How to Mirror Your Android Phone on Linux

Mirroring your Android device, including video and audio, allows you to control your phone using your computer’s keyboard and mouse. This is incredibly helpful for tasks that require prolonged phone usage, making it more comfortable by utilizing your PC setup.

By mirroring your phone to your computer, you gain advantages such as improved posture, access to additional tools on your PC, and overall enhanced productivity.

In this article, I’ll share my experience with mirroring my Samsung S10e to a Linux system and provide a step-by-step guide for the process.

Requirements

• Android phone (running Android 12)
• A mirroring application
• USB data cable
• Laptop or PC

Mirroring on Linux

Follow these steps to mirror your phone on a Linux system (in my case, Manjaro ArchLinux):

1. Specific Requirements

• Android phone (Samsung S10e)
• Mirroring application: scrcpy v3
• USB data cable
• Laptop or PC running Linux (Manjaro ArchLinux)

2. Configuration

Enable USB debugging on your Android phone:

1. On your phone, go to Settings > About phone > Software information > Build number.
2. Tap Build number seven times to enable Developer Mode.
3. Return to Settings and select Developer options.
4. Enable USB debugging.
5. Connect your phone to your computer using a USB cable where scrcpy is installed.
6. Authorize the USB debugging connection on your phone.

3. Install scrcpy

On ArchLinux, you can easily install scrcpy using pacman. For other Linux distributions, refer to the scrcpy documentation:

pacman -S scrcpy

4. Install Android Studio (includes AVD)

What is AVD?

AVD (Android Virtual Device) allows you to create a virtual environment with the same characteristics as your physical Android phone. This ensures compatibility and avoids errors while mirroring.

For my phone (Samsung S10e with Android 12), I installed the correct Android API using Android Studio. Below is an example of how to create a new Virtual Device using AVD tools:

5. Open and Use scrcpy

Once everything is set up, use scrcpy to mirror your phone to your Linux PC.

Resources

• scrcpy GitHub Repository

By following these steps, you can easily mirror your Android phone to your Linux computer.