Where is screen mirroring?

You know the feature exists. You have seen it work on someone else’s TV. But the word you are looking for is not in your Settings app, because your device calls it something else. We opened the settings of 43 operating systems and found the same feature under five different names.

The same feature, five names

Ten of the 43 systems in our catalogue expose screen mirroring somewhere in Settings. Between them they use five different labels for it:

If you have an Android phone and you search your settings for “mirroring”, you will find nothing — the word on your screen is Cast. If you have an iPhone and you search for “cast”, likewise nothing: Apple calls it AirPlay. The feature is the same; the vocabulary is not.

Where each system actually keeps it

These are the shortest paths from the first Settings screen, as they stand on the newest release of each system:

Eight of the ten put it within two taps. Google TV puts Cast on the first screen, which makes sense for a device whose whole job is to show someone else’s picture.

Windows is the outlier, and not by a little

On Windows 11 the path is four taps deep — but the depth is not the real surprise. Look at where it sits: Apps › Optional features › Add an optional feature › Wireless Display.

That is not a settings screen. That is an installer. On every other system in the table, mirroring is a switch you turn on; on Windows it is a component that may not be on the machine yet, filed next to handwriting support and extra language packs. If you have searched Windows Settings for “screen mirroring” and come up empty, this is why — the words are different and the thing itself is somewhere you would never think to look.

You can walk the path yourself in the Windows 11 settings simulator.

Thirty-three systems do not have it at all

It is worth saying plainly: most of the systems we catalogue have no mirroring setting. That is not an oversight in the data — it reflects what the devices are. A Windows XP desktop, a Symbian phone and a fitness tracker have nothing to mirror to, and nothing to mirror from.

Screen mirroring is a feature of the last fifteen years, and it shows up almost entirely on systems built around a screen someone else might want to watch: phones, tablets, TVs, and the two desktop systems that also sell you a TV box.

How to find it when the name is wrong

If you are hunting for it on a device not in the table, the pattern across these ten is consistent enough to guess from:

• Apple devices file it under AirPlay — in General on iOS and iPadOS, in Control Center on macOS and visionOS.
• Android-based systems file it under Cast, inside a connectivity or sharing group.
• Windows calls it Wireless Display and treats it as an optional component.

Searching your own Settings app for “airplay”, “cast” and “mirror” in turn will find it on nine of these ten. Or you can open the system in the osimulator and click through the real menu without touching your device — and you can search every system at once for a setting by name.