How to AirPlay Videos and More from Your iPhone or iPad to a Mac Computer

AirPlay to Mac Credit: Apple
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With macOS Monterey, now available to download on compatible Macs, AirPlay has received some excellent updates that make it much more versatile, allowing you to send audio and video to your Mac or MacBook swiftly.

AirPlay is really handy if you’re using a Mac as a second screen while teaching, or need to share videos to a larger audience, or quickly preview a video on a larger screen, etc.

Fortunately, using this new version of AirPlay on Mac isn’t difficult. So let’s check out what you need to do to enable it. 

First, Make Sure Your Devices are Updated

All your Apple devices will need the latest updates for AirPlay to work. That means updating your Mac device to macOS Monterey and making sure it’s ready to go, as well as checking that your mobile device is updated to the latest version of iOS/iPadOS 15. This is absolutely necessary for the new AirPlay features to work.

Activate Screen Mirroring

  1. Unlock your iPhone or iPad to the Home screen.
  2. On newer Apple devices, swipe down from the upper right corner and open the Control Center.
  3. Find the button for Screen Mirroring – it looks like two rectangle screens overlaying each other. Select this button.

Select Your Mac and Enter the Code

A small Screen Mirroring window will now appear and will show all the available Apple devices that can connect with AirPlay for quick streaming. If you’ve used AirPlay before, this should be very familiar, but there’s one important change: you should now see your Mac on the list.

This applies to any of the Macs you’ve upgraded to Monterey, including Mac minis, iMacs, and MacBooks.

If you’ve made all the updates but don’t see your Mac on the list, it could be a connection issue:

  • Try to get closer to your Mac and see if that helps.
  • In more complex setups that you may find in the classroom or office, one of the devices may accidentally be on a different Wi-Fi network, too, so make sure that’s not a problem.

When AirPlay finds your Mac, select it.

If this is your first time mirroring to that Mac, Apple may require the handshake protocol where it sends a four-digit code to your Mac and has you enter it on your iPhone.

Stop Mirroring When Finished

You can easily stop Mirroring at any time. Just swipe down on the Control Center again, and choose the Screen Mirroring button once more to exit.

You Can Also AirPlay from Specific Apps

Screen Mirroring is nice for guides and examples, but if you want to share a video or examine one on a larger screen, it’s not as effective. In this case, you can look for dedicated streaming options in the app you are using.

For example, most video players will have a streaming button, like a Share button or Wi-Fi icon that indicates streaming. Select this, then look for an option that says AirPlay.

As long as you can find an AirPlay option on the video player (it may be worth it to check under Bluetooth as well), you should see a list of available devices, including your Mac. Select it, then continue playing the video, and it should stream only the video content to the chosen Mac.

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