Official Mega application for Android released

What's the next best thing next to creating an application for your website or service? Right, buying an existing application. That's apparently what Mega Limited did recently as it acquired the Mega application for Android from its original developer. You find evidence of that in the what's new section where the acquisition is confirmed.

It is the first official mobile app for Mega and now officially maintained by the company and its contractors. The application supports many of the features that you would expect from a file hosting application: you can download and upload files, browse all files that you have uploaded to Mega.co.nz, or drop all photos that you take with the phone's camera to your account directly.

First thing that you need to do is enter your Mega email address and password to get access to the account. All folders and files hosted on the account are then displayed in the apps' interface. You only need to tap on files to download them to your Android device and execute them from there.

The process itself is unobtrusive and elegant. Please note that files only get downloaded to your device if you select them, and that an open dialog is automatically displayed to you when downloads finish. The files seem to be downloaded to the phone's cache only if you download them this way. If you long press a file and select the download icon from the toolbar, you do however get options to save it to downloads or the file system.

You can create, delete, rename and move files and folders using the application as well. The new folder option is displayed in the main interface, while the renaming, moving and trashing options become only available once you have selected at least one file or folder with a long tap on it.

Links pointing to files stored on Mega can be created with a long tap and the selection of the link symbol in the main toolbar of the application. This displays all apps and technologies that you can use to share contents, including Google+, email services like Gmail or Bluetooth.

Official clients for Apple's iOS and Microsoft Windows will follow soon according to the official announcement over at the Mega website.

Mega Tips

1. A long tap on a file or folder selects it and displays check boxes next to all other files and folders so that you can select multiple files for download.
2. To configure Camera photo syncing do the following. Select the menu button of the Android device and select Camera Sync from the context menu. Tick the box of the same name on the next page and configure the feature. You can for instance limit uploads so that they are only processed when the device is connected to a wireless connection.
3. A long tap on a file and the selection of download lets you download it to a location of your choosing on the device.
4. Use the search on top to find any files or folders that you have stored on Mega.
5. Images are displayed directly with their thumbnails. The app does not feature an image viewer though, so that you need to use a third party viewer for that.

Verdict

The official Mega app works just fine. It is a little bit complicated to use, especially when it comes to downloading files to the Android device. While that takes just a tap, it stores files in a location that you cannot access unless you have root access to the device.

There is a way to download files to a location that you can access though, but it would have probably been better if that would have been made the default way of downloading files.

The application all in all works well and is fast when it comes to the downloading of files from Mega or the updating of file lists. If you are using Mega and own an Android device, you may want to give it a try.

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