macos - How can I mount an iPhone as a drive on OS X

When I plug my iPhone in on Windows, it automatically detected as a USB mass-storage device and mounts as a disk. How can I set this up in Finder under OS X?

Answer

You can't by default, since iOS in combination with OS X won't allow you to. iOS will only present the iPhone as a camera, so Image Capture can pull the pictures stored under /var/mobile/Media/DCIM, using the PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol).

Two options:

• You can jailbreak your iPhone and use the USB Drive app from Cydia to turn the device into an actual USB drive. The "Drive only" mode would allow you to do what you want, if I read your question correctly.




• You could install PhoneDisk for OS X, which will monitor any plugged in devices and mount them as drives

  
  

  

  
  

  Note though that PhoneDisk has been discontinued as of July 2012 and its features have been merged in to iExplorer.