How to Mirror Your iDevice to your Mac

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I recently found myself debugging a mobile game I’m working on (sneak peak) with a friend over Jitsi. I had no trouble sharing my Godot window, Xcode console, or IRC bouncer. But how were they going to view the output on my phone?

Well turns out it’s really easy, and requires no non-default software:

  1. Open Quicktime
  2. Press File -> New Movie Recording or + + N
  3. Plug in your iDevice (I’ve only tested with an iPhone) via USB
  4. Click the down caret by the red record button
  5. Select your device as the Camera

That’s it! I didn’t even need to record anything, as I just used Jitsi’s built-in Window Sharing feature to share the screen live.

If you want to record your phone with something more powerful than Quicktime, you can use OBS and select your phone as a Video Capture Device.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post! I know it’s a bit shorter than normal, but I’m hoping to post more frequently starting soon as a bunch of interesting things are happening in and abouts my life.