Updated February 23, 2026
Plug a USB drive into your DeviceFreedom and it will appear under External storage in the Files sidebar. You can browse, upload to, and manage files on it just like your internal storage.
Always eject a drive before unplugging it. Click the eject button next to the drive in the Files sidebar. Unplugging without ejecting can corrupt data on the drive.
If your drive's format isn't supported, Files will offer to format it as exFAT (for compatibility with Windows, macOS, and Linux) or ext4 (for better performance with devicefreedom-os).
External drives can be used as backup locations. When setting up backups in Settings > Backups, choose External Drive as the backup type.
External storage is available on DeviceFreedom Tab, DeviceFreedom Phone, and amd64 devices. It is not supported on Raspberry Pi — the Pi cannot reliably power external drives via USB, which can lead to data corruption.