How ONLYOFFICE Documents Can Help De-Google Your Android Phone

Google Docs and Sheets are the hardest part of Google to leave. Years of documents, familiar workflows and shared files keep people in Google’s productivity apps long after they have swapped out the browser and the search engine. ONLYOFFICE Documents, a free Android office suite from Ascensio System, is built for that gap: it creates, edits and manages documents on the phone and stays compatible with Microsoft Office formats.

Version 10.0 arrived on October 27 and added a built-in AI assistant to the existing editors. For anyone de-Googling a phone, the older features matter more: offline files, native Office formats and a choice of cloud storage. Whether the app earns its place depends on how well those basics hold up, and on a licensing change the release notes do not mention.

ONLYOFFICE Documents at a Glance

Office suite / AndroidONLYOFFICE DocumentsAscensio System SIA

One app holds a document editor, a spreadsheet editor, a presentation editor and a PDF viewer with form filling. It suits anyone who wants Office-compatible files on an Android phone without a Google account.

• FreePrice
• 2.96.2K reviewsGoogle Play rating
• 1M+Downloads
• 10.0Latest version

Official site

The rating and download figures come from the Google Play listing as it stood in mid-November. The table below covers the rest of the basics: where to get the app, what it edits and which cloud services it connects to.

Two of those lines need a note. The Android 8.0 requirement is the developer’s figure for recent builds, so check the store listing against your phone. And a 2.9-star average across roughly 6,200 Google Play reviews is low for an office app with more than a million installs, which is a good reason to try it with your own files before you move everything across.

Why Docs and Sheets Stick

Swapping Chrome for another browser takes an afternoon. Documents are harder, because one Google account holds years of files, shared folders and comment threads, and every collaborator expects a link that opens in a browser. Most people who start de-Googling get as far as search, mail and maps, then stall on Docs and Sheets.

A replacement has to pass a short list of tests. It must open Microsoft Office files as they are, since DOCX and XLSX are what most workplaces still send around. It must work on files stored on the phone, with no account and no connection. And it should let you decide where synced copies live. On paper ONLYOFFICE Documents covers all of that: native Office formats, an On Device tab that needs no sign-in, and a list of cloud services that includes self-hosted options such as Nextcloud.

ONLYOFFICE Documents in Brief

ONLYOFFICE Documents bundles a document editor, a spreadsheet editor, a presentation editor and a PDF viewer into one Android app. It belongs to a larger product family that includes desktop editors, a server suite and the DocSpace collaboration platform. ONLYOFFICE says the family has more than 21 million users worldwide.

Anyone coming from Microsoft Office will recognize the layout. The file icons follow Microsoft’s color conventions, and the main tools sit in a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, within reach of a thumb.

The part that matters most for de-Googling is the On Device tab. Files there stay in the phone’s local storage, and the app does not ask for an account to open or edit them. Cloud storage sits in a separate tab you can ignore.

What’s New in 10.0

The 10.0 update is almost entirely about AI. According to the release notes, most of it runs through a new AI Chat tab, and all of it is optional: nothing happens until you add a provider and an API key.

A dedicated AI tab

AI settings now live in one place. Open the AI tab, tap AI Chat, then Add provider, and paste in an API key from the service you want to use. The key is yours, so the provider bills you for usage on its own terms.

AI Assistant in the Documents section

From the file list, the assistant can find a document, summarize it or answer questions about its contents. You can attach files and images to a request, which is useful when the answer sits inside a scanned page or a long report.

AI Chat inside every editor

Each editor has an AI icon on its top toolbar. Tap it, choose AI Chat, and the app offers a set of prompts matched to the file type.

Presentations from a description

Describe a topic and the presentation editor builds a deck from it, slides and structure included. Treat the result as a first draft, and check every figure and claim it produces before you present it.

Auto fill for forms

In PDF forms, the assistant suggests answers for empty fields and can pull in contact details so you do not retype them. Version 10.0 also adds input masks, phone number formatting and signatures, plus a form-filling mode you open from the context menu. Check which permissions the app requests before you switch auto fill on.

Listen to AI responses

A Play button under each AI reply reads the text aloud, and the app detects the language on its own.

Grok and DeepSeek providers

Version 10.0 adds Grok and DeepSeek to the provider list. Earlier versions supported OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and a local Ollama setup, and ONLYOFFICE’s help center also lists Mistral. One privacy point applies to all of them: whichever provider you connect receives your prompts and attachments. Pick one of Google’s models and the contents of your documents go straight back to Google.

Other 10.0 Improvements

Spreadsheets get a shortcut for turning a cell range into a formatted table: select the range, tap the plus icon, then the three dots, then Table. DocSpace users can now sort rooms into groups, set room covers, filter the room list and delete rooms from the phone.

Sharing a file or adding it to Favorites now works from inside the editors, even when collaboration is disabled.

File handling picks up several smaller changes: multi-image upload, renaming for files on WebDAV storage, better handling of HTML files and e-books, and an option to disable SSL certificate verification. Leave that last one alone unless you run your own server with a self-signed certificate. Turning verification off on a public network removes a real protection.

The Three Core Editors

The AI features are new. The three editors are what you will use every day.

Documents

The document editor handles tables, shapes, images, charts, footnotes, endnotes and section breaks, which covers most reports and letters. Spell check is built in, and a file can be protected with a password.

Spreadsheets

The spreadsheet editor supports more than 450 formulas and functions, according to ONLYOFFICE, along with sorting, filtering, charts and cell styles. That is enough for budgets, trackers and most shared workbooks. How it copes with very large files is the open question, and one to test on your own phone.

Presentations

Slides can be created and edited on the device with themes, graphs and shapes, and the developer says this works offline. The Google Play listing words it differently: it describes offline use as editing documents and spreadsheets and viewing presentations. Confirm that slide editing works without a connection before you rely on it.

DOCX, XLSX and PPTX are the native formats, so nothing is converted when you open or save an Office file. The app also opens ODT, ODS, ODP, DOTX, Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote files, HWP and Markdown, and it exports to PDF, TXT, CSV and HTML.

PDFs, Forms and OCR

PDF support stops at reading and filling in. The app opens standard and password-protected PDFs, and it comes with form templates you can complete on the phone and export as DOCX or PDF. The camera can scan a paper page and pull the text out with OCR, which saves retyping a printed letter or a receipt. That replaces two more Google habits, Drive’s PDF preview and its document scanner.

The limit is editing. You cannot change the text of an existing PDF, so anyone who marks up contracts on a phone will still need a dedicated PDF editor.

Move Your Google Files

1. Export your files with Google Takeout. Select Drive only and choose Office formats, so Docs become DOCX files and Sheets become XLSX.
2. Install ONLYOFFICE Documents from Google Play, the Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei AppGallery or Xiaomi GetApps, or download the APK from the official website.
3. Copy the exported files to your phone and open them from the On Device tab. No account is needed for this step.
4. If you want sync, open the Clouds tab and create a DocSpace account (the sign-up screen in the app describes a 30-day free trial). Continue with Google is offered there, and so is plain email sign-up.
5. Or connect storage you already use: Nextcloud, OneDrive, ownCloud, kDrive, Dropbox or any WebDAV server.

Step three is where a de-Googling project can stop. Files on the phone need no account, and a cloud service can wait until you miss one. If you do sign up for DocSpace, use an email address: signing in with Google ties the new account back to the one you are trying to leave.

Before you delete anything from Drive, open your most complicated files first: a document with comments and tracked changes, a spreadsheet with heavy formulas, a slide deck with custom fonts. Those are the files where a conversion problem will show, and it is better to find one now than in front of a client.

Collaboration and Cloud

Real-time co-editing, comments and tracked changes all need a cloud account and a connection; files in the On Device tab are yours alone. When you share a file you choose one of six permission levels, and a shared link can be set to expire.

The storage list is the stronger argument for de-Googlers. Nextcloud and ownCloud can run on a server you control, which keeps documents off any big provider’s cloud, and the app connects to both directly. Google Drive appears on ONLYOFFICE’s own list of supported services but not in the Google Play description, so check the Clouds tab if you still need Drive during the move.

The Licensing Question

For years ONLYOFFICE Documents was described as open source, including in the company’s own press materials, which still call ONLYOFFICE an open-source office software project. The Android app’s source is no longer public: its GitHub repository returned a 404 error when we checked.

According to a reply attributed to the developers, the mobile editors were always proprietary, and only some interface components were published as open source. We could not load that thread to confirm the wording, so read it as the company’s position as reported.

This matters on a de-Googled phone because people who leave Google often want software they can inspect, under a license such as the GNU Affero General Public License. A closed mobile app asks for the same kind of trust Google does, only from a smaller company. If auditable code is a requirement for you, this app does not meet it.

Nothing changes for availability or price. The app remains free on the official site and on Google Play, and the files it saves are standard Office formats you can take elsewhere.

ONLYOFFICE vs Google Docs

We did not benchmark the three side by side, so read the table as a summary of how each product is designed. The DOCX row reflects the file model: ONLYOFFICE and Word work on the Office file directly, while Google Docs converts it to its own format and back, which is where complex layouts can shift.

The two co-editing modes are the less obvious difference. Fast mode shows every collaborator’s changes as they type, the way Google Docs does. Strict mode locks the passage you are working on and shares your changes only when you save, which suits contracts and other documents where half-finished edits should stay private. Self-hosting applies to the wider ONLYOFFICE platform, meaning the server editors and DocSpace; the Android app is a client for them.

The Bottom Line

ONLYOFFICE Documents will not de-Google a phone by itself, but it handles the part most people get stuck on. It opens and saves Office files natively, works on local files with no account, and connects to storage you choose, including servers you run yourself. For everyday writing, budgets and slide edits it is a solid, free alternative that deserves a place on your de-Googled Android phone.

The caveats are specific. The app is proprietary, PDFs are view-only, AI needs a key from a third party, and large files may slow or crash it on some devices. Test your biggest spreadsheet before you move everything across.

The app is a free download from either source:

• Get ONLYOFFICE Documents from the official website
• Get ONLYOFFICE Documents from the Play Store