Screen mirroring iPad on linux devices

Tablets are a great way to digitalize the process working with documents, like taking notes and annotating documents like PDF files. Especially the combination of iPad and Apple Pencil proved to be a very stable and useful solution for many people. Sharing your screen, for example in online calls, can be quite difficult though, especially when using a linux based device.

AirPlay on MacOS devices

For mirroring the display, Apple offers their own AirPlay solution. The problem is: it is only available for MacOS or other apple devices - the only way to use it outside of their ecosystem is using Apple TV, which is a very expensive solution to the problem. Another possibility is a cable bound solution, like for example using an HDMI adapter. This way however, it is not possible to share your screen, like needed for example in zoom meetings.

UxPlay

Update: The original repository seems to be inactive. The updated link below is a fork, which is still actively maintained and fixes some problems of the original version.

UxPlay is an open source prototype aimed to replicate Apples AirPlay servers for UNIX devices. With this software, it is possible to mirror the screen of an iPad on linux. On the iPad itself, it looks as if you were screen sharing to an Apple TV device.

The installation itself is very easy:

# install prerequisites
sudo apt install cmake
sudo apt install libssl-dev libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-libav
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-vaapi
# clone repository
git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay.git
cd UxPlay
# build
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

Now, the AirPlay server can be started using ./uxplay. If not everything is working right out of the box, many compatibility problems can be fixed using sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad.

Desktop entry for comfortable usage

To start UxPlay comfortably using the gnome interface, it might be a great idea to add some additional tweaks:

• sudo mv uxplay /usr/local/bin moves the file to a directory that is in $PATH by default, making the program available to start from every directory. You can also move it to a custom directory and append the directory path to your path variable, if you prefer this method. It is also possible to install UxPlay system wide using sudo make install.
• Using a desktop entry, the launcher in the gnome menu can be adjusted - adding an icon for example:

  [Desktop Entry]
  Name=UxPlay
  Exec=uxplay
  Type=Application
  Terminal=true
  StartupNotify=true
  Icon=/path/to/image
  Keywords=AirPlay;UxPlay;
  

  The desktop file can now be moved in one of the default directories ~/.local/share/applications or /usr/share/applications.

All in all a very useful tool to make working in homeoffice quite a bit easier.