Show HN: Gander, an Android file viewer that asks for no permissions
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Gander is an open-source Android file viewer with zero permissions.
Gander is a 15 MB, fully offline Android viewer for PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, photos, video, audio, Markdown, and text. It uses the Storage Access Framework and 'Open with' intents, avoiding all permissions including INTERNET. Rendering is done on-device via vendored JS libraries (e.g., SheetJS, docx-preview, Pdfium). The app is licensed under MIT and runs on Android 8.0+.
What commenters are saying
Commenters praised the privacy design but debated whether an app without the INTERNET permission is truly isolated. Some noted that Android apps can still exfiltrate data via intents (e.g., launching a browser with data in the URL), Chrome Custom Tabs, or shared user IDs. The developer acknowledged these avenues but argued they are visible to the user and unlikely; the app only opens intents for sharing or locating files. Others pointed out GrapheneOS allows denying the INTERNET permission, while standard Android does not surface it.
A top comment asked about the hardest format to support. The developer replied that PPTX was hardest due to absolute-positioned shapes and chart rendering, DOCX had bullet-encoding issues, and XLSX was easiest thanks to SheetJS.