Hands-On Mac 142 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on Hands-On Mac. Let's take a look at iPhone mirroring in macOS Sequoia. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. Welcome back to Hands-On Mac. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at a new feature that will be available in macOS Sequoia and iOS 18, called iPhone Mirroring. This feature is one that will hit all phones come this fall, or I should say the phones on which it is compatible this fall, but I wanted to go ahead and talk about it because many of you, I know, after having watched the episode on the public beta and before the episode on getting a developer account and joining the developer beta, will probably want to experiment with some of these features. So let's head over to macOS and take a look. So here we are on macOS and, first and foremost, understand that over to macOS and take a look of the screen, or, in my case, as it is on the side of the screen, and this new app is called iPhone Mirroring. This is how you access iPhone Mirroring on your Mac, but before we actually go to the iPhone Mirroring app, we need to go somewhere else so that you can set up your phone with iPhone Mirroring, and that in this case is the System settings app. When you're in the system settings app, you're going to want to choose desktop and dock and you want to scroll down until you get to the portion that is marked widgets. When you get to widgets and again, this could change in future versions of macOS Sequoia that's just how it looks now and of course, we'll talk about it more when the final version ships. But within widgets you will see an option that says iPhone and you need to choose the iPhone that you want to use with macOS Sequoia's iPhone mirroring. In this case, I want it to be the iPhone 15. Once you have selected it, now all you have to do is launch iPhone mirroring. This will immediately connect to your iPhone and in this case I need to on my iPhone type in my passcode. So I am going to do that now and then I'm going to choose, try again and we will see if it allows me to connect and it does.
02:44
So I have just logged into my iPhone. Importantly, my iPhone itself is just showing my lock screen and it shows a little notification that says iPhone in use. This iPhone is being used from Evelina MacBook Air, which is the case. I am using it from this MacBook Air, macbook Air, which is the case. I am using it from this Macbook Air. Now I can click and drag this window to move it however I might want to, and I can, in the top, for example, go to the home screen. I can click to go to the app switcher, or I can click to open a given app, like the music app, for example.
03:29
I am controlling the iPhone. It is not the case that I am controlling, you know, some version of my phone on the screen. No, this is my actual iPhone that is being controlled right now. I can interact with notifications as they appear. They'll actually appear on my Mac as notifications.
03:48
I am able to again go back to the home screen. I can use the bottom bar to swipe up. Clicking and dragging allows me to switch between portions of the screen, like so, and so I can switch back just as easily. You'll notice that it just launched Audible. Clicking at the bottom will take me back to the home screen there and I can go back to the main page here. If I were to go into the home app from here, I could turn on and off lights, so I just turned off the light in my studio, turned that back on. Everything that I've been able to do on my iPhone I'm able to do from here.
04:25
Now let me show you quickly the settings iPhone mirroring uh, I am able to choose whether my iPhone or my Mac kind of automatically authenticate. So at times you may need to use a password or touch ID in order to access it, but it can kind of whenever the Mac is unlocked and whenever the iPhone has not been locked in a certain period of time, then you are able to just automatically authenticate and I can make adjustments to where I am looking. Command one is the home screen. Command two is the app switcher. Command three is spotlight. Spotlight, of course, is the search feature that I use for everything.
05:06
You can also change the place where the window appears and you can make some subtle adjustments to that window as well. So I can move it to the edges of the screen and I can minimize it, and I should be able to. There we go, change its placement or, of course, have it kind of fill the center of the screen, move it to the half of the screen, quarter of the screen. These are just normal options that you have when it comes to a window on macOS, and that is because you should treat it like a window on macOS. That is indeed what it is, but the most important thing to understand when it comes to this is a you are using your iPhone, so if your iPhone's plugged in somewhere, it will be there, but as I'm moving around on that screen, nothing is changing on my iPhone itself, so people aren't able to see what you're doing, which is good. We want that.
06:10
Um, last but not least, is just the fact that when you're using this, you shouldn't think of it as a means of doing exactly what you would do on the iPhone. So, for example, control center is not able to be accessed from this screen. So in that case, you know you wouldn't necessarily want to access control center, because those are controls that are specific to the phone. I don't change the brightness of the screen, I don't want to turn off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. I wouldn't have access. Those controls are hidden in that case. So that's just one way that it's a little bit different from using your phone itself. Outside of that, though, everything is right there and everything appears exactly as you would expect Very cool new feature that we will continue to see improvements and adjustments made to, but I just wanted to show you what it looks like, how it works on Mac OS.
07:08
Sequoia Folks. I want to thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Hands-On Mac. I will, of course, be back next week with even more Folks. I want to thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Hands on Mac. I will, of course, be back next week with even more and I thank you in advance for becoming a member of Club Twit to get the video version of this show. Twittv slash club twit. If you have suggestions, ideas to send my way, questions about Mac OS or iOS or iPad OS, you can send those to Micah at twittv. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you again next week for another episode of Hands on Mac. Bye-bye.
