What is screen mirroring?

How it works

Your PC asks Android to start an H.264 video encode of the screen and stream it back over ADB. The PC decodes and displays the stream. Latency is typically 30-80ms — fast enough that scrolling and typing feel native.

Input forwarding

Mouse clicks and keystrokes on the PC get translated into Android touch events and sent back to the phone. The phone runs the actual app — your PC is just a remote display + input device.

Why it matters

Demoing apps in a meeting, recording high-quality screencaps, typing long messages with a real keyboard, debugging touch interactions — mirroring saves hours every week for anyone working with Android.

How to mirror an Android screen to your PC

On Windows the most reliable route is over ADB: connect the phone with USB debugging enabled, and a tool like Andora (which uses the scrcpy engine under the hood) streams the display into a desktop window in real time, with full mouse and keyboard control. Nothing is installed on the phone, nothing is uploaded to a server, and over USB there's no noticeable lag. Once you've paired the device over Wi-Fi, the same thing works without a cable.

Mirroring vs casting — they're not the same

The two sound alike but solve different problems. Casting (Chromecast, Miracast) pushes a video stream to a TV and is built for media playback. ADB-based mirroring sends the live display to a computer and lets you control the phone back from the desktop — better for demos, remote support, and development because it's two-way and low-latency.

Does it need root or a special app?

Neither. ADB-based screen mirroring needs only USB debugging turned on — no root, and nothing to install on the phone, because the heavy lifting happens on the PC. That's why it works on virtually any Android device from the last decade.

Frequently asked questions

Can I control my phone from my PC while mirroring? Yes, with ADB-based tools. Your mouse becomes touch input and your keyboard types directly into the phone, so you can run the device entirely from the desktop.

Does screen mirroring upload my screen to the internet? No. ADB mirroring is a local connection over USB or your own Wi-Fi — the video never passes through an external server.

Is there any lag? Over USB it's near-instant. Over Wi-Fi there's a small delay that depends on your network quality, but it stays usable for most tasks.

Do the phone and PC need the same Wi-Fi? For wireless mirroring, yes — both must be on the same network to pair and stream. USB mirroring has no such requirement.