Features

A map of what Next File Manager does, with links to the page that covers each area in depth.

File browser

Everything you expect from a desktop file manager, running inside the Joomla admin.

A tile grid with large type icons, or a dense sortable list view
A lazy-loading folder tree covering every place you have access to
Breadcrumbs showing the place and your path within it
Multi-select, with a right-click context menu carrying every granted operation
Drag a selection onto a folder tile or a tree node to move it
An info panel with type, size, modified date, image dimensions, full path and a writable flag
Filter chips to narrow the current folder by type

Moving files in and out without a separate FTP client.

Drop files anywhere on the window to queue them
A progress queue showing each transfer and its result
Per-profile maximum file size, allowed-extension list and always-blocked denied list
Rules checked in the browser for fast feedback, then enforced again on the server
Download a single file, or select several and receive one ZIP
Copy and move across two different drives, streamed rather than buffered

Reading and changing file contents in place.

A CodeMirror editor with syntax modes for PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, JSON, SQL, XML and Markdown
A full-screen lightbox for images and media
Byte-range streaming so video and audio can be scrubbed without a full download

Finding a file across a folder tree.

Answering "who changed what, and when".

Every mutation recorded: upload, delete, rename, move, copy, duplicate, edit, archive, extract and lock changes
Each entry carries the acting user, the action, the place and the path
A filterable, searchable data grid
Visible to Super Users only, never exposed to profiled users

One interface over every filesystem you use.

Five drivers: server folder, SFTP (SSH), FTP/FTPS, WebDAV/Nextcloud, S3-compatible object storage
Credentials encrypted at rest, keyed off the Joomla site secret, never returned to the browser
A live connection test before saving, which fills in the SFTP host fingerprint for you
Capability negotiation: each driver declares what it can do, and the interface hides the rest
Drivers the server cannot run are greyed out with the reason stated

Naming the folders that profiles can grant.

A place is a folder on a storage, with a label and a stable key
One storage can carry many places, so an SFTP account exposes several folders under one password
Profiles reference the stable key, so renaming a place or repointing its storage never breaks a grant
The built-in site place always follows the live Joomla root

Joomla-native permissions that go well past on and off.

Sixteen individually grantable commands
Roots: a place, an optional subfolder within it, and a read-only or writable flag
Upload limits: maximum file size, allowed extensions, always-denied extensions
Feature gates, including who may manage component settings
Assignment to individual Joomla users or to whole user groups, direct beating group
Deny by default — a user with no profile gets nothing

Safe defaults a misconfigured profile cannot switch off.

A protected-path pattern list blocking writes to a path and its whole subtree
Secret files — configuration.php, .env, *.key, *.pem, .htpasswd — unreadable below Super User by any route
Per-path locks, and Super-User unlock overrides gated behind a global switch that is off by default
Every path canonicalised and re-checked against its granted root, through symlinks and on case-insensitive filesystems

The same app, published to logged-in site users.

Driven by a standard Joomla menu item
The front-end dispatcher runs the identical profile checks, protection rules and command allowlist as the admin
Session-aware: an expired session raises an in-place re-login dialog and replays the interrupted request

The handful of global switches that apply site-wide.

A global upload ceiling that caps every profile
Image thumbnail generation on or off
Interface theme, following Joomla's own colour scheme by default
The protected-paths pattern list, and the switch that allows unlock overrides at all