Dumpster-Recycle-Bin-Android-App

Have you ever regretted deleting that picture you took with a hot promo girl because when your significant other would give you a fit when she sees it? Or perhaps you accidentally deleted a document containing some numbers and addresses?

For quite a while, the desktop trumps us because of the ever-useful Recycle Bin. And while it’s true that rooters have been enjoying a similar feature for some time now, us unrooted are no longer left hanging! Enter: the Dumpster app, the app that might save your bacon someday. And the best part about it is how much it costs: the bargain bin price of PHP 0! Another nice thing about the app is its Spartan nature. Once installed, you will be greeted with the Configuration Wizard. No splash screens or anything unnecessary. Good, I love that.

Dumpster App

Once you’re ok with the initial settings (you can change them anytime afterwards), the app will build an index of the files you have on your phone, both in the internal storage and SD card.

Recycle Bin app for Android

After that, that’s it. You can forget about the app until you need to restore a deleted file and remembered that you installed this app. The app works in the background, keeping a log of all the documents that get deleted. Here’s where I found a caveat. I don’t know if it’s just in mine, but it also keeps track of some logs, such as the notification logs.

That inadvertently made my list of deleted files unnecessarily long. You do have the option to select multiple files (or all in one fell swoop) for permanent deletion.

Dumpster Google Play

For the purpose of this review, I deleted all files in the list so that we start with a clean slate.

Review: Dumpster

The app works slightly differently whether the file resided in the internal storage or not. For internal storage files, it’s pretty much straight forward. When a file in the internal storage is deleted, it shows up in Dumpster’s list.

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Android Dumpster Recycle Bin app Screenshot_2014-06-23-17-29-41

Simply click on the file and choose the option to restore. And viola! It gets restored exactly where the file originally resided, exactly the same way the Recycle Bin behaves.

App Spotlight: Dumpster

Dumpster-Review-NoypiGeeks

Where it behaves differently is when trying to restore files deleted from the SD card. Instead of restoring it in the file’s original location, it gets restored in a folder named Restored in the internal storage. One reason for this could be because of Google’s moronic SD card security “feature” (yes, Google, no matter how you sugar coat it, ALL find it a limitation and not a security feature). So, I completely get the app’s approach. What is irksome is that there is no notification or tutorial that tells you that, leading one to believe that the restoration didn’t work. I found it because I acted on instinct to look for a folder where the restored files are. If I didn’t, I would have erroneously told you that restoring in SD cards don’t work, and that would have been lamentable.

Despite these misgivings, this is such an awesome app that does one thing but does it extremely well. And while it’s always advisable to create backups of your files, there will still come a time when you’re going to need a restore feature. I don’t find an excuse not to have this app. It’s free (it does have a paid, ad-free version), it has a small footprint, uses minimal resources, and is uber useful.

The Dumpster – Recycle Bin Android app is available for FREE on Google Play. Download it here.

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