Android FTP file transfer using MiXplorer

MiXplorer File Manager can help us not only manage files on our Android device but also share files between our phone and computers. This free app can turn our phones into FTP, HTTP or TCP SERVERS for wireless file sharing in local network.

In an earlier post, we used this app to connect our Android phone to remote FTP server. Today, we will show you how this app can help us setup FTP server on Android, then connect to the FTP server from a Windows PC or Mac using a free desktop FTP client to upload or download files and documents.

Setup FTP Server on Android

Download and install the free file manager app on your phone or tablet. Run the app, tap the More menu(three vertical dots) at the top right corner, you will see a drop-down menu list. Choose Servers from the list, you will then get the servers list as below.

Tap Start FTP Server to setup FTP server on your mobile phone. The FTP server IP, port number and FTP server root folder will be displayed.

Note that you can also tap on the Edit icon after the FTP server to configure the FTP server. For example, you can create an FTP account with username and password, choose a different FTP server path, define a different port number, ensure secure FTP via FTPS, etc. You can tap on the FTP server again to turn it off.

Connect to Android FTP server from computer

Connect your Windows PC or Mac computer to the same Wi-Fi network in your local network. Use a desktop FTP program to connect to the FTP server on Android. We recommend FileZilla FTP which is cross-platform, easy to use and best of all totally FREE. There are different ways to connect to Android FTP server from computer using this FTP client. We will use the quickconnect bar for establishing the connection below. Run FileZilla on your computer. We will use its Windows version in this demo. Enter the FTP server address into the quickconnect bar’s Host field. Enter the Port field with the FTP server port number which is 2121 by default. Now click on Quickconnect.

If you have set your login information, enter the username and password into the Username field and Password field separately.

Once the connection established, you can navigate through the directory structure and manage files on the Android device from FTP client applications on your PC or Mac.

Connecting to Android FTP server using web browser

Except FTP clients, you can also use Windows File Explorer, web browsers like Edge, Safari, Chrome on computer to connect to the FTP server on mobile phone. They are however not so powerful or user-friendly in file transfer like those professional FTP tools.

MiXplorer FTP Transfer known issues

We found this method doesn’t work with PNG images. Images were corrupted when we downloaded them from Android phone to PC through this FTP server transfer. JPG files however can be downloaded via FTP without any problem. We test MiXplorer version 6.44.0 on an Android device which is running on Android 7. A workaround is to use the file transfer via HTTP server as follows.

Android file transfer via HTTP server

If you only need to download files from Android phone to PC or Mac not the other way around, you can simply activate the HTTP server on Android phone, then connect to the HTTP server using any desktop browser on your computer. This HTTP server allows navigation of directory structure and management of files on Android mobile through web browsers on computers or other mobile devices connected to the same local network. File sharing via HTTP server is less highly functional and less convenient than a good FTP client or FTP transfer but does not require FTP client and can be done in most browsers.

We will discuss further about its HTTP server in another post soon.