How To Use the iPhone Files App

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's  take a look at using the Files App on your iPhone. 

So the Files App on the iPhone is how you access the files that you have stored on your iPhone and in iCloud Drive and other cloud services. It is equivalent to the Finder on the Mac. When you first go into the Files App you may see it looking like this with Recents at the top and then a bunch of icons for different files you have stored throughout your device and cloud services. You may notice at the bottom you have three main buttons here. Recents, Shared, and Browse. The way that this is configured has changed over the years. This is how it currently appears in iOS 26. To view, open, or organize your files you're going to want to go to Browse mode. At the top of Browse mode you'll see browse here at the top, a way to search, then three sections: Favorites, Location, and Tags. You'll only see On My iPhone which represents files that are store locally on your iPhone and no where else. You'll also probably see iCloud Drive which is how you get to all the files stored on iCloud Drive and those are the files you also have on your Mac and your iPad in iCloud Drive. The normal way to use and store files on your iPhone is to use iCloud Drive. That way they are not only protected in case you loose your iPhone but you'll also be able to access them on your other devices. You also may see some other Cloud Services here. 

Now navigating simply involves tapping on different locations and folders. For instance I'm going to tap on iCloud Drive here. I will go down into iCloud Drive. I'll see all the folders at the top level of iCloud Drive. The same folders I would see on my Mac or iPad when I look at iCloud Drive there. Then I can go down into another folder by tapping on it again and again into another folder. To navigate back to the previous location you can tap on the back button here. But you can also tap and hold the Back Button and then see the full path up to the top and simply jump to any level that you want. 

At the top level you've got Favorites. This is where you want to put the folders that you access the most. It's easy to add something to Favorites. Just browse to that folder, tap and hold it like this, and then select Favorites. Now when you look at the top level here you'll see that location as well. You can add as many as you want. You can tap and hold and then Remove from here as well. 

Now when you're looking at the contents of a folder, like here, you're going to see icons, like this, showing you a small preview of the file. This is called Icon View and you have another option which is List View. Tap the more button at the top right and switch between Icon and List. In either Icon or List View you can also use the More button here and you can choose the Sort order. You can sort by name, by kind, date, size, and tags that are applied. You can also go to View Options here, set Sort By and also Group By. So you can group, for instance, by Kind or by Date and then have them alphabetized inside each group. You can also change the size of the icons you see from Default to Compact if you like. Then here also is the option to include file name extensions when viewing the files. 

You may notice the little cloud icon here to the right with an arrow pointing down. That will appear for files that are in iCloud Drive that exist in Apple servers but are not currently cached on iPhone. Your iPhone saves space by not having all the files available. If that icon is there then when you go to open the file it will simply download the file and then open it. If the file is small enough and your connection is good enough you may not even notice a delay. But if you want to download the file right now so you could have it available to open later you can tap and hold to bring up the Context Menu and you've got a Download Now option. You can also use Keep Downloaded to download now and indicate that you don't want it to offload this file, perhaps because you want to access it offline sometime in the near future. 

So to open a file all you need to do is tap it. For instance I'll tap this Pages document, right here, and it will open up this document in Pages. You can see here if I look at the App Switcher it has switched to the Pages App in front of the Files App here. Whenever you open a document like this in another app you'll usually have the little back button at the very top left to jump right back to the app that you came from before. 

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Now if you don't have an app that opens that kind of file it may still open for you in a Preview. For instance here I've got a video. If I tap here it's going to open up this video and I haven't left the File. Notice I'm still in the Files App but I get a video preview of it here. This is called Quick Look. To get out of Quick Look you can simply dismiss it with the X here. Quick Look will contain different options depending on the type of file. For instance for a video file I can rotate and trim it using Quick Look right in the Files App. But you'll see different options for other types of files. When you're looking at a file like a Pages  document like this one, tapping on it once will simply open up the file in that app. But you can also tap and hold to bring up the Context Menu and then use Quick Look instead. This will allow you to preview the file and get various Quick Look options without ever leaving the Files App and then you can just dismiss Quick Look when you're done viewing the file. 

When you tap an image file or a PDF it will open it up in the Preview App. Just like I showed you before in Pages you can easily get back to Files. If you'd rather just preview it in Quick Look without leaving the Files App you can tap and hold and then select Quick Look instead. But you can also set that as the default. In fact you can set the Default App for any file type, say, if you have multiple image editors and you want to set the default one, or the you tap on an image just tap and hold and select Open With. You'll see a list of apps that will open that kind of file and also preview with Quick Look. Select which one of the apps for the preview with Quick Look option that you want and now when you tap on the file of that type it will use that option instead. 

There are other things you've got here in the Context menu as well. For instance Get Info will give you all sorts of information about the file. The information you get depends on the file type. Also here in the Context Menu you have the Rename the file. Select the file, like this, and you can see that the text cursor is now placed inside of the file name there and you can work with it, just like any other text, to rename the file. You can also duplicate the file or create a new Folder that contains that file. You can also create a new folder by tapping on the three dots button here and there is a New Folder option that will create an empty new folder. You can also use this to move files. If you bring up the Context Menu and select Move you can navigate to another folder and then tap Move to move the file from its original location to this new one. 

There are other ways to move files as well. For instance, you can simply tap and start dragging the file and then with another finger you can tap on any of the Navigation Buttons, and I'll navigate to this folder and then drop the file right here. You can do this with multiple files as well. Just start dragging the one file, like that, and then use another finger to tap other files and you can see now I have three that I can now move to another location. Another thing you can do with dragging is instead of tapping another location you can simply move up with the back button there and it will go up a level and then you can move to another folder and then you can move down into that folder and even into another folder as well. So you can do it with just one finger if you want. 

Another option is to tap the three dots button here and then choose Select and then you can select multiple files. This works in Icon View as well. Once you have these multiple files selected you can use the button down here the folder to move them somewhere else. But you can also use this as a way to select multiple files and then start dragging them but just start dragging one but all of the ones selected will start moving with it. 

Now there's another list of option besides what you find here in the More Button. That's the options for the title. Tap on the Title anywhere, or this little icon to the right, and you'll see the name of the title and you'll be able to go up to the levels above it. You'll also be able to set the Download Now Key downloaded it or Remove download status for iCloud for that folder. You'll be able to Rename the folder, Copy the entire folder, or Move the entire folder or get info for that entire folder. So these are the same actions you get from the Context Menu for an item inside the folder. This is just how you access those options for the folder that you're in for the folder itself. 

Now other options for a file exist in the Context Menu under Share. Tap that and you get the Share sheet. This is where you can share with somebody else, either over AirDrop, send Messages, send an email, import into other apps like Notes, for instance, and import all sorts of other  functions, many of which as dependent on other apps you have installed. You can tap the More Button here and you can see lots of other apps including Shortcuts that you've created that handle files. 

Now back at the top level of Browse there are Tags. You can apply one or more tags to any file or folder you like. So if I were to go down here back into the folder we've been looking at you can see there's a tag applied to this file. If I wanted to apply a tag to this file, for instance, I can tap and hold and here at the bottom there are tags. I can select a tag, like this one, and maybe a second tag like this one, to apply it. I can also add a new tag here assigning a name and a color to that tag. Now you can see I've got two tags applied to this file and if I go back to the top level of Browse and I look for one of these tags, like this one here, you'll see that that file appears here. If you've got similar files spread across multiple folders and they have the same tag this is quick way for you to be able to see all of the files that have that tag. 

Now tags also give you the ability to change the color of a folder. So if you want to make a folder stand out, tap and hold the folder and then look for Customize Folder and tags. The here where it says Tags select a tag, like let's select orange, the folder is now orange instead of the light blue color. You can always go back in, Customize Folder & Tags again and easily remove the tag and go back to the default color. Also you can customize folders by using one of these icons here or an emoji. So I can put an icon, like this, on the folder or I can tap emoji here at the bottom and I can choose an emoji character, like this, to appear on the folder. So now it makes the folder standout a little more and maybe signify what it is with the icon in addition to the name. 

To Delete a file you can tap and hold the file in the Context Menu at the bottom is Delete. You can also tap the More button at the top and then Select and then select one or more files and then use the Trash or bin button here at the bottom. If you're in List View you can swipe from right to left. Once you do that thought the file isn't deleted. Go back to the top level of browse and you'll see a recently deleted location. Go there and then you'll find the files you just deleted. You can tap and hold a file here and you can select Leave Now or you can recover it putting it back in its original location. You can also do the same two functions by selecting multiple files, like that, and then recover or delete. If you don't do anything the file will simply be permanently deleted after 30 days. 

Now besides browsing to find a file that you want another thing you can do is Search for it. You can use the Search Box that's available at the top of the Files App if you're at the top level of Browse or inside of a folder. If you know that the file is inside of a folder or a subfolder of that folder it is handy to start there because once you start typing something at the top you'll see Recents and you can search all your recent folders across all locations. You can tap the top level of whatever location you're in. So in this case since I'm in iCloud Drive or I can tap the name of the current folder to only look at that folder or subfolders. The search can refer to the name of the file, the contents of the file or even the tag. Then you can tap open a file or you can tap and hold to bring up the Context Menu to do things like Go to the folder that contains that file. In addition to the Browse Mode, right here, you can also go to Shared and see all the files you've shared. It's just a means for you to search for files across all your folders that you may have shared with somebody, maybe to remember to Unshare it when you no longer need it. You also can use Recents here and it is going to give you a list of all the files you've recently opened or downloaded. Just a quick way to get to a file that you are currently working with. 

Two other functions you can do in the Files App. One is you can scan documents directly into a file. So first go to the folder where you want the file to be placed after it is scanned. Then tap the three dots button here and then choose Scan Documents. It will use you camera and allow you to scan each page and create a PDF from that. 

Another thing you can do is you can compress or Zip files and decompress or unzip them So, for instance, this file right here I can tap and hold and I can choose Compress and it is going to zip it into a file. Then I'll end up with a second file right here that's original one zipped. Then I can tap and hold any zip file that I've downloaded and uncompress it. To do multiple files put them in a folder first or use the More Button, Select and then Select Multiple Files and then tap the three dots button at the bottom. 

Now one more thing I want to show you is you're going to see the Files App, or at least an aspects of it, in other places beside the app itself. For instance, when you go into an app like Pages and you're not currently working on a document you're going to see a File Chooser here. A File Chooser is basically a mini version of the Files App. You'll even notice Recents, Shared and Browse here and you can Browse through files inside this app the same way that you would the Files App that's only going to have the correct file type active. You can open a file by just tapping on it. You'll also notice as you're browsing a Create Document button as the first item in whatever folder you're looking at. So this allows you to create a new document at this location. You'll also see aspects of the Files App turn up in other locations. For instance here in Pages if I go Export in the Share Sheet here, if I choose Save To Files, I get a little mini version of the Files App that I can use to navigate around to choose location to Save.

So get to know the Files App especially if you tend to use your iPhone like a computer creating and organizing documents from different apps. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.