Is Apple’s new iPhone Mirroring feature within the newest variations of iOS and MacOS truly helpful? Regardless of the place your iPhone is close by — in one other room charging or buried on the backside of a bag or pocket — you’ll be able to view and management it out of your Mac.
Apart from the sheer comfort of not having to choose up the telephone, I’ve discovered a number of causes to make use of iPhone Mirroring. In actual fact, I catch myself utilizing it frequently on my iPhone 16 now that iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia have been launched. (And in the event you’re operating the latest betas, you’ll be able to experiment with probably the most fascinating mirroring options, the power to pull and drop objects on to the telephone and vice-versa.)
Learn extra: How to Control Your iPhone From Your Mac Using iPhone Mirroring
iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia can be found now, bringing a number of different options equivalent to animated text messages and the power to customize your iPhone’s home screen.
Watch this: iPhone Mirroring Involves Macs with MacOS Sequoia
When your iPhone is in a bag, purse or one other room
The simplest use case is while you need to entry one thing in your telephone but it surely’s buried in a bag, simply out of attain otherwise you’re unable to stand up (or you’re able, however the snoozing cat or canine in your lap would not admire the disruption). Connecting through iPhone Mirroring is far more handy.
You possibly can entry your iPhone even when it is in a bag or out of attain utilizing iPhone Mirroring on MacOS Sequoia and iOS 18.
Nonetheless, this function does not work over lengthy distances, like in the event you unintentionally left your iPhone at house and you should entry it from work. iPhone Mirroring makes use of Apple’s Continuity expertise to work, which implies the iPhone and Mac have to be inside Bluetooth vary of one another.
When you should verify in on an iPhone app
Did you miss your day by day Duolingo check-in and the telephone is not useful? In case your Mac is, iPhone Mirroring can join and ensure you hold your streak going.
Or perhaps you should end at present’s Wordle problem however it could be too apparent whereas working that you simply’re checking your telephone. The discreet iPhone Mirroring window might be simply coated or hidden if crucial.
Sustain your Duolingo streak even when your telephone just isn’t close by.
Once you need to use an app, not an internet interface
Even at present, some common providers work much better in apps than they do as net interfaces. Sure, we’re you, Instagram. Posting from an app typically consists of extra choices or a greater consumer expertise. Since iPhone Mirroring provides you nearly full entry to the iPhone’s interface, you’ll be able to put up utilizing a mouse pointer as a substitute of a finger.
Apps like Instagram are extra featured than their net counterparts.
Once you need to switch objects rapidly between gadgets (coming quickly)
I create loads of screenshots for work and take much more pictures personally, which all find yourself in my Pictures library. These photos are then synced through iCloud to my Mac — however typically it appears at a tempo precisely described as “when the telephone will get round to it.” After I want one thing on my Mac immediately, I discover myself utilizing AirDrop between gadgets, which works however is clumsier than I would choose.
Later this yr, although, we can drag and drop all types of information — not simply photos — between an iPhone and the Mac operating the iPhone Mirroring app. That can go in each instructions, too: Drop a video or vital PDF from a Mac Finder window onto the mirrored iPhone to switch it to the telephone. (You possibly can play with it now on the newest iOS 18.1 and MacOS Sequoia betas.)
Drag and drop information from the Mac to a mirrored iPhone and vice-versa.
When you do not need to muddle your Mac with software program junk
MacOS has an extended legacy of supporting system extensions, startup objects and varied background processes that you simply most likely do not understand are operating more often than not. Some massive utility suites, for instance, unfold out these accent information like a dropped field of Legos. In lots of circumstances, the drain on sources is negligible, however these items nonetheless eat storage and processor energy.
In distinction, iOS has all the time been constructed as a silo’d system, the place every app has its personal protected storage and strictly managed routes for interacting with different apps. Particularly for apps you do not use typically however must hold round, it’s possible you’ll need to set up a cell model and keep away from the app creep that occurs below MacOS.
iPhone Mirroring provides you a solution to nonetheless use an app like this in your Mac, with out infecting MacOS with all of the related detritus that’s usually put in.
Once you need to register to your financial institution’s app as a substitute of doing it on the pc
Sadly, a number of of those solutions deal with the theme of “an app is healthier than a web site,” and there is typically no better instance than banking websites.
It may be simpler, and safer, to entry your financial institution accounts or investments utilizing iPhone Mirroring to log in with the iOS app as a substitute of an internet browser in your Mac. You continue to must authenticate the iPhone app while you open it (since you’ll be able to’t use Face ID or Contact ID on the gadget), however that could possibly be a extra handy choice.
Use safe apps which are solely in your telephone, such because the Financial institution of America app.
Once you need to entry locked and hidden apps in your telephone
In iOS 18, you’ll be able to disguise delicate apps or require authentication (equivalent to Face ID) to open them. When you’d fairly use them in your telephone than via an app or net interface in your Mac, iPhone Mirroring helps you to entry them when the telephone is not close by.
Once you do, the iPhone Mirroring app requires authentication through the Mac, as you’d count on. Enter your Mac’s login password, use Contact ID or authenticate together with your related Apple Watch to open locked apps or make the Hidden folder on the telephone seen.
Entry the Hidden app folder through iPhone Mirroring.
Once you’re giving a presentation and need to present what’s on the iPhone
Granted, it is a smaller subset of use circumstances, but when you should exhibit one thing on the iPhone throughout a web-based or in-person presentation, iPhone Mirroring is a far simpler choice than different strategies.
Apart from rigging an overhead digital camera, the prevailing methodology has been to attach the iPhone to a Mac with a cable and use QuickTime Participant to view the telephone’s display. You’d then nonetheless must function the telephone together with your arms.
Now with iPhone Mirroring, the telephone might be related wirelessly and manipulated utilizing your Mac’s trackpad or mouse and keyboard.
The principle limitation with this method is that in the event you do must carry out one thing on the telephone, activating it pauses the mirrored connection.
And one streaming limitation we would prefer to see modified
One unheralded function between Apple gadgets is the power to stream media from an iPhone to a Mac utilizing AirPlay. Time to relax and watch a film or absorb an episode of your favourite TV present? You can begin it on the iPhone and select the Mac — with its bigger display — because the vacation spot.
Since iPhone Mirroring helps you to management an iPhone that is out of attain, it could be good to begin a film that performs on the Mac’s display. Nonetheless, digital rights administration squashes that concept within the context of iPhone Mirroring. Though you’ll be able to open an app equivalent to TV and tee up a present, the picture stays black.
Netflix exhibits up as a black display in the event you try to make use of it through iPhone Mirroring.
That black display additionally applies in the event you use AirPlay to stream whereas iPhone Mirroring is lively. The one approach this works is in the event you management the telephone bodily and stream to the Mac.
iPhone Mirroring is only one new function on the iPhone and Mac with iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia. Do not miss how to spice up your texts in Messages and methods to work with the updated Control Center.
