Apollo is a File Explorer Homebrew for the Nintendo Switch. Its goal is to be the most convenient and reliable method to manage console's files.
Following the NX Homebrew Scene trend its name comes from Apollo - one of the Olympian deities, who is i.a. a god of music, truth, knowledge and protection of young.
It is also a reference to Apollo 11 - a spaceflight mission which allowed people to walk on the Moon.
Apollo is my first homebrew project, I hope you'll like it.

Overview
Apollo's current features are:

- Graphical User Interface: Minimalist design which is based on default hbmenu and official home menu esthetic.
- Selecting items: A simple but mandatory feature.
- Copying files and directories: Before doing so, application checks whether user is trying to overwrite currently existing files or directories and then asks about overwriting them.
- Recursive directory deletion: It allows for complete deletion of directories' content and obviously for file deletion.
- Renaming files and directories: Speaks for itself.
- Sorting items: Alphabetically or reversed.

Screenshots

Spoiler: Click for screenshots

Planned features
Planned features for the very next release:

- Moving files and directories
- Showing files and directories' information (size, permissions)
- Sorting files by size and reversed
- Remembering cursor's position while browsing between folders
- Viewing images
- Viewing text files
- Extracting .rar and .zip files
- Creating directories and files

Download

Download: https://github.com/evo-brut3/Apollo/releases/latest
Github: https://github.com/evo-brut3/Apollo​

Credits
- devkitPro for providing toolchain.
- XorTroll for the amazing Plutonium which allowed Apollo to look like this and the Goldleaf which is a mine of knowledge.
- GilFerraz for his beautiful Miiverse UI concept which inspired me to create sidebar.
- Lucas Lacerda for his Nintendo Switch UI Concept.
- jaames for the nx-hbmenu mockup which helped me with the design.
- Nintendo for security <3.

 

[FoxMcloud5655]

Thank you very much, hearing that from the creator of the most advanced file explorer for the Switch means a lot to me. I must say that making Apollo gave me more knowledge than 3 years of high school (they taught me english not c++).

When someone has something they want to make and they're willing to learn whatever it takes to realize their dream, it can be a very rewarding and educational experience. I speak from my own experience Happy to see that you took an idea and ran with it!

Speaking of a dark theme, that would be highly appreciated myself, as I love keeping things dark on my screen. Helps with power saving AND helps my eyes not strain too much!

 

[Dichotomy754]

When someone has something they want to make and they're willing to learn whatever it takes to realize their dream, it can be a very rewarding and educational experience. I speak from my own experience Happy to see that you took an idea and ran with it!

Speaking of a dark theme, that would be highly appreciated myself, as I love keeping things dark on my screen. Helps with power saving AND helps my eyes not strain too much!

Too bad it basically all has to come from self motivation. Early schools fail by focusing on what students struggle with rather than encouraging what captures their interest, children are naturally curious but the educational system beats that out of them.

Anyhow, while I just prefer a darker aesthetic there are some people where dark mode is a full on accessibility feature.

 

[evo-brut3]

Dark theme won't be a problem, but I'm not yet sure what colors should I use.

 

[realdev]

An MTP interpreter would be great for editing files over USB. But good work! Looks great.

 

[mrmole]

Will you also support .cbr and .cbz for graphic novels? Or at least allow for their extraction (they are just rar/zip archives with changed extension)?

 

[hippy dave]

My role model is currently banned from Google Play Es File Explorer, which before deletion was mine "must-have' tool.

Hehe wow I didn't know that had got banned from the Play store. And I just looked, there are already so many fakes on there. It was my android file explorer of choice too, was best before it changed hands and got more heavy on the ads and paid features, but was still possible to get a version running nicely up until fairly recently. RIP I guess.

On my new phone I got MiXplorer as it was linked from a guide I was following, and it goes nicely with my EMUI phone and has done everything I need so far, with no ads or bullshit.

 

[Pluupy]

Why would I want this over NX Shell

 

[hippy dave]

Why would I want this over NX Shell

Options are good. So far you wouldn't, unless you want to see its progress (so far so good), but it sounds like the future holds good things.

 

[Dichotomy754]

Hehe wow I didn't know that had got banned from the Play store. And I just looked, there are already so many fakes on there. It was my android file explorer of choice too, was best before it changed hands and got more heavy on the ads and paid features, but was still possible to get a version running nicely up until fairly recently. RIP I guess.

On my new phone I got MiXplorer as it was linked from a guide I was following, and it goes nicely with my EMUI phone and has done everything I need so far, with no ads or bullshit.

ES Explorer may no longer be in the play store, but it is available from XDA Labs. Who have a handy app for installing and updating underground apps.

 

[hippy dave]

ES Explorer may no longer be in the play store, but it is available from XDA Labs. Who have a handy app for installing and updating underground apps.

Good tip thanks, think I'm happy having moved on from it now tho.

 

[chaoskagami]

I thought about ftp, but I don't know whether should I implement someone's code or code it myself. I'm also interested in the way that current ftp (for example ftpd) works 'cause it doesn't show japanese/chinese/korean signs and I'm curious if it is possible to support these languages.

The FS module has bugs with non-ASCII filenames and is incapable of handling them. See here. Theoretically, if the bug in FS were to be fixed and you use UTF-8 encoding it should just work, but that day probably isn't coming anytime soon. Blame Nintendo.

Either way, cool tool. I like seeing options for people to choose from.

 

[evo-brut3]

The FS module has bugs with non-ASCII filenames and is incapable of handling them.

That would explain why I wasn't able to support these languages in Apollo, but still I'm curious if there's something that can be done with this.

Will you also support .cbr and .cbz for graphic novels? Or at least allow for their extraction (they are just rar/zip archives with changed extension)?

If there are only images packed in archives then it should be simple to implement.

 

[huma_dawii]

I don't mind some competition but the all the planned features are already incorporated into NX Shell apart from text editing/viewing. Anyways I hope to see more uniqueness from your project rather than another program that does the same thing in different ways.

Make one for Wii U, there is definitely no competition there.

 

[chaoskagami]

That would explain why I wasn't able to support these languages in Apollo, but still I'm curious if there's something that can be done with this.

Unless you reverse FS and patch or reimplement it, no.

The burden to fix it here is on Nintendo or CFW developers like the atmosphere team. There's not much if anything that can be done from the homebrew application side, nor on libnx's side of things. Nintendo has yet to fix it, likely because it only affects homebrew and doesn't affect files inside a romfs.

This has also negatively affected several other homebrew projects; EasyRPG is probably the one hit the hardest, since half the library of games for RPG maker uses Japanese filenames.

 

[blawar]

I believe that these features are mandatory for any file explorer. My role model is currently banned from Google Play Es File Explorer, which before deletion was mine "must-have' tool. I'll be happy to give it more uniqueness, but this not a game nor a movie, this is a tool, so having same features which works in different ways is unavoidable.

I have concerns about your project. You seem to be modeling it after android, however (and i know this is obvious), the switxh is not android. android doesn’t have joycons or a dock, it’s touch screen only. you can not use a touch only design on a switch, the usability of docked mode would be nearly unusable.

additionally, you are using plutonium. plutonium is not going to get you anywhere near that type of UI, i don’t see a viable path for getting where you are now, to getting where you want to be.

 

[chaoskagami]

I have concerns about your project. You seem to be modeling it after android, however (and i know this is obvious), the switxh is not android. android doesn’t have joycons or a dock, it’s touch screen only. you can not use a touch only design on a switch, the usability of docked mode would be nearly unusable.

additionally, you are using plutonium. plutonium is not going to get you anywhere near that type of UI, i don’t see a viable path for getting where you are now, to getting where you want to be.

In other words, you don't like Plutonium and want to complain in a completely irrelevant manner to this topic (NX-Shell is based on CM File Manager, for reference.) Got it.

 

[blawar]

In other words, you don't like Plutonium and want to complain in a completely irrelevant manner to this topic (NX-Shell is based on CM File Manager, for reference.) Got it.

I didn’t say i did, or did not like plutonium. plutonium is not a fully featured windowing library, that is a massive undertaking. @XorTroll obly implemented the minimum he needed for goldleaf, which is understandable. but will not get this guy to where he wants to be without a ton of modification.

what most people may not understand is that he got this basic version of the app out very quick because he used pretty much off the shelf plutonium stuff, but he is going to start hitting some hard walls soon.

edit: i also agree with joel, i would like to see some innovation from this project to make it worth while. a different GUI is not a worth while basis for a project, there are plenty of unique projects that he could spend his time writing, that the scene needs. But it is his time to spend any way he chooses.

 

[chaoskagami]

edit: i also agree with joel, i would like to see some innovation from this project to make it worth while. a different GUI is not a worth while basis for a project, there are plenty of unique projects that he could spend his time writing, that the scene needs. But it is his time to spend any way he chooses.

I wouldn't say not worthwhile (it's up to him how he spends his time, not us), but it is true there are other tools that would be beneficial to homebrewers more than a second file manager project, and that Plutonium could use some more functionality than it currently has. I'll concede that, at least.

Also, Plutonium is not a windowing library. You don't need a windowing library on a game console; any form of window management would be counterintuitive (and one could just port something like MyGui anyways.) Plutonium is a UI framework. There is a very, very large difference in scope and provided functionality between the two.

Since this really has nothing to do with the topic at hand, I'm going to abstain from further off-topic discussion on this. This thread is about the OP's application. Not Plutonium.

 

[blawar]

I wouldn't say not worthwhile (it's up to him how he spends his time, not us), but it is true there are other tools that would be beneficial to homebrewers more than a second file manager project, and that Plutonium could use some more functionality than it currently has. I'll concede that, at least.

Also, Plutonium is not a windowing library. You don't need a windowing library on a game console; any form of window management would be counterintuitive. Plutonium is a UI framework. There is a very, very large difference.

i think you are misunderstanding what “windowing” means. it’s not having multiple windows up that you can drag around like on a PC. Every UI element is generally it’s own window. Depends on the framework, but generally each window handles it’s own draw events, click events, etc. each button, menu item, frame, menu are their own windows.

 

[seeWood]

Great Plugin @evo-brut3 Looking forward to the new features you announced!

The Black Style that was requested to you, i created one :-) You can Name it Dark Side of the Moon :-P

and.. i dont know if it is possible, but i would like to see these features:
- FTP Support directly through the Menu of Apollo (like FTP Support on VitaShell)
- OTG USB Support

So keep on going and stay on your Job, i like the Style from Apollo!