In the previous tutorial we looked at how to stream music, videos and photos to an Apple TV. Here’s an even more exciting use of AirPlay: mirroring the screen of your iPhone onto a HDTV. Mirroring lets you show exactly what’s on your iPhone’s screen on the TV. That might be a web page, the Home screen, a spreadsheet or even a game. That means you can load up a racing game and play it on the TV while using the iPhone as the controller. There’s a slight lag but it works wonderfully, especially for games that don’t require precise input such as flight simulators or turn-based strategy games.

Mirror your iPhone to a TV

As before, you’ll need an Apple TV connected to the TV and hooked up to the same Wi-Fi network. Next, open Control Center on your iPhone by swiping upwards from the bottom of the screen. Wait a moment and an option to enable AirPlay will appear next to the AirDrop panel near the bottom of Control Center. Tap it, then select Apple TV from the menu. Finally, toggle the Mirror switch “On” to mirror your devices screen on the TV.

While your screen is mirrored on the TV, everything you do on the iPhone will appear on-screen, including messages, websites and apps. Note how the images rotates into landscape mode when your turn your device on its side. Also note, that if you view a photo or video while mirroring, AirPlay will show it full-screen. To turn off mirroring, just bring Control Center back up then toggle the Mirror switch to “Off”. Alternatively, lock your iPhone via the power button and the stream will end, or if you have the Apple TV remote to hand press the Back button.