There are several ways to capture your iPhone or iPad’s screen on your Mac; however, many of these approaches call for third-party software and setups that you might not have. For instance, you might consider setting up an airplay server to capture the display stream from your iPhone, or install other special software that will capture your iOS device’s output. While these approaches might have their merits, there is an easy way built into OS X to view and record your iPhone or iPad’s screen.

Attach your iPhone to your Mac with its USB cable Open QuickTime Player (in your Applications folder) Go to File > New Movie Recording in QuickTime’s menus

When you create a new movie, QuickTime will use your Mac’s built-in HD camera (if available), by default. Now you simply need to change this to your iPhone by clicking the little down-arrow next to the red “record” button on the QuickTime Player controls, where you will see a menu appear containing all of your available audio and video inputs. One of these should be your iPhone or iPad, so select it.

With your iOS device selected, you should now see its view stream to your Mac’s display live. If you rotate your iOS device, the aspect ratio of the display on your Mac should update accordingly.

You now can put QuickTime Player in full-screen mode to present what you are seeing, or you can record the display output as a QuickTime movie. You can use this to record what you are doing, or also open your iPhone’s camera and then record it directly to your Mac (granted features like slow-motion and time-lapse will not work, but it will give you some video options.

You can also use this view to quickly take screenshots of your iPhone, as opposed to pressing the iOS device’s home and power buttons simultaneously to store a screenshot on it, and then have to transfer that screenshot to your Mac. To do this, simply move your mouse out of the window so the QuickTime controls disappear, and then press Shift-Command-4 followed by tapping the Space bar to put your Mac into Window Screenshot mode. Then move your mouse pointer (which should now look like a small camera) over the QuickTime window and click when the window highlights blue. The screenshot will be saved as any other on your Mac, directly to your desktop.