Browsing and Managing Files on the Watch - Lists, Grids, File Actions and Locked Containers

On the watch's home screen, open Phone. Pick Video, Audio, Images, Documents or All, and the watch lists what the phone holds of that kind - no digging through folders first. Tap a file and the watch fetches it from the phone and opens it in its own player.

The same categories carry the same names and colors on the watch's own storage and on your network resources, so once you know one list you know them all. Walking the phone's real folder tree, searching and sorting are covered in phone and network folders on the watch.

Every file list - the watch's own files and those of a network resource - can be shown as a List, a Grid 2 or a Grid 3. Pick the one you like under Files view in the watch's settings; it is kept separately from Screens view, the look of the navigation screens, so a roomy list of sections and a dense grid of photos can live side by side.

In a grid, each cell shows a real picture. For a photo on a server the watch reads only the first part of the file, where the camera tucked a small preview, so thumbnails appear without downloading whole photos over the air. A file with no preview shows a large icon of its kind - a note for music, a film frame for video - filling the cell, and the name underneath runs over two lines instead of being cut off after a few letters.

In a list, each row carries a small colored icon of its kind beside the name. On a small watch where three columns would make every cell too small to hit reliably, Grid 3 quietly falls back to two.

Press and hold a file to start selecting. Tap more files to add them, or tap Select all. The top line counts them - Selected: 3 - and the menu offers what these files allow:

• Send to phone - a copy goes to the phone, the watch keeps its own.
• Move to phone - the watch removes its copy only after the phone confirms the file arrived whole.
• Delete - asks first, because Deleting from the watch cannot be undone.
• Rename - type a New name; a name already taken is changed a little, and the watch shows the final one: Saved as ...

Delete and rename work on files the app keeps on the watch. Files from a network resource (SMB, FTP or SFTP) are read-only here - you can open and send them, but not change them on the server.

After Send to phone or Move to phone, the watch tells you for each file where it went:

• Saved to .. with the folder name - the file is on the phone.
• Queued for upload to .. - the phone is set to pass files from the watch on to a network or cloud folder, and the upload is under way in the background.
• No destination configured - the phone has nowhere set up to put files from the watch yet.

If a background upload fails later on, the watch gets an Upload failed notification naming the file and the place it was going to, so nothing disappears silently. Where files from the watch land is chosen on the phone - see the watch as a resource on the phone.

A photo you took with the watch or a voice note you recorded there lives in the watch's shared storage, and its press-and-hold menu offers Delete, Rename and Move as well as sending it to the phone. Because those files belong to the watch rather than to the app, the watch first shows its own system prompt asking you to allow the change, and the action finishes as soon as you answer.

If your watch has no such prompt at all, the action simply isn't listed, so the menu never offers something that would only be refused. The menu for one file and the menu for a selection always show the same set.

Some files just don't belong on a wrist. In the watch's Phone section, tap a file the watch can't show - a PDF, a text file, an archive - or press and hold any file and pick Open on phone. Nothing is copied to the watch first, so the offer is there straight away.

• If the phone app is already on screen, the file opens there at once and the watch says Showing on your phone.
• If it isn't, the phone shows a notification naming the file, and the watch says Tap the notification on your phone. One tap on the phone opens the file in the right viewer.
• If the phone's notifications for the app are switched off, the watch tells you exactly that - Phone cannot show it - turn on its notifications for the app - so you know the fix is on the phone, not the distance between you.

A FileDO container is a file sealed with a password - its name ends in .fd-sec. Tap one in a watch file list and the watch asks for the password, masked as you type. Enter it and the file inside opens in the usual viewer or player. The unlocked copy lives only in the app's private space on the watch and is wiped the moment you go back to the list.

Tick Remember password before you open it, and from then on the watch tries that password first - a container sealed with it opens straight into the viewer. If the remembered password doesn't fit a container, the watch forgets it and says The saved password did not fit and was forgotten. Enter the password. The password is kept only on the watch, in its protected storage; it is never shared with the phone and never written to any log.

To seal or unseal files on the watch itself, switch on FileDO encryption in the watch settings (it is off by default). A single file's menu then gains Encrypt FileDO and Decrypt FileDO. Encrypting asks for the password twice, keeps your original and reports Encrypted. The original is still here. An empty password is allowed, but the watch warns that it protects nothing.

*noLegal version only:* a container on a network resource opens the same way, from both the flat list and a folder walk. The watch fetches it over SMB, FTP or SFTP, asks for the password, opens what's inside and deletes the fetched copy right afterwards.