Nothing’s quite revolutionized the TV yet, but small steps are helping to breathe new life into that giant black square in your living room. One of which is to broadcast content on your iPhone/iPad directly onto your television, whether it’s to watch shows and movies you’re streaming or even play games, make presentationswith other apps or browse Facebook in the big screen. There are a number of ways to easily accomplish this. So, here’s how you can quickly enable enable screen mirroring on your iPhone
Stream Using AirPlay and Apple TV
The first solution for streaming your display or media from your iPhone is to just use Apple’s AirPlay, built right in iOS. This includes devices like the iPad and iPod Touch as well, as long as they’re up to date and support AirPlay. The feature can beam media content you’re watching instantly to your TV screen, while your iPhone acts as a remote. To use AirPlay, you need an Apple TV hooked up to your current television. It’s a small set-top box Apple sells for $69 that has some content of its own from iTunes, iCloud, and third-party media apps as well. For this situation though, we want it for the AirPlay receiver. When your Apple TV is plugged in and connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPhone, slide up from below the iPhone’s display to bring up the Control Center. Here, tap AirPlay Mirroring. Select your Apple TV from the list of available devices (other devices might include speakers and headphones for audio playback or perhaps even your own Windows PC) and let the magic happen. If you’re listening to music or watching a video, within seconds it should appear on your television display. Cool Tip: Notice that when you select Apple TV The good thing about this method is that it’d work seamlessly for mirroring your iPad’s screen as well.
Stream to Other Devices Using Chromecast
Cool Tip: You can, however, do this on Android. Check out our Ultimate Guide on how to mirror displays with Chromecast Again, whichever Chromecast device you use must connect to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPhone. Then, simply look for the wireless broadcast icon in your preferred app. Tap it, and choose the device you want to stream to. Got a Mac? Learn How to Completely Uninstall Programs on Mac with AppCleaner
Screen Mirroring Using HDMI
If you’re trying to kick in old school, you can ditch wireless streaming altogether and just use HDMI to mirror your iPhone display to your television. There’s an important catch though: the iPhone doesn’t support HDMI out of the box. To use an HDMI cable with an iPhone (or any iOS device) you need the Lightning Digital AV adapter Apple sells for a whopping $50. This supports all iOS devices with a Lightning connector, usually 2012 or later.
HDMI cable, via Shutterstock From there, just plug the adapter in to your Lightning port, then your HDMI cable into the adapter. Insert the other side into the HDMI port on your television. Unless you have a particularly long cable, using HDMI for mirroring generally requires your device to be close to the TV. It’s definitely a more clunky method for mirroring, but effective for presentations and the like. Plus, HDMI doesn’t require an Internet connection. Having done that, you might have to pick from the HDMI inputs on your TV Screen.
Which One is The One?
So, whether you have the high-end Apple TV or one of the cool ones from Samsung or Sony, enabling the screen mirroring option on your iPhone/iPad is rather an easy affair. All you have to do is follow the simple steps and Voila! The device screen will be broadcasted to the TV screen. See Next: New iPad (2017) vs. iPad Pro: Should You Spend the Extra Money?
