The best way to mirror an iPad screen to a Macintosh screen for presentation or recording

The best new feature of Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) is tucked away in QuickTime Player that provides a rock-solid, reliable way to display an iPad or iPhone screen on the screen of a laptop or desktop computer. 

Requirements:

* A Macintosh computer running Mac OS X version 10.10 or later

* The QuickTime player app (installed with Mac OS X, should be in your Applications folder)

* An iOS device with a Lightning connector running iOS 8 or later (devices with the old 30-pin connector will not work)

* A Lightning to USB cable

How to:

1. Connnect your iOS to your Macintosh with the Lightning to USB cable

2. Run QuickTime Player

3. Choose File > New Movie Recording (command-option-n)

4. In the display that appears, choose iPad for the Camera in the drop-down menu. This will cause the iPad to mirror onto the Macintosh screen. If the iPad screen doesn’t appear on the Macintosh screen, you may have to swipe once on the iPad screen to make it appear.

The advantage of this approach over wireless solutions that use Airplay is that it doesn’t require access to wifi. 

What you need to know about logging into the DPS Folio Builder panel

When you create article content for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite projects, you will probably need to use a different Adobe ID to log into the Folio Builder panel than you use for your Creative Cloud account. If you are a designer creating DPS content for a client, the client may provide you with a specific Adobe ID to use for the project. If you are working on a DPS project for your company, you will want to create a separate Adobe ID for each DPS app that you create. You can learn more about this here.

If you are running InDesign CC, you will be logged into Creative Cloud with the Adobe ID associated with your Creative Cloud account. You can verify this Adobe Id by looking in the Help menu where you will see Sign Out (YourAdobeID)

When you first open the Folio Builder panel in InDesign, InDesign will attempt to log you into DPS with your Creative Cloud ID. If this is not the Adobe ID you want to use, you will need to choose Sign Out from the Folio Builder panel menu:

And then choose Sign In from the Folio Builder panel menu:

When you choose Sign In, it can be confusing because the dialog box that appears says “Creative Cloud” at the top. But you can sign in with any valid Adobe ID that is associated with a DPS account.

Once you have done this, the next time you start InDesign, the Folio Builder panel will automatically sign you in again with the last Adobe ID that you used.

This can be confusing if you are working on multiple DPS projects which require different Adobe IDs. Here are a couple small visual cues that can help you with this.

First, you can tell at a glance if you are signed into the Folio Builder panel by looking to see if the bullseye icon is displayed. If it is, you are signed in. 

Second, you can hover over this icon to see which account you are signed in with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t display the actual Adobe ID, just the name associated with the account, but it may still be helpful.