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Last Updated: 05/14/2024
Last Updated: 05/14/2024
You’ve arrived at an event and need to turn the venue TV into signage or use it for a presentation in the next 10 minutes. The Chromecast or ScreenCloud P1 Pro player you typically use for signage got lost on the way, and your laptop battery’s dead. Your iPhone’s the smartest device you’ve got. If only it had a bigger screen.
Turns out, you can project your iPhone screen to a TV for just that scenario.
Your iPhone—or any smartphone, for that matter—isn’t the best tool to power digital signage. But sometimes, the best tool is the one you have with you. With either an HDMI adaptor or AirPlay support, plus a couple small workarounds, you can mirror any iPhone screen to a TV and use it to present your slides or as makeshift digital signage in a pinch.
Here’s how to get your iPhone screen on your TV.
Turning an iPhone into a digital signage player
The best way to turn a TV into digital signage is with a dedicated media player. A consumer device like the Chromecast with Google TV for around $50 or a professional signage player like ScreenCloud’s Station P1 Pro for $150 can keep slides and apps on your TV with little to no maintenance. They’re best when you can plan out your signage.
But sometimes you need something to use on short notice. Or you might want to test out signage ideas in a digital signage pilot, and don’t want to invest in new players until you’ve determined how many screens your office needs and where to place them. That’s when an iPhone—either the one in your pocket or an older repurposed iPhone—can come in handy to power digital signage.
There are two ways to connect an iPhone to a TV: With an HDMI cable with an adaptor, or wirelessly via AirPlay. Then, you can turn your iPhone into signage with ScreenCloud’s web player and tweak your iPhone settings to make it a bit better at powering your TV.
How to Connect an iPhone to a TV with an HDMI adaptor
If you have a new iPhone, odds are fairly high you’ll be able to get it connected to your TV in minutes, since iPhone 15 and newer include a USB-C connector. Grab any USB-C to HDMI adaptor, including ones that are designed for laptops, and you’ll be ready to go. You can also buy cables with HDMI on one end, USB-C on the other, for around $10, or a dedicated USB-C to HDMI adaptor for around $15. That’s handy enough to keep in your laptop bag, just in case you need to connect your phone or laptop to a TV. iPhones with USB-C can output up to 4K resolution to a TV over HDMI.
All other iPhones use Lightning connectors. Apple’s default charging port since the iPhone 5 has a wide range of accessories including HDMI adaptors. Apple sells a Lightning to HDMI adaptor for $49, but you don’t need to spring for that. Instead, check Amazon or local retailers. You should be able to find a Lightning to HDMI adaptor for around $10, or a cable with Lightning on one end and HDMI on the other for around $15. iPhones with Lightning can output up to 1080p HD resolution to a TV over HDMI (though with 3rd party adaptors, you may only get 720p resolution).
The same goes for iPads. The 2018 iPad Pro and newer support USB-C; 2012’s 4th generation iPad and newer support Lightning. The same adaptors that work on iPhones also work on iPads.
If you plan to use your iPhone to power signage, the best option is to buy an HDMI adaptor that includes either USB-C or Lightning on one end (depending on your device), then both HDMI and USB-C or Lightning on the other end. That way you can charge your device and stream your iPhone screen to a TV at the same time.
To connect your iPhone to a TV, connect the HDMI cable from a TV to your adaptor, then connect the adaptor to your phone. Optionally, connect your power cable to the adaptor as well. Turn on and unlock your iPhone and you’ll see your iPhone home screen mirrored on your TV. Open an app, turn your phone sideways, and it should fill up your TV display with black letterbox spacing around the top and bottom (similar to watching a movie on your TV).
Everything should just work. There are no settings on your iPhone to tweak the display; what you see on your iPhone screen will be mirrored on the TV, without you needing to do anything other than plug it in.
Most iPhone apps work while mirroring over HDMI to your TV. Some, including Google Slides, include specialized presentation modes to use your phone for notes while showing full-screen slides on the TV. Others, including some streaming media apps and ScreenCloud’s iOS app, aren’t supported over HDMI—but there are workarounds we’ll get to in a bit.
How to stream an iPhone screen to a TV with AirPlay
No HDMI cable and adaptor in sight? There might be one other way to get your iPhone’s screen mirrored on your TV: AirPlay, Apple’s wireless streaming technology.
If you’ve ever used a Chromecast or Apple TV, you might have used AirPlay or Google’s similar technology to cast YouTube or Netflix to your TV, using your iPhone as a controller while watching video on the big screen. The same tech can work to stream your whole screen to a TV.
A wide range of TVs include AirPlay built-in, including many Sony, Samsung, Vizio, and LG TVs sold since 2019. Check Apple’s documentation or your TV’s manual to see if your TV is supported. Or, if an Apple TV device or a newer Roku is connected to your TV, you can AirPlay to that device to show your iPhone on your TV.
To AirPlay your entire iPhone to your TV, first connect your phone to the same WiFi network as your TV or media player device. Then, open the iPhone Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of your device, tap the Screen Mirroring icon (two interlocking rectangles), then tap your TV’s name. That will stream your entire phone’s screen to your TV, in up to 4K resolution for the latest devices.
The same restrictions apply as with HDMI cables and iPhones. You’ll see black letterboxes above and below your iPhone’s mirrored screen on your TV, and some apps will block their content from showing on your TV. For the most part, though, you can watch videos, showcase slides, and more from your phone on your TV, wirelessly.
How to keep a TV running consistently from an iPhone
The worst problem of using your iPhone to power your TV will show up about 30 seconds after you connect the HDMI cable. Odds are, your phone will go to sleep.
Sleep and notifications are the two things you’ll want to take care of before using your iPhone to power a TV as digital signage or for a presentation.
To keep your iPhone from going to sleep while mirroring to a TV, open your iPhone’s Settings app, scroll to Display & Brightness, then tap the Auto-Lock setting and set it to Never. Then, to keep your iPhone from overheating, open the Control Center and swipe down on your brightness option to dim your screen as much as possible. You could also enable Guided Access to turn off your iPhone’s touch screen and keep people from interacting with your phone while it’s powering signage.
Apple, by default, turns off notifications whenever you’re using Screen Mirroring (which should keep notifications off both over AirPlay and HDMI). Check that in your Settings app. Open Notifications, tap Screen Sharing, and make sure notifications are off. Or, from Control Center, tap the Focus button and select Do Not Disturb mode to turn notifications off your iPhone manually.
If your iPhone’s display turns off while connected to HDMI, the most recent content may freeze on your TV or your TV may go blank. The same will happen if your iPhone’s display turns off while streaming your full screen over AirPlay (though you can turn your phone’s screen off if streaming a video directly over AirPlay).
How to use an iPhone with digital signage software
You’ve got your iPhone connected to your TV, whether via a cable or AirPlay. Now, how to get your content on the big screen?
iPhones are great at showing slides on a TV. If you’ve got a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation, download the respective app to your phone, open your presentation, and tap the play button. Google Slides will show an option to present to an external display when connected to HDMI. That shows slide notes on your phone while playing full-screen slides on your TV.
To play back other media, open them as normal on your iPhone. You can open and play YouTube videos, showcase web pages from your browser, or flip through photos from your photo roll on your iPhone and mirror them to the TV.
To turn your TV into digital signage with an iPhone, you need signage software like ScreenCloud to build out slides and connect apps, then play them back on your iPhone. ScreenCloud’s iOS app doesn’t work over HDMI or AirPlay, but the ScreenCloud web player gives you a way to use your iPhone to power signage.
To connect your iPhone to ScreenCloud, open the ScreenCloud Web Player in Safari (other browsers work as well, but in our testing Safari’s minimal interface was a better fit for full-screen signage). To make ScreenCloud look the best on your phone, tap the Aa button and select Request Desktop Website; that’ll fit ScreenCloud to your iPhone screen and avoid scrolling. At the same time, open ScreenCloud’s Screens tab on your laptop’s browser, click the New Screen button, and enter the code from your iPhone’s screen to add the iPhone to ScreenCloud.
You can now add any app integration, Canvas or Playgrounds slide, or other ScreenCloud content to play on your iPhone’s ScreenCloud player. Full channels with multiple apps typically won’t work well on the iPhone’s smaller screen, but individual apps and other standalone ScreenCloud content tends to play well on mobile.
Or, you can make a new two-app dashboard for your iPhone in ScreenCloud Channels. Add a new channel, choose landscape, then in the Channel Size menu choose iPhone X. You can then edit the layout and choose a new option to show multiple apps at once on your iPhone screen. In our testing, the best option was to use a two-app layout. A customized layout with one larger slide, joined by a smaller Weather app widget, worked well.
By default, you’ll see the Safari address bar alongside your ScreenCloud content. There are two options to hide it. The easiest option is to tap the Aa button and select Hide Toolbar. That will shrink the toolbar down to a faint website address line—but will also show your iPhone’s white indicator to go back to the home screen.
Another way to hide the address bar is to zoom in slightly on your ScreenCloud content, then scroll down just enough that the address bar fades from view. That’ll give you the largest, full-screen content on your TV, without ScreenCloud’s address or the iPhone home indicator.
With everything set—ScreenCloud content queued and zoomed in Safari, your iPhone’s notifications turned off and display set to not lock—connect your iPhone to your TV with HDMI or AirPlay, hide it away behind the TV mount, and voilà: Your TV is now digital signage, powered by your iPhone. Your content will be framed by letterboxes, and it won’t be quite as crisp or detailed as with a dedicated digital signage app—but it’ll get the job done for a short event or to test out signage locations.
Sometimes the best hardware is the device you have with you. While the iPhone isn’t the best way to power digital signage, if you have a spare older iPhone you want to reuse or want a way to power signage from the phone in your pocket if needed, it’s almost worth keeping a $10 HDMI adaptor in your backpack, just in case. Or, if you need really small signage—on an event table, or as actual water cooler signage sitting on top of your water cooler, you could run ScreenCloud for iOS on your iPhone or iPad as another way to use your iOS device as digital signage.