iPhone Mirroring: A Boon for Apple Coaching

From QuickTime Player…

Until now, my primary method for displaying an iPhone screen on a Mac has been via QuickTime Player. As described in Getting Started with Zoom, which I published a week after the COVID lockdown began, it’s possible to:

1. Plug an iPhone into a Mac
2. Make sure the devices trust each other
3. Create a new movie recording in QuickTime Player
4. Choose the iPhone as the Camera (macOS 12 and earlier) or Screen (macOS 13 and later)

Because of the complexity of this process, I have consistently asked clients to share their whole Mac screen with me and give me control so I can set this up independently. Then, I have to remind them to interact with their iPhone on the device even though they can also see its screen on the Mac.

…to iPhone Mirroring

If you’ve met all the requirements and your iPhone is nearby and locked, you can open the iPhone Mirroring app on your Mac and connect to your iPhone. A simple animation (shown above) and description show the basic interaction and capabilities of the feature.

You can easily access your iPhone apps and content, interact with notifications, and even have them push through to your Mac. When in use, you also cannot use iPhone directly at the same time.

Your iPhone must be near enough to maintain a stable connection but can be across the room, sitting on your desk, or even mounted on your Mac.

Access Shortcuts

Here are some ways to access common device functions in iPhone mirroring. (To see the window toolbar, mouse up to the top of the window.)

1. To go to the Home Screen, you can click the Home Bar, click  on the toolbar, or use the View > Home Screen command (Command+1).
2. To show the App Switcher, click  on the toolbar or use the View > App Switcher command (Command+2).
3. To enter Spotlight Search from anywhere, use View > Spotlight (Command+3). Or, on a Home Screen, swipe down on the screen or click Search at the bottom, just as you would on iPhone itself. To get out of Spotlight, use any of these access shortcuts or press Escape.

Notably, there is not currently a way to access Control Center nor Notification Center. However, iPhone notifications can appear on Mac if you wish and you can find them in the Mac’s Notification Center, too.

To control which iPhone notifications post on Mac, go to iPhone Settings > Notifications, select an app, and toggle Show on Mac. Or, on Mac, go to System Settings > Notifications > Allow Notifications from iPhone. Here you can toggle specific apps or universally toggle showing iPhone notifications on Mac.

Also, you’ll find that Mac cannot show iPhone notifications for apps whose notifications are fully disabled on iPhone as well as apps that are installed on Mac, too.

Limitations in iPhone Mirroring

It’s worth noting that iPhone features that require biometric authentication (Touch ID or Face ID) don’t work in this mode, forcing you to manually enter passwords and passcodes.

And, hardware functions like the camera and microphone are disabled, meaning dictation is unavailable in this initial version. In fact, since you use your Mac keyboard and mouse/trackpad to operate iPhone, the on-screen keyboard doesn’t even appear.

Additionally, to clear the elephant in the room, this feature is currently iPhone-only and does not work with iPad, even though this was unclear in June when Apple introduced it.

Hopefully, iPadOS will get equal support in a future update. Control Nearby Devices just doesn’t cut it, even though it’s kind of cool that you can also control an iPhone using an Apple Watch.

Goodbye 9:41?

If you’ve been in session with me and allowed me to see your iPhone screen using QuickTime Player, you may have noticed that your iPhone clock displays 9:41 am. This is an Easter Egg that harkens back to 2007.

When Steve Jobs introduced iPhone to the world, a live presentation that was precisely timed by the late CEO, the time of day when he displayed “iPhone” on the screen was precisely 9:41 am.

As iPhone Mirroring displays an exact replica of the remote device’s screen, including the time of day and battery status, this secret’s presence may be waning.