[Tip] How to Mirror or Cast Android Mobile Phone Screen on PC

If you want to access and view your mobile phone screen on your PC or laptop, this article will help you in mirroring or casting your smartphone screen on your computer system.

You might have heard of screen mirroring feature which can be used to mirror or cast your mobile phone screen on smart TV. It helps you in viewing content stored or playing on your smartphone on large screen of your Television set.

But sometimes you may need to mirror your mobile phone screen on your computer. Recently a reader asked me similar question. He wanted to mirror his Android mobile phone screen on his Windows PC. He wanted to use keyboard and mouse attached to his computer to navigate and type on his mobile phone screen.

Actually mirroring mobile phone screen on PC or laptop is possible and there are many software tools available for it. Most of them are paid but in this tutorial, I’m going to tell you about a free and open source tool called “Scrcpy” (Screen Copy in short) which can be used to mirror your mobile phone screen on computer quickly and easily.

The benefit of mirroring mobile phone screen on computer is, you can use your mouse to click inside mobile phone and select items. You can also use your computer keyboard to type in your mobile phone apps. So basically you can control your mobile phone using your computer keyboard and mouse with the help of screen mirroring. Also you can take screenshots and record videos of your mobile phone screen using your computer.

Suppose you need to type lots of text in your mobile phone, if you mirror your mobile phone screen on your PC or laptop, you can finish the work quickly by typing the data using computer keyboard.

Following screenshot shows my mobile phone screen mirroring on my Windows device:

If you also want to mirror or cast your mobile phone screen on your Desktop PC or laptop and want to display and view your mobile phone content on PC, following steps will help you:

NOTE: This tutorial and tool will work for Google Android mobile phones only. This tool can be used in Windows, Linux and MacOS. No root access required.

Let’s start the tutorial:

STEP 1 (One time only):

This tool “Scrcpy” and other screen mirroring tools utilize “adb” command to connect to your Android mobile phone. To be able to use this command, you’ll need to enable USB debugging option in your mobile phone.

USB debugging can be enabled using Developer Options menu in Android mobile phones. By default, Developer Options menu is deactivated or disabled. Developer Options menu is a hidden secret option which is turned off by default in Android devices so that only advanced and expert users can use it.

There is a secret process or trick to activate and enable Developer Options menu in all Android mobile phones which we have shared long time back in following tutorial:

[Tip] Enable Hidden Secret “Developer Options” Menu in Google Android Devices

You can visit above mentioned tutorial to learn how to enable and add Developer Options menu in your Android mobile phone. Basically you need to tap on “Settings -> About phone -> Build number” 7 times and it’ll activate and enable Developer Options menu.

After enabling Developer Options menu, open Settings in your Android mobile phone, scroll down to bottom and you’ll see new Developer Options menu.

Tap on Developer Options menu and now you’ll see USB debugging option on screen. Enable USB debugging option. Your mobile phone will show a warning message that USB debugging feature is intended for developer purposes only. Tap on OK button to enable USB debugging option.

Now connect your mobile phone to your computer system using USB cable. Again your mobile phone will display a message about USB debugging. Actually it’s asking for permission to connect to your computer for debugging purposes. Select “Always allow from this computer” option and tap on Allow button.

STEP 2:

Once you enable USB debugging option in your Android mobile phone, download scrcpy tool from following link:

Download Scrcpy to Mirror Android Mobile Phone Screen on PC

Once you go to above mentioned link, scroll down a little on the page and download win32 or win64 ZIP file according to your computer system. Most of the people will need to download win64 ZIP file.

STEP 3:

Once downloaded, extract ZIP file using 7-Zip or any other file archive utility and run scrcpy.exe file.

That’s it. It’ll first launch a Command Prompt window to execute required commands and within a few seconds, it’ll load your mobile phone screen on your PC.

Congratulations. You have successfully mirrored your Android mobile phone screen on your PC or laptop. Now you can view and control your mobile phone right from your computer.

To exit from screen mirroring, close the window and disconnect your mobile phone from your computer.

You can also disable USB debugging option in your mobile phone if you are not going to mirror your mobile phone screen on your computer frequently.

BONUS TIP:

You can also use above mentioned “Developer Options” menu to disable unnecessary animation effects to speed up your slow Android mobile phone. Check out following tutorial for more details:

[Tip] Speed up Your Slow Android Mobile Phone, Make it Run Faster