Access and Recover files from an iPhone on Linux
pilabor.com
pilabor.com
Plugging the phone into USB exposes almost nothing to the Linux OS, and pictures / videos are not present.
Once I read a tutorial similar to this one, I was able to get my pictures off using libimobiledevice. BUT, none of the filenames were preserved. Even worse none of the file _extensions_ were preserved. Instead I was left with a jumbled mess of files named after a SHA checksum. I had to run `file` against them all with a script and rename accordingly. This was not going to cut it.
I tried the alternate route of using iCloud / Photos app to get everything back. First I had to pay to get enough cloud storage to hold my 10,000 photos and 1,000 videos. Then I had to wait till they synchronized with the cloud over wifi since my phone obviously didn't have Ethernet. This took a night's sleep to finish. I had to jump through even more hoops which I don't remember, but this way barely worked too
What's funny is that I had already bought the new iPhone 12. However, I was so annoyed by the locked-down Apple platforms that I returned the unopened iPhone for a full refund and got a OnePlus 9 Pro. Best decision ever. Now I have an unlocked bootloader and the ability to take phone backups, install LineageOS, root my phone, and generally control my own mobile computing environment. I doubt I'll ever have another Apple device.
Usually I use the migration assistants (Android or iPhone), or iTunes on Windows - also easy: Just the Finder on MacOS.
BUT: I once customized my ringtones to play Super Mario Bros - and I liked it so much, I wanted to keep them. Getting it to work was a lot of work (creating m4r files < 30s and putting them on the phone was a nightmare of error messages and many different tools). But there was NO way of extracting these back from my iPhone. iTunes did not show the files and crashed. Same on MacOS. No App on the phone had access to the files (e.g. to send it via Mail) - so I was stuck. This way was the ONLY way to get the files back.
Like you, I did not have the correct file names, but renaming a few ringtones was acceptable.
I heard of someone extracting the photos using an App like for Wifi file transfer (starting a little webserver on your phone), but fortunately, Apple Photos worked for that in my case.