Troubleshooting

Last updated 22 October 2026

Mirroring gets choppy after a minute or two

Fixed in 3.1.1. Mirroring started smooth, then within a minute or two the frame rate slid, sometimes to under 10 fps, and the delay grew. Meanwhile the iPhone's own screen stayed perfect, and the sound stayed in sync.

The cause was on the PC. Windows acknowledged the incoming video too slowly, so the iPhone's send queue filled up and the iPhone dropped frames to cope. The iPhone reported up to 52 of every 60 frames dropped for that reason, with plenty of Wi-Fi capacity to spare. Earlier versions had the same problem.

3.1.1 has the PC acknowledge the mirror stream promptly. In the same test afterwards, a 7-minute session averaged 53 fps with no frames dropped for that reason. If you still see this on 3.1.1 or later (Help → About shows the version), please tell us. The Microsoft Store updates the app for you.

The picture freezes for a second, then catches up

How to tell that's what you're looking at

The status bar along the bottom of the AirMirror Pro window answers this directly. It shows the frame rate, Latency, and Skipped — and the one to watch is Skipped.

• While the picture is frozen, is Skipped climbing? If it is not, nothing is arriving from your phone. The PC is discarding nothing because it has nothing to discard. That is the hot-phone case, and by far the most common one.
• If Skipped is climbing quickly, frames are arriving and being thrown away, which points at the PC rather than the phone. That is rare. Turn on Performance Mode in File → Settings… → Mirroring, which mirrors at 720p and 30 fps for older and slower PCs, and if it still happens it is worth telling us about.
• If you see LOST in red, packets are being lost between your phone and your PC. That is a Wi-Fi problem rather than a heat problem — skip to the network section below.
• Touch your phone. If it is warm or hot, that is almost certainly the whole answer.
• Look at the phone's own screen while the PC picture is stuck. If the phone is perfectly smooth and the PC is frozen, your phone has stopped sending. Nothing is going wrong on the PC — there is nothing arriving for it to draw.
• Are you on a call? Mirroring during a phone or FaceTime call is the worst case, and it can freeze even on a cool phone.
• It recovers on its own. Let the phone cool and the picture returns to normal without touching anything.

What we measured

The same phone, the same PC, the same Wi-Fi, minutes apart — once healthy, once hot and on a call:

The bottom two rows are the important ones, and they are the same two numbers the status bar shows you as Skipped and LOST. The PC discarded nothing and the network lost nothing. The frames simply never turned up — for three and a half seconds, the phone sent nothing at all.

Mirroring asks your phone to encode video continuously, which is one of the most heat-intensive things it can do, on top of running its screen at full brightness. When an iPhone runs hot it protects itself by slowing down, and video encoding is among the first things to be starved. A call takes priority over mirroring for the same reason.

What actually helps

• Unplug the phone. Charging while mirroring is the single biggest source of heat. If you do nothing else, do this one.
• Take the case off, especially a thick or insulating one.
• Turn the screen brightness down. The display runs the entire time you are mirroring and it is a real contributor.
• Put the phone on something hard and cool — a desk, not a bed, a couch, your lap, or anywhere in direct sunlight.
• Close everything else, particularly the camera, games, and navigation.
• Start cool. A phone that is already warm when you begin will start freezing sooner, and once it is throttling it stays that way for a while after it feels fine again.
• Plan around calls. If you need a clean recording, take the call afterwards.

What won't help

These come up often and none of them are the problem, so they are worth ruling out before you spend money or time:

• A faster PC. We measured the PC's share of drawing each frame at 0.11 milliseconds out of a 16.7 millisecond budget. There is nothing there to win.
• Turning hardware acceleration on or off. It is already on, and decoding is not where the time goes.
• Restarting AirMirror Pro, or your PC. It will look fixed for a moment and then come back, because the phone is still hot.
• Changing your Wi-Fi, for this particular symptom. Nothing was lost in transit, so there was nothing for a better network to rescue. See below if your phone is cool and it still stutters.

Stutter on a phone that isn't hot

If the phone is cool to the touch, you are not on a call, and the picture is still uneven, that is a different problem and the advice above will not fix it. The things worth trying, in order:

• Put your PC on wired Ethernet if you can. Your phone has to be on Wi-Fi, but the PC does not, and taking one hop out of the path helps.
• Use the 5 GHz band rather than 2.4 GHz, and get closer to the router.
• Check that nothing else on your network is saturating it — another device streaming video, a large upload, a game download.

If none of that changes anything, email support@airmirrorpro.com and say what you tried. It is genuinely useful to hear about a case that does not fit the pattern above.

iPhone control won't start

The iPhone window shows what it is waiting for. Hover over the message for the detail.

• "Mouse control unavailable" means Windows could not start the Bluetooth side. Check Bluetooth is on in Windows Settings. If the detail says the adapter does not support the LE peripheral role, that adapter cannot act as a Bluetooth mouse, and a Bluetooth 5.0 adapter that can is needed. If it says another program is using the Bluetooth service, close any other app that makes the PC act as a Bluetooth device.
• "Waiting for the iPhone over Bluetooth" means the PC is ready but the iPhone has not connected. On the iPhone, open Settings → Bluetooth and tap your PC's name while the iPhone window is open. The first time, Windows asks on the PC whether to allow the pairing: accept it within about 30 seconds, or the iPhone drops the connection. A game or Do Not Disturb can hide that request. If the iPhone already lists the PC as connected and the message stays, click Reset Bluetooth in the iPhone window, which turns the PC's Bluetooth off for a moment and back on (AirPods disconnect briefly). That reopens a Bluetooth link Windows left stuck, which re-pairing does not.
• No pointer on the iPhone means AssistiveTouch is off. Turn it on in Settings → Accessibility → Touch → AssistiveTouch.
• The pointer sticks or jumps between buttons. In AssistiveTouch, turn off Always Show Menu; the pointer catches on the floating button when it passes over it. If it jumps from item to item, turn off pointer snapping.

Mirroring and recording do not depend on any of this. If control will not start, the mirror still works.

iPhone notifications don't show, or a reply isn't sent

Notifications and replies are part of Pro and use the Bluetooth link that iPhone control sets up, so set that up first. You don't need to be mirroring: notifications arrive as long as AirMirror Pro is open.

• Nothing arrives. On the iPhone, open Settings → Bluetooth, tap ⓘ next to your PC and turn on Show Notifications. It switches off whenever the iPhone and the PC are paired again.
• The reply is refused, or opens the iPhone window instead. Replies work with Messages, one person at a time; a group chat opens in the iPhone window. If it says your iPhone can't be reached, make sure it is nearby with Bluetooth on, then press Enter to try again.
• Notifications wait, then appear together. While NVIDIA Instant Replay or NVIDIA desktop capture is recording, notifications are held so they stay out of the recording, and they appear once it stops.
• A notification reads "Hidden". Windows would not keep it out of screen capture on this PC, so its text is blanked rather than risk showing in a recording or screen share.

The iPhone doesn't list AirMirror Pro

• Start the receiver first. The PC only appears in Screen Mirroring while it is running.
• Same network. The PC and the iPhone have to be on the same Wi-Fi network, or the PC wired to the same router. A guest network usually keeps devices apart.
• Windows Firewall. If it asked on first run, allow AirMirror Pro on private networks.
• WSL, Hyper-V, a VPN or another virtual network adapter. Before 3.1, AirMirror Pro could announce itself on one of these adapters, at an address the iPhone cannot reach, so it never appeared. 3.1 fixes that. Check your version under Help → About; the Microsoft Store updates it for you.

The sound falls behind the picture

Fixed in 3.1. Before it, a video starting, an ad or a change of playback speed could leave the sound seconds behind for the rest of the session. The cause was a gap iOS leaves in the audio at those moments. Older versions waited almost three seconds for it to fill, then played everything that had piled up, so the sound stayed that far behind. 3.1 waits a fraction of a second and drops the backlog, so the sound stays locked to the picture. If you still hear it on 3.1, tell us what was playing.

A recording has no sound in Premiere Pro or another editor

Fixed in 3.1.2. The recording played with sound in a media player, but Adobe Premiere Pro and some other video editors imported it as video only. The audio was in the file, in the format the iPhone sends over AirPlay, which those editors do not read.

3.1.2 saves recording audio as standard AAC at 48 kHz stereo, which video editors expect. It also keeps the sound in sync for the whole recording, including after a pause in the iPhone's audio. Recordings made before the update keep their old audio format, so record again on 3.1.2 or later (Help → About shows the version). The Microsoft Store updates the app for you. If a new recording still imports without sound, tell us which editor you use.