Present

Mirror your USB-connected iPhone on your Mac with QuickTime-level latency,
framed in a photoreal device bezel over a pretty background —
made for sharing the window in calls (Google Meet, Zoom, …).

Features

• Low-latency USB mirroring — uses the same CoreMediaIO screen-capture mechanism as QuickTime, rendered through AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer (the fastest display path there is).
• Photoreal device frames — the exact bezel for the connected model, taken from Xcode Simulator's vector chrome artwork, including animated side buttons (click them!). Falls back to a drawn bezel when no simulators are installed.
• Automatic model detection — the connected iPhone's hardware identifier (e.g. iPhone18,2) picks the right frame; manual override available.
• Adaptive Dynamic Island — idle mirror streams omit the island, so the app fills in a black pill; it fades out automatically whenever the stream renders the island itself (animations, Live Activities), detected by sampling frames. Position is calibratable in-app (⌥-arrows) and the fill can be toggled off.
• Backgrounds — gradient presets or your own image.
• Screenshots & recordings — composed at the stream's native resolution (background + frame + video), not a window grab. PNG (⌘S) and H.264 .mov (⌘R), saved to your system screenshot folder (the location set in Screenshot.app, Desktop by default).
• Clean window for sharing — hidden title bar; controls only appear when the mouse reaches the bottom edge, Dock-style. Portrait and landscape both supported.

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon or Intel
• Xcode command line tools to build (xcode-select --install)
• Optional: Xcode with iOS simulators installed, for the photoreal frames (/Library/Developer/DeviceKit); without them a drawn bezel is used
• An iPhone + USB cable

Build & launch

git clone https://github.com/oozou/present.git
cd present
./build.sh
open build/Present.app

On first launch:

1. Allow camera access when prompted — that's how macOS gates iPhone screen capture (nothing is recorded unless you ask).
2. Connect your iPhone via USB-C, unlock it, and tap Trust if asked.
3. The stream appears automatically, and survives unplug/replug.

Then share the Present window in your call.

The app is ad-hoc signed, so macOS treats every rebuild as a new app and asks for camera access again after ./build.sh. Normal launches don't ask.

Usage

Move the mouse to the bottom edge of the window to reveal the control bar:

Control	What it does
Status light	Connected device and detected model
iPhone button	Toggle the device frame on/off
Sliders menu	Frame style (photoreal/stylized), device model override, phone size
Camera button (⌘S)	Save a composed screenshot to the system screenshot folder
Record button (⌘R)	Record a composed H.264 movie to the system screenshot folder
Color dots	Background gradient presets
Photo button	Pick a background image

Drag anywhere on the background to move the window. Click the phone's side buttons to see them depress (cosmetic only — the mirror stream is one-way).

How it works

• Setting the CoreMediaIO kCMIOHardwarePropertyAllowScreenCaptureDevices property makes iOS devices appear as AVCaptureDevices — the same mechanism QuickTime's movie recording uses.
• iPhone screen devices report their activeFormat as 0×0; the real stream dimensions (and rotation changes) arrive via AVCaptureInputPortFormatDescriptionDidChange.
• The mirrored device only reports modelID: "iOS Device", but its sibling Continuity Camera device exposes the true hardware identifier, which maps to Simulator chrome via /Library/Developer/DeviceKit/chrome_map.plist.
• Frames, screen masks, and side buttons are Apple's own vector PDFs from *.devicechrome bundles; the screen position is derived from the artwork geometry, so no per-model tables are needed.
• Exports composite the scene on the GPU (CoreImage) from a parallel AVCaptureVideoDataOutput tap, so recording doesn't touch preview latency.

Development

swift build          # debug build
./build.sh           # release build + app bundle (build/Present.app)

Logs go to ~/Library/Logs/Present.log.