Mastering iOS device management with libimobiledevice and ideviceinstaller

Have you ever wondered how to manage, debug, or install applications on your iOS device directly from your macOS terminal? These tools are your answers. They allow interaction with iOS devices natively, a crucial ability for developers and tech-savvy users. Let’s dive right into it!

Installing libimobiledevice and ideviceinstaller

Before anything else, we need to install our tools. Here’s how you can do it on macOS:

brew install --HEAD usbmuxd
brew install --HEAD libimobiledevice
brew install --HEAD ideviceinstaller

Querying Device Information

Using ideviceinfo, we can retrieve all sorts of information from the device. Simply connect your iOS device to your computer and run:

ideviceinfo

File Transfer

With ifuse, we can mount the iOS device’s filesystem to our local system and transfer files:

mkdir ~/myiosdevice
ifuse ~/myiosdevice

Installing Applications

You can install IPA files to your device using ideviceinstaller:

ideviceinstaller -i /path/to/app.ipa

And also uninstall them:

ideviceinstaller -U <app_id>

Debugging Applications

With idevicedebug, we can start and stop the debugging process for an application:

idevicedebug start <app_id>

Screenshot

Taking a screenshot is easy with idevicescreenshot:

idevicescreenshot screenshot.tiff

Restarting Device

You can restart your device using idevicediagnostics:

idevicediagnostics restart

Managing Provisioning Profile

To add a provisioning profile to your device, use ideviceprovision:

ideviceprovision add /path/to/provisioning/profile

And More!

There’s a lot more you can do with these tools, like managing network links, setting device names, activating/deactivating devices, and checking device “heartbeat”. You can always learn more with:

idevicetool --help