AirPlay Mirroring is a fantastic feature of iOS on the iPad. It lets you mirror your iPad screen, and everything that you do on it, to an Apple TV or a Mac computer. This is hugely useful when doing presentations and demos, creating screencasts or videos, or just enjoying your iPad photos or videos or games on a bigger screen.
And it’s incredibly easy to use as long as you have the right setup. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s needed and how to use AirPlay Mirroring on the iPad:
Requirements:
– An iPad 2 or later, running iOS 5 or later.
– If you want to mirror to Apple TV: An 2nd gen or 3rd gen Apple TV running software version 5 or later.
– If you want to mirror to a Mac: OS X Mountain Lion, a supported Mac, and an app to support mirroring.. Supported Macs are:
iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)
Two apps that enable mirroring to a Mac from an iPad are Reflector and Air Server. Both offer free trials, are available for $14.99 for a single user license, and have other licensing packages for multiple users. Both these apps also work on Windows PCs.
– A WiFi network. All devices taking part in the AirPlay Mirroring must be on the same local WiFi network.
How To Turn On AirPlay Mirroring:
– Bring up the MultiTasking Bar on the iPad. Do this by double-tapping the Home button or by using a swipe up gesture from the bottom bezel, if you have enabled multitasking gestures in Settings.
– Then swipe on the recently used apps list once or twice from left to right until you see the AirPlay Mirroring icon.
– Tap on the AirPlay Mirroring icon. This will bring up a popover dialog showing you an entry for the iPad and any Apple TV or Mac that is available to mirror to on your WiFi network. Please note that on a Mac you will need to have either the Reflector or Air Server app open in order for it to be available to mirror to.
Tap to select either the Apple TV or the Mac and tap to toggle the Mirroring button below the device name to On.
– To turn off mirroring you bring up the Multitasking Bar again, swipe left to right to reveal the AirPlay Mirroring icon (just as you did above), tap on the AirPlay Mirroring icon, and tap on the entry for the iPad.
That’s it. This really is a superb feature that’s ever so easy to use.
