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If you can use Termux, you can use the command-line lftp, which supports SFTP; I use this on Linux, so I'm familiar with it.
$ pkg install lftp
$ lftp sftp://foo.com
I also use rsync in Termux after being exasperated over the lack of a reasonable F-Droid graphical client for that.
I wound up using some non-open-source graphical SCP or SFTP client out of the Google Play Store using Aurora Store's anonymous login at one point, which worked but wasn't what I wanted to use.
Material Files has good SFTP support.
True, I am using it regularly. However large transfers that take a long time have the tendency to crash quite frequently unless you leave the app open and the screen on, in my experience.
So at some point I setup Syncthing with a specififc folder on my phone that during charging the phone just gets synced with my server. Yes, the syncthing-fork that had some drama recently.
I also find it to be very slow on many networks, and even in ideal conditions it might get 2MB/s when the phone has a 10MB/s connection.
For photos and predictable stuff I thus use syncthing, and the odd very large thing I send using scp with termux.
Total Commander for Android has an SFTP plugin. They run their own fdroid repo.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| SCP | Secure Copy encrypted file transfer tool, authenticates and transfers over SSH |
| SFTP | Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH |
| SMB | Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.
[Thread #149 for this comm, first seen 9th Mar 2026, 05:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
rclone or rsync on ternux maybe, or totalcmd if you want gui file manager thing
I've used Ghost Commander for this; I've tried several and disliked it the least. That said, really wind up doing SCP over command line with termux.
Owl files if you want a nice simple gui, but cli like termux or terminus are better for mass file transfer
I got into this issue recently, and the ones on F droid are bad like you say. So after trying many I ended up using 2 apps. If you want an open sources app, then good old Ghost Commander works very good. It has very good transfer rate and stability. The downside is the old interface, although some people might like it, and that it cannot keep the connection on the background. So if you lock your phone or close the app, the transfer will stop. The second one is not open source, but it works really well. It's CX File Explorer. It has a fast transfer and can keep working in the background. All the other file managers that I tried had connectivity issues and would not complete the transfer on big files.
FX File Manager still has the best ui in my opinion and supports a range of network access methods
I don't know of any sftp programs specifically, but any file sync program should work.
It would be massive overkill for this one task, but I personally use my Nextcloud server to move files on and off my iPhone to my services as needed. I have the Jellyfin media directory, Calibre upload, and Paperless upload directories mounted in Nextcloud as external directories (as SFTP mounts, I think) and then access them from my phone from the Nextcloud app.
I have found these 2 smb clients working.
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.wa2c.android.cifsdocumentsprovider
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.schliweb.sambalite
And good ol' ghost commander too, like everybody here :)
Does it have to be SFTP?
I use both Syncthing and Resiliosync - both are better on battery than conventional file transfer mechanisms, and they don't require babysitting. They simply sync files as you define.
Alternatively if you must have FTP/SFTP, I have used FolderSync (Play store or Apk Mirror) since about 2010 - I've even bought it twice because it's such a great app. Though I haven't upgraded in a while because I don't like the new UI.
The free version does pretty much everything the paid version does, and the devs have always been great.
But I'd use Syncthing, you can even set it to only sync on your wifi and while charging, though I've found even syncing a few gigs doesn't impact my battery (I probably sync 10GB a day while on battery).
I was using sync thing and syncfork previously, but they didn't allow me to sort my new files into the existing structures without getting on the computer and sorting them that way. Id like to cut out the middleman that is my desktop and just move things directly to the server if possible.
Yea, that's a challenging part for sure, one that I still deal with.
It can be done, but you need to configure the sync jobs "just so". Send only from the phone, don't sync deletions, etc.
In the past I've setup a master folder on my phone and used subfolders for "upload only" Syncthing shares. Then wherever I put a file on my phone it gets synced to the appropriate folder on my server.