Tips to mirror and connect your smartphone screen in Mac

Fitri Rahmadhani
3 min readJan 28, 2021

To exploratory testing especially in platform apps you should test in two platform Android and iOS. Not only when doing testing, may be you going to present something in a meeting, and the content is in a mobile app or mobile screen.

So I did search some tips how to connect and mirror your smartphone screen in mac. There is some tips you can use:

1. Using third party support: Vysor for android user

https://www.vysor.io/

Before seeing the instructions please make sure that you connected your Android smartphone with your mac through USB cable.

When mirroring an android device, you need a third party support. I recommend using Vysor. Install this tool to mirror your android phone on Mac or PC.

Note: USB debugging should be enabled on your android device with PTP mode (i.e. not charging mode MTS)

  • Connect your android smartphone to your Mac
  • When you connect for the first time, the mobile os will ask for a USB debugging permission. Accept it by tapping OK.
  • Vysor will install an APK on your device to sync.
  • After few seconds you can see your mobile screen on your Mac through the Vysor window.
  • The next time you connect your phone, Vysor will auto detect your phone and come with a mirror screen.

That’s it for Android.

2. Using Quick Time Player for iOS user

Same like Android please make sure that you connected your iphone with your mac through USB cable.

  • Launch Quick Time Player in your Mac.
  • Select New Movie Recording under File Menu (⌘+⌥ + N)
  • In the popup window select the down arrow near record button.
  • Choose the iPhone as your camera and microphone if needed.

That’s it. Now you are mirroring the iPhone screen on your Mac.

3. Connect with no cable!

In third method, we don’t need cable. This tips I share for android device only because I couldn’t find how to in connect using iphone.

Before start, make sure you follow this requirement:

  • To connect a device, we need IP address. How to get IP Address?
  1. Go to Settings
  2. Go to About phone
  3. Go to Status
  4. See the IP address
  • To mirroring we will use the scrcpy because it doesn’t need to install anything in the device. How to install scrcpy in mac?
  1. Please run $ brew install scrcpy.
  2. Please run $ brew cask install android-platform-tools if you doesn’t have adb.

After we do the requirement, let’s connect then mirroring to mac:

  1. Make sure real device and laptop are using the same connection (ex: mac and my android connected to “fitrinet”)
  2. Set your android to be debugable
  3. First, you have to connect with usb android to your mac
  4. Open iterm/terminal in your mac
  5. Type adb devices in terminal, then will show serial number android (List of devices attached
    4d7b59fdxxxx device )
  6. Run $ adb tcpip 5555 *start next step, unplug usb
  7. Run adb connect [IP android:5555] . Text connected to [IP address android]will showed
  8. Run $ scrcpy or $ scrcpy --serial <real device IP address>:5555
  9. Your android screen will appear in mac screen and you can remote it
https://medium.com/@yosuapelamonia/install-and-run-scrcpy-for-mac-os-f2758e56afe4

How? Easy right? Hope this post will help you to gain knowledge about mirroring a smartphone screen on your Mac. If I have a missed, I open to discuss ya. Thankyou!

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSG93ixmifc&ab_channel=ProgrammingKnowledge

https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

https://medium.com/@yosuapelamonia/install-and-run-scrcpy-for-mac-os-f2758e56afe4

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Fitri Rahmadhani

Still learning. Request for what to write poke me on any social media