iPhone backup extractor and viewer software that works on Windows PC?

Let's talk about ios_backup_extractor as an iPhone backup viewer on a Windows computer: it doesn't have a graphical interface at all. You won't find a window with buttons, thumbnails, or browseable folders.

How "viewing" works: After running the --extract command, the script copies all the files from your iPhone backup into a regular Windows folder. Once extracted, you can then use File Explorer to browse those files—looking at photos, reading document files, examining data—just like any other folder on your computer.

Here's the main challenge: Windows doesn't come with Ruby pre-installed. To get this tool working, you need to:

1. Install Ruby on your Windows machine

2. Open a command prompt as administrator

3. Run the installation command: gem install ios_backup_extractor

The gem command is Ruby's package manager. Once installed, the ios command becomes available in your terminal.

Using ios_backup_extractor as an iPhone backup viewer on a Windows computer means using a tool to extract your backup to a folder, then browsing that folder with File Explorer. It's a two-step process: extract first, then view.