With the new developer beta of iOS 18, Apple has delivered something special: iPhone mirroring. It means that you can leave your iPhone in your bag and use it seamlessly on your Mac screen. Here’s everything you need to know.
iPhone mirroring on the MacBook Pro.
What Is iPhone Mirroring?
It’s pretty cool and, if you’re a developer and you’ve signed up to the developer betas that have just been released for iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, you’ll be seeing it now. Anyone can sign up for a developer account but the usual warnings apply: this is beta software so don’t put it on your main drivers, iPhone or Mac. Battery life may be impacted or some apps may not work yet. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Anyway, iPhone Mirroring means that while your iPhone is sitting comfortably nearby you can access it through your Mac display.
Is It Really New?
But wait, I hear you say, other manufacturers have offered something similar, haven’t they? Not like this. You can completely interact with your iPhone without touching it. An image of it appears on your Mac display and you can use the trackpad to swipe through pages, open apps and more.
iPhone notifications on the Mac with iOS 18.
Chief among the “more” is a very cool feature where you can drag and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone, which is the last word in convenience. The connected Mac will show notifications from the iPhone on the Mac screen and when you click on the Mac’s screen, they will open onscreen.
What Happens To The iPhone?
All the while, your iPhone (in your bag or just across the room somewhere) stays locked, so you’re in control of it. If the iPhone is charging in landscape orientation, in StandBy mode, then it stays like that, while you browse the display on your Mac.
Anything Else?
There’s another major feature in the new beta: SharePlay which allows you to interact with someone else’s screen to draw on it, for instance, or even take it over—with their permission, of course.
These key new features will be very big news when the software reaches general release in the fall, and will be widely appreciated when the public beta release arrives in July. For now, though, developers will be lapping them up.