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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.

Program screenshot

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. Replace JARFILE.jar with the name of the file you downloaded.

macOS

  • cd to the download directory and type in chmod +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 in chmod +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

  1. Run mvn install
  2. 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:

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