Sharing your iPad screen on virtual meetings
You want to get an idea across with a quick “back of the napkin calculation” , but drawing shapes and adding text boxes with your mouse gets frustrating and slow.
Recently, while having a virtual catch up with my good friend Jean Metz I learnt a very useful trick. You can share your iPad screen, from your computer, while you scribble on it!
I was amazed, for years, since buying my own iPad I had set up Sidecar but never got around to figuring out how to do this.
Always remembering during a meeting, and not wanting to waste people’s time while I tried to get it set up, I always said I’d figure it out later. But never did. Anyway, let’s dive in!
This is something that can come in very handy during work meetings and job interviews, since it can help you communicate your ideas in an easy and quick way.
If you work in Product or Engineering this surely has happened to you: You want to get an idea across with a quick “back of the napkin calculation” drawing while talking to your colleagues.
You’re discussing a system, a UI or something else, but unless you’re a Miro/Lucidchart wizard, drawing shapes and adding text boxes with your mouse gets frustrating and slow.
So, if, like me, you’ve been in similar situations before. I just wanted to share this new thing I learnt with you!
There are a couple gotchas that can be easy to miss due to some odd UX choices from Apple. Hopefully this helps you navigate around them.
For 2 of the 3 main video conference products I tried, this is a hack. As you end up sharing your iPad screen through a Quicktime window.
Requirements
So, first, let’s go through what you need in order to try this:
- Mac. As far as I understand, it works on any Apple computer (Pro, Air, iMac, Mini, etc).
I’ve used a Macbook Pro M2 for this article. - iPad. It works on most modern iPads, with both A-series and M-series chips. As long as it supports Sidecar it should work.
I’ve used an iPad Pro 2nd Gen with an A12Z chip for this article. - Apple account login. You need to be logged in using the same Apple account on both the Mac and the iPad.
- USB-C/Thunderbolt cable. (or Lightning cable for other models) Both the Mac and iPad need to be tethered to each other with a USB cable.
In my experience it doesn’t work wirelessly (at least I wasn’t able to get it to work).
Check here for more details on device compatibility:
Setup
Now for the actual steps:
Connecting it
- Using your cable, connect the iPad to your Mac.
- Trust Computer. When prompted, tap “Trust” on your iPad. It might also ask for your passcode or to use FaceID.
This should only happen the first time you plug it in.
Setting up QuickTime Player
1. Open QuickTime Player. Launch the QuickTime Player application on your Mac.
2. Start New Movie Recording. Go to “File” and select “New Movie Recording”.
3. Select iPad as Input. Click the arrow next to the record button and choose your iPad from the list of available screens.
4. This is a very small arrow/chevron pointing down, and can be easy to miss.
Keep in mind. The whole Recording widget disappears when your mouse pointer leaves the window, which can make it easy to miss.
That’s all the setup we need! Quicktime is now mirroring your iPad screen in a window. You don’t need to actually start recording, unless you’d like to keep the screen recording for something else.
Screen sharing using different Video Conference Apps
Here are instructions on how to use this for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
Sharing Screen with Google Meet
1. Start or Join your meeting on Google Meet.
2. Present Screen. Click the “Present now” button in the bottom-right corner of the Google Meet window.
3. Select Window. Click on the “Window” tab and select the “Movie Recording” Quicktime window.
That’s all! You’re sharing your screen and everyone in the meeting can see what you write or draw on your iPad in real time!
Now you can open your preferred app to scribble, draw, take notes or anything else you need. Just note that it might not share sound if you were to try and play a YouTube video or similar.
Sharing Screen with Microsoft Teams
In the case of Teams, it’s the same workflow regardless of using the app of the browser.
You’ll just get a slightly different UI on the app; on the browser it’ll have the same pop-up as in Meet.
1. Start or Join your meeting on Microsoft Teams.
2. Share Screen. Click the “Share” button in the top-right of the Teams’ UI Ribbon.
Tip: Here you can also choose the layout in which you prefer the participants to see you and the content.
3. Select Window. Click on the “Window” tab and select the “Movie Recording” Quicktime window.
4. You’re now screen sharing!
Sharing Screen with Zoom
Zoom actually has this as a built-in feature, so the Quicktime “hack” is not needed if you’re having your meeting in Zoom, you just need to:
1. Start or Join your meeting on Zoom.
2. Click on the green “Share” button at the bottom and center of the window.
3. Click on the “Advanced” tab and select “iPhone/iPad via cable”.
4. You’re now screen sharing!
Wrapping up
That’s all! If you have an iPad in a drawer and you haven’t used it in a while I hope this works as an excuse to dust it off and get some new value out of it, using it in your meetings/interviews or catch ups with friends.
Here’s a video from Scott Wagner in case you prefer watching the instructions in that format (it focuses on Google Meet only):
