Echoing iPad screen to iMac

Software
,
1

I’m looking for the best way to echo my iPad’s screen to an iMac.

I know that there is a hack that allows you to do this with QuickTime, but I wasn’t very happy with this for number of reasons:

  • It requires a cable (I’d prefer it were wireless)
  • it’s a fiddle to set up
  • The resultant image appeared to be fairly low resolution even though it was running on 5K display.

I’m therefore considering using a 3rd party app for this.

The two most popular seem to be…

  • AirServer
  • Reflector 3

Does anyone have any experience of these or any other recommendations ?

2

I am using AirServer to present ZoomNotes as an infinite whiteboard from my iPad Pro through my MacBook Pro to a projector while doing capture with Panopto. The setup is stable. When I log out of the air mirror on the iPad, I usually have to turn the Bluetooth on the iPad off and back on to reset the connection.

As I recall, I found AirServer to be more intuitive or easier or less cumbersome or less expensive to use compared to Reflector, especially for just mirroring. Also as I recall, Reflector had advanced features compared to AirServer.

—
JJW

3

Thanks for the feedback, having looked at both apps on the web I decided to try Reflector 3 first as | preferred the look of the UI and it was slightly cheaper.

So far I’m quite impressed.

  • It was very easy to set up
  • It works well on my wireless network (Linksys Velop)
  • You can configure it to AirPlay a 4K version of the iPad screen to the Mac, which looks sharp on a 5K display
  • You get a nice frame of your device around the screen image on the Mac
  • You can AirPlay multiple devices to your Mac at the same time (e.g. iPhone and iPad)
  • It’s easy to take screenshots or make screen recordings

Possible downsides ?

  • There’s a little bit of lag with fast moving objects (e.g. if you’re using a mouse on the iPad)
  • I have seen some reports of dropouts on certain wireless setups, but I haven’t experienced any myself as yet