How To Use iPhone Mirroring With Your Mac

With macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 you can not only view your iPhone screen on your Mac, but control it as well.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using iPhone mirroring on your Mac. 
One of the big new features that's part of macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 is the ability to mirror your iPhone screen on your Mac. Not just see the screen but actually interact with it using your mouse or trackpad and the keyboard on your Mac. The reasons you may want to do this is so you can keep your iPhone in your pocket or in your bag or better yet on a charging stand and then access it on your Mac's screen while you're doing other things on your Mac. That way if there is an app that only works on the iPhone you can actually use it on your Mac.  It's likely you can probably type faster on your Mac's keyboard anyway. You can interact with the apps on your iPhone just like they were apps on your Mac. In other words, dragging and dropping things to them, copying and pasting and so on.
Before trying to use this you should be aware of the requirements. It needs a Mac running macOS Sequoia and also an iPhone running iOS 18. So pretty recent hardware. The Mac has to have either an Apple silicon chip, so M1 or newer, or if it's an Intel chip it has got to have the T2 security chip. You should be using the same Apple account on both devices and you should have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on for them, although they don't need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. 
Now you can't use some things while using iPhone mirroring. For instance you cannot have your personal HotSpots turned on in your iPhone. You also can't have AirPlay or Sidecar or be using an Apple Vision Pro. All those things are using the same technology to mirror either your Mac Screen or some other screen to and from your Mac. So you can't be doing two screen mirroring things at the same time. Another big on is that this doesn't work in the European Union. Apparently this has because of the European Union regulations, Apple is afraid they would have to make this available to go from Mac to android or to allow iPhones to also be mirrored on other types of computers. So, for now, it is not available in the EU. 
You can go to this webpage for a full list of all other requirements and some troubleshooting tips if it is still not working for you. 
If it is not working you should, of course, make sure your iPhone is locked and nearby and also think about other software you may have running on both devices. Like do you have a VIP, do you have some sort of security software or a firewall turned on. All those things may or may not get in the way of using iPhone Mirroring. 
So I've got my iPhone here nearby and locked and ready to go. Now to use this you need to use the iPhone Mirroring App that's on your Mac. So you want to launch that anyway that you normally launch apps. You can use Spotlight. You can use Launchpad. You can go to the Applications folder. Anything you want. I'm going to use Launchpad here. Find iPhone Mirroring and launch it. It's going to come up with this Introduction Screen the first time you use it. Then you can continue. Then it is going to ask you to unlock the iPhone. So, I'm going to do that here and this iPhone, of course, is using the same Apple account. So it recognizes and connects and I just Allow. It says it is ready for use. So I'll get started. 
Now it is going to say iPhone Mirroring is locked. Now I want to enter my login. This is my Mac's login, the same one I use to unlock my Mac account. Then Return and it will show Connecting and then there I go. I'm connected and I see the iPhone screen. Now the iPhone itself won't show anything. It will be a blank screen because the iPhone has got to be locked during this. 
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Now to use your iPhone you would, of course, use your Mac's pointer with your mouse or trackpad. You can click on things instead of tapping on your iPhone screen. So, for instance, if I want to use an app here I just click on the app and it will launch the app. Just like if I tapped on the screen on iPhone itself. You can continue to tap on things, like that. You can navigate around just like you're using your finger on the iPhone. You can also swipe. So on the trackpad you use two-fingers to swipe. On an Apple Magic Mouse you would use one finger and swipe on the top. You can swipe and it is just like swiping on the screen of the iPhone. 
To navigate around here are some tips. You've got the Home at the bottom. You don't need to actually swipe up with it. You can just click it and it will work to go back home. But you also have some buttons here in the Toolbar of the window. Now you don't see the Toolbar unless you actually move your pointer over the top, like that, and then it appears. You've got a Home button there and you also have an App Switcher button. So you can click on that and go to the App Switcher. Click on this one to go Home. So you have those ways of doing it but you also have, in the View Menu, keyboard shortcuts. Command 1 for Home Screen. Command 2 for the App Switcher. Command 3 will take you to Spotlight. You may also notice in the View Menu you've got Larger, Smaller, and Actual Size. So you can change the size of one of these three. So, for instance, I can go smaller and have a smaller window there. I can go back to Actual Size. You saw there were keyboard shortcuts for that as well. 
Now you have some Settings as well. If you go to iPhone Mirroring, Settings, look here and your've got How Often You Need to Enter Your Password. So, every time you start iPhone Mirroring here you will be asked to enter in your Mac Account ID, just like you're unlocking your Mac. But if you prefer you can set it to Automatically Authenticate. So you're asked that less. If you're using Touch ID on a keyboard that has that then it is really less of a problem. 
You also have a button here if you want to Reset everything. This would disconnect your iPhone and you would just have to set it up again from scratch. There is some settings on your iPhone as well. If we go into Settings here and go to General and then look for AirPlay & Continuity you'll see iPhone Mirroring here. It lists all the Macs where you have this setup. So you could Edit here and you could remove one of these even if you're not actually using them at the moment. Also, if you go to System Settings on your Mac and then you go to Notifications, note you can Allow Notifications From iPhone. Now you can do this independent of the iPhone Mirroring feature. But it is nice to be able to get these iPhone notifications on your Mac. It is kind of a related feature. 
Now one of the ways that you can interact between the iPhone Mirroring window and other windows on your Mac is to Copy & Paste. So, for instance, I'll go into the Notes App here and I'll create a new note. Say I am composing something here. Notice I can type on my Mac keyboard and it appears here just fine. Which to me is reason enough to be using iPhone Mirroring. But you can also just Copy & Paste. I can Copy from this pages document in a Mac window, just do Command C to copy. Go over here to the iPhone window and I'm going to use Command V to paste. You can see it pastes here in this note. I can do it the opposite way as well. I can select some text here and I can go into Pages on my Mac and Command V to paste. 
Now, here's the interesting thing. This is actually not using iPhone Mirroring. This is something you could have done before. It is using universal ClipBoard to do this. iPhone Mirroring didn't need to enable this at all. It already was part of using your iPhone and your Mac together. You can also Drag & Drop between the iPhone Mirroring window and your Mac apps. This is a new feature in macOS Sequoia 15.1. So make sure you have that if you want to do this. But here I am still in the Notes App here and I'm going to drag a photo from the Mac Photos App into the iPhone Mirroring window here and it adds it to this note or any other app that I want. You can do the reverse as well. So now I'm going to drag the image from the Notes App into the Mac window here and drop it into Pages. It will add it here to my Pages document. 
Now there are some interesting notes here about how this all works. One thing is if you play audio here on your iPhone in should iPhone Mirroring it should play through on your Mac. Another is that the mic on the iPhone and the camera on the iPhone don't work in this mode. If I go to the Camera App here I just get this message. However, you can actually exit and reenter iPhone Mirroring really quickly. So, I'm going to Unlock my iPhone right now. Just swipe up and use FaceID and you can see what happens here. It says iPhone In Use. So I can now use my camera, use my microphone, Voice Memos, whatever it is I need to do and then all I need to do is Lock my iPhone and then click the Connect button here and it should quickly and easily reconnect. Remember I had it set to ask me for my password each time. But you could change that so that it doesn't and it just reconnects immediately. 
So other notes here. This works in Standby mode. That means when you put your iPhone on a charger and it is in horizontal orientation, if your iPhone supports Standby Mode it can display a clock. Be a clock basically on your desk while you're actually using the iPhone through iPhone Mirroring. Another note that Apple has is that some of the videos may not play in Mirroring mode. That is because that if an app kind of prevents that, if it has already been set to prevent say using AirPlay Mirroring or any other kind of like screen recording then it is not going to work for iPhone Mirroring to your Mac as well. 
So I think iPhone Mirroring, for some people, is probably the big new feature in macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 and they going to be using it all the time. I've had a lot of people say that they don't see a use for this. That's okay. This feature may not be for everyone. If you primarily have your iPhone put away and don't use your iPhone during that time then you're probably not going to have a need for iPhone Mirroring. This is for people that are used to using both devices at the same time, all the time. Now it is going to be a little bit easier to do that thanks to iPhone Mirroring. Hope you find this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Use iPhone Mirroring With Your Mac”

Sheldon

4 months ago

Thanks bunches

Karol

Does iPhone mirroring support AppleScript? Or Automator’s recording macro?

Gary Rosenzweig

Karol: There's definitely no hooks in iPhone Mirroring that would enable you to use any sort of AppleScript. I doubt recording in Automator would work very well either. If you need that sort of automation, I'd look into Keyboard Maestro. But it is hard to know how well that would work for you as I have no idea what you are trying to do.

Earl Richardet

Very Useful video, as are most of your videos. I learned some things that I didn't know about. Thanks for all that you do!

Nan Holcomb

Thanks for this. Count me as one of those who will use this new feature frequently.

Susan Yonish

2 months ago

If you don't want to use iPhone mirroring, how do I turn it off?

Susan: There nothing to “turn off.” Just don’t use it if you don’t want to use it.