# Mobile Client

[`tfks/dropbear-android`](https://git.tfks.net/tfks/dropbear-android/releases) is a native Android app for browsing and viewing a synced bucket from your phone. It is not the desktop daemon ported to a phone, and it isn't a sync peer.

## What it is

Dropbear's daemon model assumes a **normal POSIX userland that mobile OSes don't provide**: a real directory it can watch, a long-lived background process, and user-controlled extended attributes for marking [shelved](/glossary#shelve) files. Phones don't offer that, so the Android app is a separate, native, **read-only viewer**. It talks directly to the bucket over the S3 API with its own credential, lists the namespace from the (tiny) [manifests](/glossary#manifest), and fetches a [blob](/glossary#blob) only when you open a file — the same on-demand model the desktop's [materialized views](/features/on-demand) use, applied to a phone that's shelved by default.

It never uploads, never writes a manifest, and never participates in conflict or tombstone handling. Anything you can do on the phone is safe to do while a desktop device is mid-sync.

## Credentials

Each phone gets its own **read-only, whole-bucket** object storage token, scoped to that device. A lost or stolen phone is a single credential revocation, not a fleet-wide key rotation — but until revoked, that token can read every root in the bucket. There's no per-root scoping without a broker server in front of the bucket, so treat the phone's credential with the same care as the bucket's read-only access as a whole.

## Installing

The app isn't in an app store yet.

- **Manual:** grab an APK from the [releases page](https://git.tfks.net/tfks/dropbear-android/releases) and side-load it.
- **[Obtainium](https://wiki.obtainium.imranr.dev/):** point Obtainium at the releases URL above to track new releases and auto-update the app the way a store install would, without a store.

## What it isn't

- Not a second sync engine — it doesn't watch, hash, upload, or write a manifest.
- Not a gateway client — no server sits between the phone and the bucket.
- Not encrypted client-side — the bucket layout and blob contents are whatever the desktop devices wrote. Encrypt sensitive files yourself if that matters to you.
- No iOS equivalent yet — see [Gaps & Known Issues](/gaps).