A Brand New iPhone/iPod file explorer

[e_boris]

I am working on an iPhone/iPod file explorer directly based on iTunes' iTunesMobileDevice.dll with C++ native code. Anyway it's not prefect, leave your comments at the dev blog .

Highlights:
Total Control of iPhone File System
Manage files on your iPhone in a way just like Windows Explorer but more robust and friendly. Easily transmit files and folders to your computer with the performance optimized file transfer.

Hi-Speed General Purpose Storage
Use your iPhone as an USB Portable Disk for general files. Exploit the large flash memory on iPhone with transmission speed beyond 5MB/s.

Backup Music and Movie from iPhone/iPod
Download Apple iTunes© managed audio and video in iPhone or iPod to PC as a backup copy. Never lose your favorite albums or movies.

Flexible Batch Wallpaper Uploader
Automatically convert and upload batches of images to iPhone as wallpaper. Any image size is supported including photos from professional cameras.



BTW, anyone can help me host the file for downloading, I am just begging my friend for hosting the file.

Download site: i-FunBox | File Manager and Hi-Speed Transfer Tool for iPhone (iFunBox Download Page)
Dev Blog: iFunBox Development

[bts0uth]

downloaded and using it, i like it a lot more than iPhonebrowser! great job so far

one big request that will make this app perfect:

ability to set permissions to files. I love that you can add apps but they wont run because you still have to set the permission on them. If this app did this then it will be awesome.

Let me kno if its possible and if you decide to start working on making it happen

[MaliciousScript]

this looks relllie promising nice job man good luck with this hope to see some nice improvements in the future

[e_boris]

iTunesMobileDevice.dll doesn't expose much on the filesystem. changing the permission may not be possible unless having a deamon on iPhone side. I will try to dig. BTW, you are copying apps to the Applications folder? In the fact, I never did so, dose it works after permission fixed?. The purpose of putting that folder there is for easily tuning apps (modify configuations, icons).

[bts0uth]

I see,lets hope you find something then. And yep apps work great after changing permissions with ssh. I just put the installer beta on my phone throigh this app and set perms to 777 with winscp and it runs how it should. Thanks for the great app, its my file browser of choice. Also the ability to add favorites for diffrent locations would be nice. Private/var/mobile/library/summerboard/themestakes a while to get to on a laptop lol

[JamesMDenton]

I love this app. I just want you to know, I've been searching for the best filebrowser, and the ease of this app, coupled with the ability to still mod core files if you choose, is great. Thanks a bunch for putting the time and effort into this.

[skippy1974]

Your tool is just incredible.
One small thing is that it does not interpret symlink correctly.

Great job !!

[e_boris]

thanks all, acctually I am windows guy and know little about unix-like file systems. So anybody can drop me something on that?

and skippy1974, what is symlink?

[tommybiro]

Hello

Is there something similar availible for Mac OSX? isn't possible to comunicate with the iPhone during the cable (no Wifi).

regards, Tommy

[NetMage]

FYI, a symlink is a Unix concept that is similar to a shortcut, but is understood by most Unix programs transparently.

From what I can tell (haven't loaded it yet) either in firmware 2.0 or the jailbreak or Cydia install process, the main /Applications directory is moved to the User partition and replaced with a symlink.

Basically it consists of a tiny text file that contains the name of the actual destination, with a special directory bit set that tells the operating system the file is a symlink that should be followed, and not treated like a text file.

For some reason Apple appears to have modified the afc service in firmware 2.x to not follow symlinks. There may be some new functionality in the afc service that would support symlinking, or maybe we could create a patched afc daemon that will follow symlinks (basically you can pass flags to the Unix filesystem API to ignore symlinks).

[deng]

Ooow... this is great! So easy to use and familiar with windows user.
You are doing a great job!

[e_boris]

thanks NetMage for the explaination. I tried my best to dig the functions (AFC*) exposed by iTunesMobileDevice.dll. however, I failed to find ways to involve with the detailed information about every file, such as the premission and filetime.

[NetMage]

Helping the competition

You can't get any more information than provided by the stat command that I know of - filesize, whether or not it is a symlink or a directory, # of blocks...

Bootstrapping a daemon onto the phone can be a little tricky as well, must replace an existing phone file that already has executable permission (the very oldest jailbreak trick) and that can be set to run automatically to change permissions on the phone for you.

[e_boris]

Many thanks to NetMage. I just find you are the author of the iPhoneBrowser. Show my respect to you. I know little of the non-window systems, i should learn a lot from you.

Have you digged other functions in iTunesMobileDevice.dll? Is it possible to ask the firmwire create a new file with premission x777?

[NetMage]

I have just used Manzana, but lightly perusing the afc daemon doesn't seem to show a way to modify permissions using its protocols.

I have considered writing a daemon - maybe all the USB file explorers should get together for a common spec for a permissions changing daemon. Something similar to the iBrickr method of using a well-known directory to send commands to the daemon, and maybe it runs any shell script files placed there? (Yes, that would be pretty dangerous.)

I'm not sure if OS X has something similar to the Windows directory change notification feature, but if it does this would be pretty easy to do. Getting it bootstrapped onto the phone via USB-only would be trickier, however.