Transfer files from iOS device to Windows PC via USB

Question

In my C++ Windows application, my users can plug in their mobile device via USB and my application can transfer specific files to/from the device. For Android devices, I was able to use MTP. But iOS devices have me tripped up (I'm not an iOS user).

Immediately, I saw that MTP wasn't an option as I couldn't view the device's filesystem via Windows Explorer (wasn't expecting that). So now I'm stuck, and confused. Googled like crazy and all I discovered was that other 3rd party programs can do it, but I can't find any documentation or resources as to HOW.

Can someone point me in the right direction? What would I need to do in order to view the filesystem on a connected iOS device? Are there any libraries I may be unaware of that I can't find? I can see that iTunes has the functionality I'm looking for.

Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

Well, it looks like my comment was wrong. There is at least libimobiledevice http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ and https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse that claims to still support access to the iOS device file system and even claims to be cross-platform. I haven't tried it though to verify if those claims are true.

See also https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/MobileDevice_Library for some possible alternatives