iPhone on Raspberry Pi

I'd like to connect my Pi4 to my iPhone to download photos.

The Bluetooth connection program under the Preferences menu seems able to connect, but won't allow me to browse the iphone. A cable connection suffers the same problem.

Am I doing something wrong, or are the two incompatible?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

Forgot to add that the error message was "Unable to launch default browser". The phone has the default apps furnished by Apple. The Pi has chromium and firefox. If a special app is needed I'd really appreciate a hint.....

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

iCloud, Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, Box, Own Cloud, various Samba/NFS/FTP connections - all via Apples Files app.

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Adrian C

1. sudo apt update sudo apt -y full-upgrade sudo reboot (just to be sure) sudo apt install usbmuxd libimobiledevice6 libimobiledevice-utils (found on
   formatting link
   )
2. Unlock your iPhone/iPad
3. Connect using a certified cable (I used the USB-lightning charger cable that came with my iPad)
4. Tap "Trust" on the iPhone/iPad
5. Dismiss error dialog on the Pi (may be hidden behind file explorer window)
6. Click Open on that file explorer window
7. My "DCIM" photos folder opened and I SEEMED to be able to copy photos but they were unreadable by ImageViewer and Chromium.

Alas.

Well, I tried it again on a different Pi (a different SD card with RaspiOS, really) and now it did work all the way! I don't know why.

Oh wow, the difference was that I initially dragged a few photos to the desktop; that didn't work. Then I dragged those same photos to a folder (in this case the Documents folder) and that did work! Strange.

That part worked, but I see Setting up usbmuxd (1.1.1~git20181007.f838cf6-1) ... Warning: The home dir /var/lib/usbmux you specified can't be accessed: No such file or directory Adding system user `usbmux' (UID 117) ... Adding new user `usbmux' (UID 117) with group `plugdev' ... Not creating home directory `/var/lib/usbmux'. usbmuxd.service is a disabled or a static unit, not starting it.

I connected with bluetooth. The connection seems to be real, but the options are for a WiFi access point or an audio source. If I choose the audio source the iPhone's audio comes out through the Pi's speakers.

There's an option on the Pi to trust the iPhone, but no prompt that I can find on the iPhone to trust the Pi, at least not in the Settings> Bluetooth page.

No error dialog, and I can't seem to open a file explorer window. In the BlueTooth Devices window the options to browse the device and send files are greyed out.

No can do 8-(

Well, you got farther than I did......

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

What I wrote was only valid for a wired connection.

iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option.

(there are a few implementations of the AirDrop protocol, which uses Bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi, but none I'd regard as stable enough for everyday use)

Theo

Aye, there's the rub....8-)

At some point I'll try a cable.

Thanks very much for writing,

bob prohaska

.

I don't know about Iphones, but every Android I know can do FTP file server over WLAN and be addressed from the desktop.

I do the above because cable does not work any more. I used to be able to plug the phone in and see a standard external disk drive. No more. Everything now is some proprietary junk I don't want.

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/ \  Mail | -- No unannounced, large, binary attachments, please! --

You've raised a good point. Both the iPhone and the Pi are on the same LAN, I don't have to use BlueTooth. An SFTP link would be even easier, apart from the iPhone's lack of a keyboard. I fixated on BlueTooth solely because my old phone used it and my only Lightning cable lives in a different room, where it's used for charging. Moving the cable will cause me to forget to charge the phone 8-)

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

Related thoughts:

- does the iPhone offer an on-screen keyboard or if it doesn't, is there one available as an app?

- alternatively, can any iPhone software act as an FTP server?

- if you fire up the sftp utility on the RPi, does that get any answer from the iPhone?

As you may guess, I don't have an iPhone, its possible it has an SSH or FTP server installed since most Apple or Windows desk/laptops won't.

I have often used sftp, a command line SSH file transfer tool, to move files between systems which have an sshd server installed. On my RPi (Buster) system sftp seems to have been installed as part of the SSH clients package, so you may already have it. If not, you can always install filezilla and use that instead.

HTH

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Martin    | martin at 
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

Yes. (I can't imagine how you'd use a smartphone without an on-screen keyboard?)

Probably, although see below for why that's not very useful.

iPhones don't really have a user-visible filesystem[1], so they definitely don't have an SSH or FTP server installed.

I have an app 'FTP Manager' that allows it to be an SFTP client, which suffices to push and pull files from the iPhone end. Because of the lack of filesystem you are limited to the files FTP Manager can see, or using the 'Share' mechanism to send files from other apps to FTP Manager.

[1] Essentially an app can have its own files (eg the documents created in the app) but there is no global view of the filesystem so apps can't see files owned by other apps, nor any system files. There is a 'Files' app, which can be used in limited circumstances to manually move files from one app to another. Also some media like photos can be accessed by multiple apps (with restrictions).

Theo

Interesting! In that case, how do Bluetooth apps transfer files, i.e. do they have the same limitations as your 'FTP Manager'?

And, of course I should have said 'sshd process' rather than FTP server, since AFAIK the sshd daemon can act as a file server when sftp is used to transfer files to or from a *nix box.

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Martin    | martin at 
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

Yes. Essentially there are no bluetooth apps; sharing is done from the app that owns the files and the medium can be "Air Drop" which is mainly bluetooth. (Of course there are system programs that manage bluetooth connections and the files transported on it, but they are not actors from the user's point of view.)

Speech recognition. (If it was good enough, which it mostly isn?t.)

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https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

AirDrop is mostly ad-hoc wifi, with Bluetooth used for initial discovery and handshaking. That's why it's a lot faster than Bluetooth. In general Bluetooth is so slow that it's barely usable for transferring files of any size (I tried to use it for videos from Android - really bad idea).

The main use for Bluetooth on iPhones is audio and networking (tethering).

Theo

Ah ok, yes. I knew Bluetooth was necessary and it only works in the proximity dictated by it; I should have searched for actual transfer mode though, thanks.