Running Rockbox on an old iPod is great for extending battery life and adding features — but sometimes macOS refuses to mount the device automatically. If you’ve installed Rockbox and find your iPod visible in Disk Utility but not in Finder, here’s a quick workaround that gets you back to syncing in no time.
1. Confirm the device in Disk Utility Link to heading
First, check that macOS sees your iPod at the block level. Open Terminal and list all disks:
diskutil list
You should see something like:
...
/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *12.0 TB disk4
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1
2: Apple_HFS disk1 12.0 TB disk4s2
/dev/disk5 (external, physical):
#: FDisk_partition_scheme *2.1 TB disk5
1: Windows_FAT_32 IPOD 2.1 TB disk5s1
In this example, the iPod appears as
/dev/disk5, with the FAT32 partition on/dev/disk5s1.
If you don’t see the drive, try rebooting the iPod in disk mode.
2. Create a mount point Link to heading
macOS sometimes won’t mount FAT32 volumes with third‑party firmware by default, but you can manually mount the partition. First, create a directory under /Volumes:
sudo mkdir -p /Volumes/arpod
You can name the directory whatever you like (arpod stands for “Arda’s iPod”, so feel free to use any string).
3. Mount the FAT32 partition Link to heading
Next, mount the iPod’s FAT32 slice using the built‑in msdosfs driver:
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk5s1 /Volumes/arpod
You may see output like:
Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil load -p /System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext
This indicates that macOS is loading the FAT32 kernel extension to handle the filesystem.
4. Access your iPod Link to heading
Once mounted, you can browse the contents of your iPod at /Volumes/arpod:
ls /Volumes/arpod
Sync music or copy files just like any other external volume.
5. Unmount when finished Link to heading
When you’re done, unmount safely so as not to corrupt your device:
sudo umount /Volumes/arpod
# or
diskutil unmount /Volumes/arpod