Wednesday, January 21, 2015

How to mirror or project an Android device screen to a Mac

I wanted to be able to project the screen of an Android handset on to a Macbook to demo an app to an audience. I found a post for a Windows PC on this site http://dmzilla.com/2014/07/21/how-to-display-or-mirror-an-android-device-screen-on-pc-no-root/ but not for a Mac. The post describes downloading and using the Android SDK platform tools along with a Jar file to do the projection to a PC. I thought that the same Jar file could be used on a Mac so I tried out the idea, and it turned out to be functional. So here are the steps to get it to work on a Mac. I am assuming that the following has been done:

  • The Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) has been installed
  • The Android SDK has been installed to a folder on the Mac e.g. /home/users/admin/Application/sdk/


  1. Download the Jar file http://dmzilla.com/files/display-android-on-windows-pc/%5bDMZilla%5d-Android-Screen-Monitor-(ASM).jar. Put the Jar file to the same location as the Android SDK's adb executable e.g. /home/users/admin/Application/sdk/platform-tools/.

    Note: the actual souce code is available on https://code.google.com/p/android-screen-monitor/
  2. Connect an Android device to the Mac. If necessary, enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Open up a Terminal.

  4. In the Terminal, type in the cd command to change to the location of the Jar file.

    $ cd /home/users/admin/Application/sdk/platform-tools
  5. Set the Path environment variable to include the Android SDK's platform-tools folder. In the Terminal, type in the export command.

    $ export PATH=$PATH:/home/users/admin/Application/sdk/platform-tools
  6. In the Terminal, run the Jar file.

    $ java -jar \[DMZilla\]-Android-Screen-Monitor-\(ASM\).jar
    The Select a Android Device prompt appears.
  7. In the Select a Android Device prompt, click the device label. Click OK.

    The Android Screen Monitor displays the screen contents of the Android device.
  8. Now on the Android device, run any app you want to present and project to the Mac screen.


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