Mirroring an Apple Watch to your iPhone might at first sound redundant. What can you do on an iPhone that you can’t on an Apple Watch? The feature, available in Settings > Accessibility > Apple Watch Mirroring in iOS, is designed primarily for people with physical or motor disabilities, Apple says, extending the utility of the Apple Watch’s vitals monitoring, voice-activated options, and other features without a requirement of having to always interact with the watchOS tap, rotate, and press interface. Activating mirroring lets you use Voice Control, head tracking, and other assistive features only available through an iPhone.
However, most accessibility features extend their utility far beyond their core audience. Many people may find it useful to sometimes or regularly access their Apple Watch via mirroring on an iPhone to adjust settings or perform actions that are fiddly, appear with very small type, or require more precision than we can pull off at a given time.
Check requirements and set standby options
To use Apple Watch Mirroring, you need to have an Apple Watch Series 6 or later (excluding the Apple Watch SE) running watchOS 9 or later and paired with an iPhone 8 model or later with iOS 16 or later installed. Your Apple Watch and iPhone must be on the same Wi-Fi network, and both must also have Bluetooth enabled and be near each other.
Mirroring works over AirPlay and is an exact duplicate of the Apple Watch screen. As a result, if your watch goes to sleep, the mirror on the iPhone does, too, and you can only wake it from the Apple Watch. To avoid this, you may want to set your Apple Watch to remain active, at least while using mirroring: go to the Watch app on your iPhone and enable Display & Brightness > Always On.
Your iPhone could also go into standby while mirroring the Apple Watch screen, which ends the session. To ensure it doesn’t go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock and set it to a longer interval or to Never.
You may want to keep your Apple Watch and iPhone plugged in and charging while using mirroring to avoid draining their respective batteries.
Use Apple Watch Mirroring
The Apple Watch Mirroring feature is unique among all screen sharing and mirroring options Apple offers and among nearly all Settings switches. The switch to enable it acts more like a “launcher” for the service.
- On your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Apple Watch Mirroring.
- Tap to enable the feature.
- Mirroring begins immediately on your iPhone. The lower portion of your iPhone screen now shows the Apple Watch display with a label beneath it that reads AirPlay Mirroring.
You can tap the Digital Crown, side button, or Action button (Apple Watch Ultra) to simulate a press. Dragging simulates scrolling, while swiping left and right functions the same as swiping on the Apple Watch screen. You can even touch and hold the Digital Crown’s image to activate Siri on the Apple Watch.
You may also see delays in reactions, as the responsiveness is quite low compared to other forms of sharing and mirroring because of its use of AirPlay.
When you’re done with your session, tap the X in the upper right corner of the mirrored display. If you return to Settings > Accessibility > Apple Watch Mirroring, you will see that the switch is set to the off position. Tap it again to resume mirroring.
Set up mirroring shortcut taps or presses
If you plan to use mirroring regularly, you can set up one or two action shortcuts on your iPhone in Settings > Accessibility:
- In Accessibility Shortcut, you can set or add Apple Watch Mirroring. This shortcut is triggered by a triple-click of the side button or triple-tap of the Home button and cycles through selected options.
- In Touch > Back Tap, you can set Double Tap or Triple Tap to Apple Watch Mirroring. Then tap the back of your iPhone twice or three times to start mirroring.
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