The developers behind Omni ROM have another treat in store for us in the near future in addition to the highly-anticipated KitKat nightlies. Omni’s Project Manager jerdog (Jeremy Meiss on G+) told me about a project that Technical Lead XpLoDWilD (Guillaume Lesniak on G+) is working on called OmniFile.

OmniFile is a root-enabled file explorer that takes advantage of KitKat’s new file system, which ties supported cloud storage accounts in with local device storage. For example, you’ll see your cloud storage accounts in the left slide-out panel right along with your local storage. Files can be copied and transferred between your device, your Box account or your Drive account (or any other supported cloud service) without having to leave the app.

Granted, third-party apps such as Solid Explorer have that ability as well, but you have to set up your cloud storage accounts manually and manually grant your third-party file manager permission to access your cloud storage accounts. OmniFile, on the other hand, gains direct access automatically through KitKat’s file system. Once you’ve installed the native app for each cloud service and used it to log in to your account, OmniFile will automatically have access to those accounts because the access is built into KitKat’s file system.

When I asked XpLoDWilD what he plans to do in the future with OmniFile, he mentioned possibly including Samba so you can access your Windows PC through your home WiFi network. He asked me to point out that the app is a work in progress and will eventually appear in Omni ROM nightlies when it’s ready. It’ll appear in your app drawer as “Files.”

I tested the app myself on my 2012 Nexus 7 running stock KitKat (since Android 4.4 Omni ROM isn’t yet available for the tablet). Since I’m not running Omni ROM, the root-enabled features are disabled because they depend on the Omni framework. Nevertheless, I was able to test all of the other features, including the cloud integration. You can see the screenshots in the gallery below.