How to Connect Your iPhone or Android Phone With Your TV – CNET

I recently took a vacation where I wanted to fire up Paramount Plus to watch Big Brother with friends, but I really didn’t want to log in to the app on our Airbnb’s television. I didn’t want to deal with plodding in my login details using a remote, nor did I want to risk accidentally staying logged in for the vacation home’s next guests. Luckily, my phone had the streaming service ready for viewing on the go, and we figured out how to connect my iPhone to the TV, and used AirPlay.

While we fortunately had access to a television with an Apple TV box, that’s not strictly necessary anymore. Many TVs now ship with built-in support for AirPlay, Chromecast or Miracast, all of which let you wirelessly connect your phone to a television. The trickiest part isn’t whether you can connect your phone to your TV, because you probably can. Instead, you’ll need to know which wireless casting connection your phone supports, and make sure the TV you want to connect to also supports it.

We’ll divide out how this works, based on whether you’re using an iPhone or an Android phone. We’ll also point out when you’ll be using AirPlay, Chromecast or Miracast to make the connection, depending on what device you have.

iPhone supports AirPlay and Chromecast

Apple’s iPhone devices have two ways of connecting wirelessly to a television. On a system level, an iPhone can use AirPlay to cast media from video and music apps to any device that also supports AirPlay. This originally was exclusive to the Apple TV, but AirPlay now supports many televisions made by Samsung, LG, TCL and Vizio, along with Roku’s streaming devices. Odds are if your device supports the Apple TV app, somewhere in its settings is also support for AirPlay. 

You can access AirPlay in one of two ways. If you’re using a supported app like Paramount Plus, you’ll want to tap the AirPlay icon represented by a TV with a triangle. You can also access AirPlay from your phone’s Control Center by tapping the icon represented by two rectangles, and then picking the device you’re casting to. Using the latter option, you can also mirror your phone’s screen to your TV to display apps like Instagram or TikTok that don’t include AirPlay from within.

Certain apps like YouTube will blend these casting options together for convenience. When tapping Google’s Chromecast button, a submenu will let you choose between using AirPlay, Chromecast or linking directly to your TV’s YouTube app using a code.

And if you want to connect your iPhone to your television using an HDMI cable, Apple also sells a Lightning-to-HDMI adapter that allows for screen mirroring without using AirPlay.

Android always supports Chromecast, sometimes supports Miracast

And while it’s not supported on every Android phone, Samsung and Motorola both make Android phones that support Miracast for screen mirroring. These features are labeled as “Smart View” and “Ready For” respectively, and will let you connect your phone to televisions or displays that support a setting that’s often labeled “Screen Mirroring.” What’s unique about Miracast is that many Windows PCs also support this style of casting, and during my recent trip that came in handy in order to play some Jackbox games.

An additional note about Samsung’s Smart View and Motorola’s Ready For is that both support connecting your phone to a television using a USB-C to HDMI cable, should you have one on hand. This could be particularly helpful if you’re trying to do a more data-intensive activity on your phone, such as connecting to your TV in order to use your phone more like a computer.