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Access your files anywhere with Mozy Android app

Good news for the Android crowd: Mozy's new app links you directly to your backed-up data, which you can view, play, share, and so on.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read
View, play, and download files on the go with the new Mozy app for Android.
View, play, and download files on the go with the new Mozy app for Android. Decho Corp.

Hot on the heels of its iOS counterpart, online backup service Mozy just released an app for Android. That's a major perk for anyone already using the service to archive their data.

Mozy, of course, is the quiet desktop tool that automatically copies your critical files to the cloud. I've been a user for years, and just this week I had to take advantage of it after a sudden system failure. Worked like a charm.

The app, which is free, enables you to access your files on the run. You can, for example, retrieve Word and Excel documents, view photos, and even play MP3s and certain kinds of videos.

Mozy also lets you share files via e-mail, or download them directly to your phone or tablet. (To access these options, you simply tap and hold any file. Unfortunately, you can't do likewise with folders.)

Mozy for Android is virtually identical in form and function to Mozy for iPhone, so I recommend reading Lance Whitney's coverage of the latter if you want to learn more.

I do share his opinion that navigation could be better; drilling down through a folder structure is a less-than-ideal way to find the file(s) you want. At least there's a search option. (Lance noted that it didn't work with entire data sets, only individual folders, but in my tests that wasn't the case: you can indeed search from the top level.)

If you're already using a service like Dropbox or SugarSync to access files on the go, I'm not sure there's much point in switching to Mozy. But if you're a Mozy user, it's a no-brainer: grab this app. (If you're not a Mozy user, I can't recommend it highly enough--especially the free 2GB MozyHome account.)