Whenever I give a presentation about augmented reality or virtual reality I’m asked how I project my Android phone’s screen. Vysor is the product that I use to project my Android phone’s screen. Vysor is my choice because it uses a wired connection rather than a wireless connection. This is important to me because many of the wireless solutions that I’ve tried run into glitches when switching from a home network to a public network even those that are password protected like is found at a conference.

To project an Android screen onto your Mac or Windows computer you will need to install the Vysor software. The software is available for free. Once the software is installed and activated you can use a standard USB cable to connect your phone to your computer. The trick to making your phone’s screen appear on your computer via Vysor is that you must enable USB debugging on your phone. The steps for enabling USB debugging vary slightly between phone manufacturers and Android versions, but a good general overview of that process can be found in this Make Use Of article. Don’t worry, USB debugging is not nearly as “techy” as it sounds.

Vysor’s software is free to download, install, and use. The free version will display a short advertisement at an interval of roughly once every thirty minutes. There is an optional upgraded version of Vysor that you can purchase. The paid version provides some additional features including drag-and-drop file transfers between phone and computer, a wireless mirroring option, and no advertisement displays.