Windows 10 Will Soon Let You Mirror Your Phone’s Screen

At its New York event today, Microsoft announced a major new feature coming to Windows 10: phone screen mirroring.

In a future update to the Your Phone app in Windows 10, users will be able to see a list of all their apps. From there, you will be able to directly mirror those apps onto your PC’s screen and even directly interact with the apps. The feature is likely still in development, and it’s not clear exactly when Microsoft plans on launching the feature. The company did demo a mirror of Snapchat for Android on stage, which is quite ironic considering all the Snapchat and Windows Phone drama we had to go through years ago.

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The feature will, of course, be limited to Android devices. Apple simply doesn’t give developers access to such low-level APIs required to build experiences like this, so Microsoft literally can’t build a similar feature for iPhones even if they wanted to.

Screen mirroring is obviously nothing innovative, and it’s always been possible on Android devices through third-party tools and apps. But the experience being integrated directly into Windows itself will open it up to millions of users without all the technicalities.

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Conversation 13 comments

  • mattbg

    Premium Member
    02 October, 2018 - 5:24 pm

    <p>Apple introduced screen sharing / recording in iOS 11 and it allows you to share your IPad screen in conferencing tools like WebEx. I wonder what the gap is between that and screen mirroring?</p>

    • danmac

      Premium Member
      03 October, 2018 - 12:24 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#337724">In reply to mattbg:</a></em></blockquote><p>I wonder if it's the control aspect. Can you allow others to control the iPad in WebEx?</p>

  • jrswarr

    Premium Member
    02 October, 2018 - 6:30 pm

    <p>I just don't know what to get next. Apple has finally pissed me off to the point I'll never buy another one of their phones. The fact that I can't get Siri to recognize that my music service is Spotify just sealed that deal. It's kinda like Henry Ford back in the day – "You can have any color you want as long as it's black."</p><p><br></p><p>While this is nice for someone who knows no better – to me it's Apple telling me they know better, They don't and I hate being tied to any specific platform.</p><p><br></p><p>Looks like my next phone is Android as much as I hate to get into the gogglesphere.</p><p><br></p><p>Crap – MS why did you give up on Windows Phone? I'd really like to see a real 3rd player in this field.</p>

    • Patrick3D

      03 October, 2018 - 12:40 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#337755">In reply to jrswarr:</a></em></blockquote><p>If you want a low-cost way of checking out the Android world take a look at Nokia's latest phones. The Nokia 6.1 has a fingerprint reader and is sold on Amazon for $229 (on sale currently.) They have higher performance models as well. The best part though is they use Android One which is the clean install of Android without any bloat and gets security updates for 3 years directly from Google. <a href="https://www.android.com/one/&quot; target="_blank">https://www.android.com/one/</a></p><p><br></p&gt;

  • dcdevito

    02 October, 2018 - 7:53 pm

    <p>Wow, this was a surprise. This is great, although do we now have to worry about yet another layer of permissions? I trust MSFT more than any other tech company, am just wondering. Anyone know?</p>

  • Daekar

    02 October, 2018 - 8:23 pm

    <p>I might actually use this frequently. If it works conveniently and reliably, I might ditch the Google Messages app for something better and use this functionality to send SMS with a full keyboard. </p><p><br></p><p>I'm so glad the grown-ups are back in charge at Microsoft. This is exactly what we should be seeing.</p>

  • Tsang Man Fai

    02 October, 2018 - 10:55 pm

    <p>That will be a big advantage for Windows devices with a touch screen.</p><p><br></p><p>When I'm working with a Windows PC, I don't even need to touch my phone and do whatever supposed to be only available on my phone.</p><p><br></p><p>With keyboard and/or mouse integration, the experience would be even better than using the phone itself!</p><p><br></p><p>This feature can absolutely keep users more engaged in their Windows devices.</p><p><br></p><p>Hope they will release this feature (fully functional instead of half-baked) very soon.</p><p><br></p>

  • BeckoningEagle

    Premium Member
    03 October, 2018 - 5:53 am

    <p>Curiously, today I was using the Microsoft Wireless Display adapter to mirror my phone on a TV screen. I thought, I wonder if there is an app that could act as a Miracast receiver and display the screen in a window. I know it's not the same, but this is something I would have running all the time. </p>

    • Trevor Fowler

      03 October, 2018 - 5:42 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#339818">In reply to BeckoningEagle:</a></em></blockquote><p>I actually already do this using the "Projecting to this PC" in Windows 10. I use this when demoing things like MFA, so the audience can see my android phone screen. When the phone is in landscape the window scales nicely, but when in portrait there is a lot of dead space. I'm hoping this is resolved with this new iteration of the feature. </p>

  • RonH

    Premium Member
    03 October, 2018 - 2:46 pm

    <p>I would like MS to add Chromecast support to Edge. Not sure if that can though…</p>

  • Illusive_Man

    03 October, 2018 - 10:37 pm

    <p>But will it work for iphones?</p><p><br></p>

    • Daekar

      05 October, 2018 - 7:06 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#345026">In reply to Illusive_Man:</a></em></blockquote><p>Almost certainly not. Apple doesn't play well with others. Microsoft didn't used to, I'm glad they've changed.</p>

  • Jorge Garcia

    04 October, 2018 - 3:55 am

    <p>This could be a huge development if you could COMPLETELY interact with it using your PC's mouse on the virtual display. Before anyone refutes this…yes, you can "swipe" with a mouse pretty effectively with some practice. But I do have doubts about the latency and the resources/battery life your phone would need to sacrifice.</p>

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