Awesome
iTunes Backup Explorer
iTunes Backup Explorer is a graphical open-source tool that can show, extract, and replace files in iPhone and iPad backups.
It supports both encrypted and non-encrypted backups, currently from iOS 10.2 onwards.
Most programs that support encrypted backups are either limited trials or expensive. There are apparently only very few open-source projects that target this issue and none that are also useful for the average user.
Installation
- Open your terminal and type in
java -version
. - If the command was not found or the version is below 18, download and install Java for your operating system, e.g. from here.
- Download the jar file of the latest release of iTunes Backup Explorer.
Windows
- Simply double-click the downloaded file to start the program.
- From the command line:
java -jar JARFILE.jar
. ReplaceJARFILE.jar
with the name of the file you downloaded.
macOS
cd
to the download directory and type inchmod +x JARFILE.jar
.- Now, you should be able to simply double-click the file to start the program.
- If that does not work, you may need to type
java -jar JARFILE.jar
into the terminal to run it.
If you have permission issues
When exporting data from the backup files, you might get Operation not permitted
errors on your MacBook. To fix this, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access
and add both java
binary file and the jar
file you downloaded.
More detailed information can be checked here.
Linux
cd
to the download directory and type inchmod +x JARFILE.jar
.- Depending on your specific system, you should be able to double-click the file to start the program.
- If that does not work, use
java -jar JARFILE.jar
to run it.
How to build
- Run
mvn install
- Run
mvn clean compile assembly:single
File Search
In the "File Search" tab, you can search for files using case-insensitive SQLite LIKE syntax.
It supports two wildcards: %
and _
.
%
matches any sequence of zero or more characters._
matches any single character.\
is used as the escape character.
Here are a few examples:<br>
Domain | Relative Path | |
---|---|---|
Videos in the camera roll | CameraRollDomain | %.mov |
Files under the DCIM directory | CameraRollDomain | Media/DCIM/% |
All .sqlite files | % | %.sqlite |
.db databases in the home domain | HomeDomain | %.db |
All WhatsApp files | %whatsapp% | % |
App documents on iCloud | HomeDomain | Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~% |
All files (can take a bit of time) | % | % |
After you clicked on the Search
button, you can also sort by clicking on a column name.
To find the largest files, type in a query, click on Search
and then twice on Size
.
With the Export matching
button on the bottom right, you can export all files that match your query to a directory you choose.
By right-clicking on a file row, you can open, extract, replace or delete a single file. This works the same as in the hierarchical "Files" tab. If it is a symbolic link, you can show the target location.
Privacy
For me, this was a matter of course, but it was pointed out that I should clarify it anyway. I do not collect any personal data. In fact, the program does not even use an internet connection at this time. If that should change at some point in the future, I will update this notice.
Credits
I started looking into this after I saw this brilliant answer on StackOverflow by andrewdotn to a question that has already been viewed more than 220.000 times. It explains in detail how iOS backups are structured and how they are encrypted, even providing a working code example.
So a huge thanks to him,
his sources iPhone Data Protection in Depth, iOS Hacker's Handbook, a GitHub comment, the iphone-dataprotection project and the Apple iOS Security Guide for iOS 11 (in the Web Archive)
and Forensic Analysis of iTunes Backups by Jack Farley