I’ve looked for answers to this, I apologize it its covered elsewhere. Have any of the iPad only users found a way to use jump drives on on iPad? I’m traveling and would only like to only take my iPad, put I need to open actual files from a jump drive while I travel. Any help out there?
SanDisk has a solution called iXpand, there are harddrives with WiFi, but iOS has no support for standard USB Mass Storage devices.
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Nope. This has been a big pain point on iOS since the beginning. There are some specific drives out there which can work with iOS over Wi-Fi, but there’s no way to take a generic USB jump / thumb drive and just plug it into an iOS device to read any files off of it.
Maybe in iOS 13?
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I use the SanDisks @airwhale mentioned. Combined with FileBrowser for Business, they provide the solution I need. However, AFAIK, they are still lightning only.
I don’t own an iXpand drive (like @airwhale mentioned) but my Mum has one and I recently used it to get some photos onto her iPad (from a camera via a Windows laptop with an SD card slot).
It was basically a regular thumb drive but had two ends–a Lightning end and a regular USB end–and it got the job done. The app was a little ugly (not sure if it integrated into the regular Files app; I didn’t think to check at the time) but for light use when travelling I would imagine it would be okay.
In fact I was thinking of getting one myself, as this is one of the few problems I have had with using my iPad as my primary device while I have been travelling too. Admittedly it’s not something I need very often so I’m not sure whether it’s worth it at this point, but if I could go back and advise 12-months-ago Kaitlin to get one I would!
(But maybe check the Lightning-only thing @WayneG mentioned if that’s not what you need!)
I was referring to the iXpand drive, they are made by Sandisk. AFAIK there is no usb-c version. The iXpand app doesn’t integrate with Files, but if you also have FileBrowser for Business, Files will see the drive.
FileBrowser lets me connect to pretty much everything (Mac, Windows, OneDrive, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, FTP, “and many more”)
Ah, yeah, sorry, I didn’t word that well. I meant, “if the drive being Lightning-only is a problem, look into whether that’s the case first” as opposed to “if it’s a problem check out the other device”. My bad!
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