iPhone Mirroring comes to Macs in macOS Sequoia public beta, but it’s missing its best feature

Smoke and mirrors

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Applehas just launched the macOS Sequoia public beta, meaning you caninstall macOS 15 nowand try out a host of thenew featuresthat are coming later this year. In the absence ofApple Intelligence– which is currently nowhere to be found – one of my favorite additions isiPhone Mirroring, which displays a fully interactive version of your iPhone on your Mac’s display. Unfortunately, in its current state, iPhone Mirroring is missing a key aspect that made it so enticing in the first place.

When Apple demoed iPhone Mirroring atWWDC 2024in June, it explained that the feature would let you interact with iPhone apps on your Mac, letting you type, swipe and scroll to your heart’s content. Notifications from iOS show up in macOS Sequoia, and you can change settings, launch apps and generally use your iPhone just as you would normally (including apps that don’t typically run on Macs).

The best part of the demo, though, was when Apple’s Craig Federighi showed how iPhone Mirroring lets you drag a file from your Mac and drop it directly into an app on your iPhone. The file doesn’t just get stashed in some downloads folder for later retrieval – Federighi moved a video clip into a template in the Unfold app, without any steps in between.

That functionality got me excited. I often useDropboxto quickly send files between my Mac and my iPhone, but this is nowhere near as seamless as iPhone Mirroring because it requires fetching files from the syncing folder. With Apple’s new feature, I might be able to ditch Dropbox entirely. Or I would, that is, if iPhone Mirroring’s drag and drop feature was present in the macOS Sequoia public beta.

Better late than never

There’s been no official word from Apple on when drag and drop might make an appearance in iPhone Mirroring, so for now we’re just going to have to wait and see.

It’s not unusual for features announced atWWDCto be delayed as Apple works on getting them right. After all, the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform Apple Intelligence is also totally absent from the macOS Sequoia andiOS 18public betas. According to a report from journalist Mark Gurman, some aspects of Apple Intelligencemight not even land until 2025, as Apple needs more time to polish them to perfection.

So, while it’s a little disappointing that I can’t yet start playing around with my favorite part of iPhone Mirroring, I’m not too worried. The rest of the iPhone Mirroring feature exists in the public beta, and while there’s no drag and drop for now, it’s still a helpful addition.

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I’d rather Apple took its time to get a feature right than rush out something buggy and broken that creates a bad first impression. We’ve seen it do just that before (I’m looking at you,Stage Manager), and if waiting a little longer means the iPhone Mirroring drag and drop experience is better than ever, that’s fine with me.

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he’s learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That’s all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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