file-manager/docs/STORE_LISTING.md

Play Store listing (M10)

Ready-to-paste copy for the Main store listing page, plus the graphics that go with it. Every graphic is generated from the app's own vectors, so a rebrand is a re-run rather than a redraw.

See PLAY_RELEASE_CHECKLIST § 7 for where this fits in the release.

App name

Plain Files

Deliberately not "File Manager": dozens of apps are literally called that, and a distinctive name is what makes a listing findable and rememberable. It is one string (app_name in values/strings.xml); the applicationId is separate and already locked.

Graphics

./tools/make-store-assets.sh                          # icon + feature graphic -> store-assets/
./tools/make-store-screenshots.sh                     # phone    -> screenshots/phone/
FORM_FACTOR=tablet-7in  ./tools/make-store-screenshots.sh
FORM_FACTOR=tablet-10in ./tools/make-store-screenshots.sh

Screenshots

Play's slots, and what each needs:

Slot	How many	Target here	Notes
Phone	2–8	screenshots/phone/ — 1080×2160	A phone at its native 1080×2400 is 2.22:1 and is rejected; the normaliser crops chrome and clamps to 2:1
7-inch tablet	4+ recommended	screenshots/tablet-7in/ — 1200×1920	A tablet frame is already inside the 2:1 cap, so 0 px of crop
10-inch tablet	4+ recommended	screenshots/tablet-10in/ — 2560×1600	Landscape profile (matches the tablet10 AVD); Play accepts either orientation

What the phone set shows (eight slots, the maximum): the home screen, a folder listing, the photo grid, storage usage, the sort sheet, the Copy to… picker, the trash with its 24-hour window, and the compress dialog. The last three are M16-M20's work; the picker is shot at the volume list so it names no folder that exists on the real device.

The library the shots are taken over

Never shoot over a real device's storage. Published screenshots are public, and a file list exposes real folder names and document titles. The library is generated instead:

python3 tools/make-demo-library.py        # -> demo-files/ (git-ignored, ~161 MB)
adb push demo-files /sdcard/Download/PlainFiles-Demo

⚠️ The home screen and the library views need this more than a folder listing does. A library is not a folder — it lists files from everywhere — so shooting Images on a real phone publishes the owner's own filenames and thumbnails, and the home screen's counts publish how many files of each kind the device holds. Both must be shot on a device, or an AVD, whose only storage is the demo library. This was found by running the libraries on a real phone and seeing its owner's files in them: EDGE_CASE_TESTING.

tools/make-demo-library.py builds eight distinct sample images (so the grid view and thumbnails have something to show), a handful of documents, sized stand-ins for video and audio so the storage-usage screen has something worth ranking, and a real ZIP so the extract action can be exercised. Every name and every pixel is fake by construction.

One consequence worth knowing before shooting the Videos library: the video stand-ins are zero-filled, so they cannot be decoded and photograph as the fallback film icon rather than as a frame. A screenshot that shows video thumbnails needs a real clip, which is one command:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "testsrc2=duration=3:size=320x240:rate=15" -pix_fmt yuv420p clip.mp4   # synthetic, no camera needed
adb push clip.mp4 /sdcard/Download/PlainFiles-Demo/Video/

Asset	Play's spec	Result	Source
App icon	512×512, 32-bit PNG with alpha, ≤ 1 MB	store-assets/icon-512.png — 512×512, RGBA, ~5 KB	tools/store-assets/icon.svg, mirroring ic_launcher_background.xml + ic_launcher_foreground.xml. Background, paths and opacities are identical, so the store icon is the launcher icon rather than a lookalike that drifts.
Feature graphic	1024×500, JPEG or 24-bit PNG without alpha	store-assets/feature-graphic-1024x500.png — 1024×500, RGB	tools/store-assets/feature-graphic.svg
Phone screenshots	no alpha, shorter side ≥ 320, longer side ≤ 3840, longer side ≤ 2× shorter	store-assets/screenshots/phone/ (1080×2160)	tools/make-store-screenshots.sh, from adb captures in store-assets/raw-screenshots/phone/

Two details worth keeping:

• The icon is full bleed. The background rect covers all 108 dp, so every pixel is opaque and Play's mask can crop to any shape without showing a gap.
• A phone at its native 1080×2400 is 2.22:1 and is therefore rejected. The normaliser crops the status and navigation bars and then clamps to 1080×2160 — system chrome only, never app content. Tablets are already inside the 2:1 cap, so their crop defaults to 0.

The feature graphic's safe area

Play crops the feature graphic to a centre square for some placements, so all of the copy sits inside x 262…762 and the motif — which does not survive — is decoration. Verified by actually cropping the rendered PNG rather than by trusting the arithmetic:

magick store-assets/feature-graphic-1024x500.png -gravity Center -crop 500x500+0+0 +repage /tmp/square.png

Short description (80 characters max)

Browse, organise and manage your files. Ad-free, offline, pay once.

Full description (4000 characters max)

Plain Files is a straightforward file manager for Android — no ads, no account, no
subscription, and no network access at all. You buy it once and it is yours.

BROWSE ANYTHING
• Internal storage, SD cards and USB drives, side by side
• List or grid view, with sorting by name, size, date or type
• Breadcrumb navigation, and a search that can look in one folder or everywhere
• Hidden files on request

ANY SIZE OF SCREEN
• On a tablet or a wide window you get two panes: the folder list on the left, and what is
  inside the folder you pick on the right — no jumping back and forth
• Pictures preview at full size beside the list, with their details
• The same layout on a phone, a 7-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet

WORKS WITH YOUR OTHER APPS
• Share a file to Plain Files from anywhere, then pick the folder to drop it in
• Choose Plain Files when another app asks you for a file
• Search everywhere at once: an index means answers arrive right away instead of after a
  long scan — and it always says how current it is
• Delete, rename or move by mistake? Undo it

MANAGE YOUR FILES
• Copy, move, rename and delete, one item or many at once
• Rename a whole batch at once, numbered in a series that carries on where the last one stopped
• Create folders and edit text files in the built-in editor
• See the details of anything: size, type, location, modified date
• Open a file in any app, or share it

FIND OUT WHERE THE SPACE WENT
• A storage-usage view that measures every folder and ranks it largest first
• Spot the folder that is actually eating your storage, then act on it

ARCHIVES
• Create ZIP archives, and extract ZIP, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ, GZ, BZ2, XZ and 7z
• Look inside an archive before you extract anything — text, images, documents, audio and
  video included, read straight out of the file
• RAR is not supported — it needs native code this app does not ship, and it says so rather
  than failing with a strange error

PRIVATE BY DEFAULT
• No INTERNET permission. The app cannot send your data anywhere, because it has no way to.
• No analytics, no advertising SDKs, no third-party trackers
• No account, no sign-in, nothing to remember
• Your files stay on your device, always

SOLD ONCE
• One purchase, every feature, no ads and nothing to buy inside the app
• No subscription

PERMISSIONS, EXPLAINED
Plain Files asks for "All files access" because that is what browsing and managing files
anywhere on a device requires — the app's core purpose. Google Play only grants this
permission to app types that genuinely need it, and a file manager is one of them. If you
would rather not grant it, the app still works: it can browse a folder you pick yourself
through Android's own folder picker, and it remembers that choice.

Read the privacy policy: https://example.invalid/plain-files/privacy

Replace the privacy-policy URL with the real public URL before publishing — a repository file is not acceptable to Play. PRIVACY.md is the source text.

Why the permission sentence matters

Play requires that an app's core functionality be prominently documented and promoted in the app's description when it declares MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. The "PERMISSIONS, EXPLAINED" section is not marketing copy — it is the evidence the Permissions Declaration Form asks for.

Ad headlines (App campaign, 30 characters each)

Google App campaigns take up to five headlines, and the system mixes and matches them, so each one has to stand on its own rather than continue the one before it. Counts include spaces and are measured, not estimated:

Headline	Chars	Angle
Ad-free file manager	20	The whole pitch, in three words
Pay once, keep it forever	25	One-time price, no subscription
Works offline. No network.	26	The privacy claim the APK actually backs
SD cards and USB drives	23	Reach beyond internal storage
See where your storage went	27	The storage-usage view

Spares, to swap in when an asset group wants a different emphasis: Two panes on your tablet (24), Undo a delete you regret (24), Built for phones and tablets (28).

Three rules these are written to:

• Never "free". This is a paid app, so a headline implying otherwise is misleading as well as a policy problem. The launch price is the only discount, and it belongs in the price field, not in a headline.
• No superlatives. "Best", "top" and "#1" are unverifiable claims, and they are not how this app sells anyway — the differentiator is what it does not contain.
• Sentence case, no shouting. No all-caps text, no emoji, no stacked punctuation; Google's editorial policy refuses all three, and it matches the voice of the listing copy above.

The app name is taken from the store listing (App name above) and is not repeated in a headline.

Still to do before publishing

• Screenshots. tools/make-store-screenshots.sh is written and the raw-screenshot directories are in place, but no captures have been taken yet, so store-assets/screenshots/ is empty. Capture against a synthetic library — never a real one, since published screenshots would expose real file names.
• Tablet screenshots. Play has a 7-inch and a 10-inch slot, each wanting 4+.