Listen to your iPhone or iPad on your Mac
As an avid podcast listener, working from home full-time has opened the door for me to catch up on all my favorite shows. My podcast player of choice is Overcast — arguably the best podcast player and experience on iOS.
For the most part, I let the iPhone dutifully playback podcast episode after podcast episode in the background.
In the office, the only minor adjustment I need to make to my workflow is to pair a set of wireless earphones to my phone — enabling me to listen to my favorite shows while making my way through the workday.
This solution works wonderfully. It’s super easy to simply pause playback when engaging with casual office chatter, discussing solutions or challenges with coworkers, or participating in ad hoc meetings.
During the workday, my phone is my lifeline to sanity.
Working from home, though, has presented an unusual twist. Zoom meetings. Microsoft Teams meetings. Unannounced Slack calls (a personal pet peeve of mine). Pairing sessions using plug-ins for VS Code. There are even some poor souls who still have to deal with Skype in 2020. The list goes on and on.
For the longest time, I’ve been connecting and re-connecting my wireless earphones as desired. First to the iPhone. Then the Mac. Then back to the iPhone. To the Mac. To the iPad. To the iPhone. Madness.
I then began to wonder…is it possible to somehow include audio from my iPhone on my MacBook Pro? If so, I could simply listen to audio from my Mac on my wireless earphones — allowing podcasts to play in the background while being able to participate in the world of online meetings, phone calls, and other events — or other important audio such as webinars, Candy Crush Soda, pomodoro timers, or even great music from Seattle’s own hard rock band Wyatt Olney & The Wreckage.
OK, the last one was a shameless plug for my band, but seriously…If you’re wanting to hear some new hard rock from Seattle, check us out at https://www.woatw.com.
Related, I’ve found a variation of the pomodoro technique to be a solid fit for me. The suggested time limit of twenty-five (25) minutes of focused work just didn’t work for me. However, I DID track my time independently and found two numbers that stood out. Depending on the task I’m wanting to focus on, either a thirty-eight (38) minute focus or fifty-six (56) minute focus led to some ass-kicking results.
Anyway…back to the task at hand. Let’s see how we can bring audio from our iPhone / iPad Pro into the Mac. 🤓
Part of the solution
All you need is a cable to connect your iPhone or iPad directly to your Mac. In my case, I needed to buy the USB-C to Lightning cable so that I could connect my iPhone Xs to my MacBook Pro.
Once you have connected your device to your computer, open “Audio MIDI Setup” and look for your device in the list:
Click on “Enable” — and after a few moments you will see that your iPhone or iPad is ready to be used by your Mac:
You’re almost there, but…
Getting your phone recognized as an audio input device is a huge win. However…If you play any music or podcasts from your device at this point, you will be sad. Audio will be going into your Mac, but it’s not audible…yet.
A simple solution: Audio Hijack
Audio Hijack (free download; $59 to purchase) is a great program from Rogue Amoeba that allows you to route any incoming audio to wherever you’d like. Your speakers. Saved to a file…and so much more.
Rogue Amoeba used to offer a freely available program LineIn that would allow you to route incoming audio to the speakers. LineIn was officially retired in 2017, however Rogue Amoeba has a great guide available here that demonstrates how you can route any audio input to the speakers of your computer using Audio Hijack.
A slightly more involved solution: Ableton Live
As a musician, Ableton Live (free trial for 90 days; Ableton Live Intro starts at $99) has become my de facto digital audio workstation (DAW). Whether tracking my drums or just exploring ideas, it has become my second home on my MacBook Pro.
If you’re familiar with Ableton Live (or other DAWs like GarageBand, Logic Pro X, etc), you may be familiar with setting up an audio track for recording.
In this scenario, I’m not going to be recording my podcasts or iPhone audio but I am interested in listening to the audio as it is being received by the computer.
To accomplish this, we just need to either create a new audio track or modify an existing audio track to use our iPhone for input.
Under our track input let’s select “Configure” so we can make sure Ableton Live is using the iPhone as an input device:
The simplest path here is to use the combined input 1/2 so that we are receiving a stereo track of the iOS audio on one track.
NOTE: A more advanced use might be to split the left and right audio channels to separate audio tracks, but that’s a bit overkill for my needs at the moment. 🤓
Now, all we need to do is set monitoring to “In” so that we can hear the audio passing directly through to our MacBook Pro:
One more thing…
Ta-daaaa! 🎉 No matter which path you choose, you should be able to enjoy audio from your favorite iOS device while you work.
There is one thing to keep in mind…these Audio MIDI Settings will be lost as soon as you disconnect your device. You will need to go back into Audio MIDI Settings and enable it to be used as an input source.
Special thanks to Robert Wallis for pointing me in the right direction to get started with this.
