Accessing the iPad’s internal files is something that Jobs and Co. have decided is completely unneccesary for the average user. While I agree that many of the 2 million plus iPad users out there may never need to access the file system of their iPad; some of them do, including me!

Here’s how to access the iPad’s file system through Finder on a Mac.

First, your iPad will need to be Jailbroken. If you still have to jailbreak your iPad and get going with Cydia, you can read our post here.

Now, visit the Cydia app store and install Netatalk, the app that enables finder access on your iPad. Once you’ve installed Netatalk, the iPad will respring. You should then reboot the iPad entirely, it won’t work if you don’t so this step is not optional.

Now go to your Mac and take a peek under the Finder sidebar, you should notice a sweet little iPad icon there now. The iPad and Mac have to be on the same local WiFi network for Netatalk to be able to work it’s magic.

When you click on the iPad to start navigating it’s files, Finder will ask you for a username and password, if you haven’t changed the default password on your iPad, these will be “root” and “alpine” respectively. Choose to remember the connection and click ok. You’re now looking at your iPad’s file system.

Here are some useful locations for files:

• Almost everything useful is in /var/mobile/
• Photos and videos are in /var/mobile/media
• Custom lock screens and mail attachments are in /var/mobile/library
• Documents for programs like Pages, Numbers and more are in the individual application folders inside /var/mobile/applications (Use SBSettings’ App Folders feature to find the exact folder your App uses)

[MacStories]