There are so many reasons you would want to stream your iPhone screen to view on your big screen TV. You may want to show off your personal videos and photos, display a work presentation to a boardroom TV or most commonly, you can stream movies or play games. There are just some situations where the small screen on your device is just not quite big enough. Fortunately, you can connect your Apple devices to your big-screen TV through several different methods and we referred to as Screen Mirroring. In this article we will show you a few easy methods for screen mirroring on the iPhone, ranging from using a basic HDMI adaptor to sophisticated wireless streaming.
Connect an iPhone or iPad with an HDMI cable
The easiest way to use screen mirroring with an iOS device to a TV is to use a wired connection. For an iPhone or an iPad with a Lightning connector, you can use Apple’s Lightning Digital AV adaptor. While cheaper third-party adaptors are available, be aware that these will not support streaming video apps that use copy protection, such as Netflix.(You’ll also need to supply your own cable, so consider getting an HDMI cable that’s at least 3 meters long if you want to sit a comfortable distance from the TV.)
This is the easiest method to set up. Simply just plug the HDMI cable into your TV on one end and the adaptor on the other, plug the Lightning cable into your iOS device and set the TV to the appropriate input. You can also plug a charger into the adaptor’s second Lightning port to keep your iOS device’s battery from draining.
Most apps will simply mirror the iOS device’s display onto the television, but video apps such as Amazon Prime and Netflix might offer persistent playback controls while the video plays on the TV.
Screen Mirroring to Apple TV via AirPlay
Most people do not want to deal with cables and would prefer not to get up from their seat to physically connect their phones. In this instance, you can opt to mirror your device’s video and audio to any Apple TV using the wireless AirPlay protocol. This allows you to either mirror your iPhone or iPad display on the TV, or beam video and audio from within supported apps.
Here’s how to mirror what’s on your iPhone or iPad display:
- Ensure that both the Apple TV and iOS device are on the same Wi-Fi network.
- If you have an iPhone X or newer or an iPad running iOS 12 or later, swipe down from the upper-right corner to reveal the Control Center. Otherwise, swipe up for Control Center instead.
- Tap the “Screen Mirroring” button.
- Select your Apple TV from the list. (If you have multiple Apple TVs, consider labelling each one based on the room it’s in.)
- On your iOS device, enter the four-digit code that appears on your TV screen. (By default, you’ll only need to do this once for each device.)
- To disconnect from the TV, follow steps 1 through 3, and then select “Stop Mirroring” from the list.
For many video and audio apps, you may not even need to use the screen mirroring method outlined above. Instead, you will have a convenient built-in AirPlay icon within the App you will benefit from. The Aitplayt icon will look like a TV with a triangle at the bottom and when pressed you will then select your Apple TV from the device list.
Screen Mirroring to Chromecast
Google’s smart-TV dongle, the Chromecast, is another great option that will allow using screen mirroring to stream video content from your Apple device to a big-screen TV. Apple does not support the use of screen mirroring to a Chromecast device and limits the technology to its first-party products. However, many popular iOS apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify include support for Chromecast directly from the App.
How to stream videos from iPhone or iPad to a TV via Chromecast:
- Make sure that your iOS device and Chromecast are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
- Open an app such as Netflix or Youtube, which supports Chromecast.
- Load the video you want to cast.
- Tap the Cast button, a square with three curved lines like the Wi-Fi symbol coming out of the corner.
- If you only have a single Chromecast on the network, the video should start playing immediately. If not, you’ll see a list of available devices, and you’ll have to tap on the one you want to cast the video too.
