this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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Why does file:// not work? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've got an HTML file on my phone, and would like to view it. But Firefox on Android has neither a menu entry "Open File", nor does using the file:// method work, nor is any app associated with the .html file extension.

BTW, Chrome suffers from the same problem. And it is not an issue with the file, it works when opened via the https:// method from my home server.

Why, oh why, can't I open a local file on Android?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I was pretty irritated when I noticed that myself. I'm guessing that there's some form of attack or class of attacks that this is designed to avoid (e.g. IIRC a webpage opened from a file:// URL can have Javascript access files via file:// as well, and I imagine theoretically could upload them somewhere or something), but it sure is goddamn obnoxious.

My guess is that you can probably fire up a local HTTP server on your phone and view it via that. I don't think that Android phones set up a firewall by default, so have it listen on a loopback address, like 127.0.0.1.

Based on this, you can use a file manager to share the HTML file with Firefox.