing that leaves the phone. Your settings, your rules and the Sort History live in the app’s own private storage, which Android isolates from other apps, and go when you uninstall or clear its data. There are no accounts, no analytics library, no crash-reporting library and no advertising library in the app at all. Google Play’s Data safety section for it says no data collected and no data shared.

The full document is the privacy policy.