How to View your Phone Screen on a Laptop (or Projector)

As part of my day job at Appware, I have to either demonstrate Apps to people or quickly send them video demonstrations via email. This can either be to show customers how a specific function works, or a fuller full presentation to a room full of people.

If you’re doing a quick demo face to face with someone, it’s not too bad to just pull your phone out and show them an App. However, if you’re in a board room with a group of 8 people, that’s not really practical! This is when you ideally want to be able to replicate whatever is shown on your phone screen, either on a laptop, TV, or projector.

We’ve tried a few different ways to do this over the years, but what we’ve found the most successful, is some software called Reflector 2. The way it works is that you install Refector 2 on your laptop and it sits in the bottom right tray. The software then effectively makes your laptop look like an Apple TV (on iOS) or a Google Chromecast (on Android) to your smartphone.

Once setup then sharing the screen is pretty simple. On an iPhone, you simply swipe up, select AirPlay Mirroring, and select your laptops name. Once connected, whatever is shown on your phone is mirrored across to your laptop screen in realtime. It’s even shown in a nice iPhone frame and you have various options, such as the colour of iPhone and background etc.

Of course, if you have this shown on your laptop screen, you can then mirror this screen again onto either or projector, or modern TV in the same way as you’d add an external monitor to your laptop (usually a HDMI cable). Being able to wirelessly demonstrate an App, showing exactly what is happening on your phone in realtime is invaluable.

I also mentioned video earlier. As well as being able to use the software for live demonstrations, you can record the screen too. Again, this is so useful if you need to demonstrate an App (or just one quick function) to somebody remotely. It works much better than a series of screenshots for a lot of things, and is very quick to do too.

Hopefully the above is of help to anyone who ever needs to demonstrate something on their phone, either live to an audience, or recorded, and sent to someone who isn’t local.

Thanks

Richard