MobileFinder is an amazing and cheap application available through the App Store. It allows you to wirelessly add files to your phone on the Media partition, like a jump drive. But, with a jailbroken iPhone and a little tweaking, this application becomes even better. Read more for information.
MobileFinder features a built in text editor, the ability to copy and paste files, the ability to zip files, and much much more. It also has a great user interface and is very easy to use. It is also extremely easy to connect to your phone wirelessly and transfer files over.Â
To connect to your phone, make sure your computer and your phone are connected to the same wireless network. Then, inside MobileFinder, tap the arrows button in the bottom right and switch sharing on. Then simply select your OS from the selections at the bottom, and follow the directions. Here are some screenshots, and afterwards, a way to make this application even better on a jailbroken iPhone.
MobileFinder is $1.99.
Now, here I’ll explain how to configure MobileFinder to explore your whole filesystem, like the old MobileFinder for 1.1.4 used to do. I found this in a forum somewhere. To do this, you will have to have a terminal connection to your iPhone or use MobileTerminal available in Cydia. If you are using MobileTerminal, be sure to log in as root by typing login, typing root, and then typing in alpine (or your own password you created). Â Ok, go to /var/mobile/Applications/ and keep clicking in the folders until you find which folder contains MobileFinder.app. Copy down that file path. Now, in your terminal, enter:
ln -s /* /private/var/mobile/Applications/C93B81D8-6055-4FDA-9B06-37E6DB910534/Documents
Your command will be different than mine, because the directories are different for every phone. Anyways, this will create a symbolic link from that directory to your / directory, which will allow you to explore your filesystem. There are a few drawbacks though. You will not be able to navigate through symlinks, so instead of going to /var, you’ll have to go to /private/var/. But even then, this is really handy! If you have any problems, leave a comment or email me at braden@iphonefreakz.com.
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\\ tags: App Store, filesytem, mobilefinder
any word on a mobile finder or that other file editting app from 1.1.4 on 2.0?(i totally cant remember what it was but it was way better than mobilefinder)
i could totally use deleting copy pasting, and perm setting on my phone
1.1.4’s MobileFinder’s googlecode page says this:
“Version 2.0 of iPhone OS has removed support for many of the features that MobileFinder depends on. This has made transitioning MobileFinder’s codebase to 2.0 very difficult. The official SDK version of MobileFinder is a complete rewrite, and thus has been tailored to make use of the features that are supported on 2.0. Unfortunately, a 2.0 version of MobileFinder based on the hacked SDK is not likely in the near future.”
So I guess we shall not see the old MobileFinder anytime soon. =[
But you’re most likely talking about FileBrowser. I’ll look around and see if the developer has any plans of making it 2.0 compatible.
yea that was it bro. sry i have one of the shittiest memories on the planet :P.
ty for checkin for me
You could just create a link to “/” in the Documents folder by means of ssh into your phone.
You also forgot to mention that this tricks mobile finder into thinking that you don’t have any space for the rest of your files and the fact that there is no security for this program. I’ve already peeked into some people files who had this program at work…
reading the comments in this apps reviews, it seems that there is no password protection with this app. if that’s the case, and you create this symlink, that’s going to give anyone on your local subnet access to root. bad stuff.
personally, i would symlink to /var/mobile/Media/Downloads/ instead, you can then get immediate access to anything you download with the safari plugin. if you want access to your root folders, do it over a secure protocal.
Thanks. I’ve done the terminal command now I can see the whole iphone folder structure. But what do you do if you want to run an applicaition?
I cannot find the executive file for the apps inside the application folders..
Have another problem. I tried to copy an icon file from one folder to another in my themes directory. It doesn’t work.. Its says the folder doesn’t exist when I try to paste it in.
[...] bladeren, maar aangezien je iPhone voor deze plugin toch al een jailbreak nodig heeft, kun je op iPhoneFreakz (onderaan het bericht) lezen hoe je dit met een simpel Terminal-commando kan [...]
why doing so hard? i just created a link in : -/private/var/mobile/Applications/7EF6FB99-6046-4CA1-AB4B-AF45CA32A714/Documents that links to /
and it works i dont understand this tutorial:P so i tried it my way
My tutorial is the exact same as what you did. I don’t exactly see where you did anything different. The tutorial is for beginners. If you’re not a beginner, great. But don’t ruin it for the people who are.
if you create the links in the Documents folder you can connect with ftp.
And you have the full acess to the filesystem in windows explorer
hey, i tried it several times but with no luck….. i did every step but in my terminal it says ; error …… allready excists !!! someone knoews what to do ?!?!?
Hi Braden,
Thanks for the info. MobileFinder is great. I tried to create the symbolic link so I can view my entire filesystem but MobileTerminal gave me “command not found.” I typed the entire command twice and triple checked to make sure it was typed correctly, and yes I used my correct folder (I didn’t copy letter for letter your command). Perhaps you can help me figure this out?
Thanks,
Greg
Same thing here “command not found.†Also did “exactly” as told!
Please help! :???:
nigel said:
why doing so hard? i just created a link in : -/private/var/mobile/Applications/7EF6FB99-6046-4CA1-AB4B-AF45CA32A714/Documents that links to /
and it works i dont understand this tutorial:P so i tried it my way
Yo Nigel! How do u make a link then? i tried with totalcommander and CuteFTP, but no way to make al shortcut (like u can in windows XP)
Hope some one can help! thx in advance
Gr. Fix
Who said the mobilefinder in the appstore, can copy and paste files here there
on the iphone. I am here to tell you that I can’t it gives me a cocoa error. or permision denied. Whats up with that. I would like a reply soon
My gues is that the folders that u want the file copyed to does not have
the proper permision (it has not got the 755 code given to it), so it is in ure case write protected. You can assign the code to a folder with programs like CuteFTP.
where does it stores the zipped file when you zip something?
I’ve read all the great posts in this string. I must say it worked well for me. Thanks for all the help. My next challenge is now that I have a sybolic link to my root directory in my Documents folder. How do I get rid if it? LOL.
I used Mobile Terminal and it worked fine. But I made another symlink for my mobile folder in that directory which is all I really wanted anyway. Can someone pleeeeease tell me the commands to remove a symlink??? I don’t need my root directory symlinked in the Documents folder. Thanks in advance.
worked ok for me.
honestly it was little hard to understand for a relative noob like me but with a little bit of research (how to ssh, install terminal etc) i finally got it working.
its very simple when you know how.
thanks very much.
Is anyone still looking at this thread??? I need some help. I had to reinstall MobileFinder from the AppStore. It seems it got an update maybe? So I was able to get my symlink back up and working. However, now in my /private/var/mobile/Media/ directory the only folders I can access are the DCIM and Photos.
This was not a problem before. All the other folder files are red and of I try to open it it crashes back to the Home folder of MobileFinder. What happened? Is there a solution. I’m bummed… :cry: Just when I was finally happy and had a TRUE iPhone file browser and this happens. Can someone PLEASE HELP? Thanks……… :cry:
ya mobile finder for1.1.4 was ported to 2.0 by the new installer(cydia)’s creator JAY FREEMAN(saurik)
Most of us know that it is. I’m still using the appstore mobilefinder for now because I got it working just like the old mobilefinder that sauric ported. Of course I had to figure it out on my own with no help since no one answered ANY of my questions above LOL.
i was on iday.ca on how to play this downloaded files. They recommend using dTunes as the player. Do you suggest this?
I was jacking around with my phone usind mobilefinder and before I knew it my appstore icon was gone from the springboard. after messing around I found it in the trash folder of mobilefinder, i moved it to the apps foldere where all my other programs are, but it still isn’t showing up on my spring board or opening up from finder, what do i do?????
how can i get the icon back on my springboard and get it to launch, I have a jailbroken 3g with fireware 2.11 i’ll do with out if I have to unjailbreak my phone and lost all my apps, esp my sms app that was too big a pain to get to work and the other apps that I have bought, any help would be appricated.. thanks,…
[...] is available via Cydia is probably the best file system navigator available on the iPhone. It is like MobileFinder which allows you to access system files and allows renaming as well.. The app is much more stable [...]