How to Turn Off Screen Mirroring

Why the TV Keeps Reconnecting on Its Own

A television that lights up without anyone touching a phone is rarely the app on this page, since nothing in it starts a session by itself. The usual cause is an iPhone feature built for video played inside apps that support AirPlay: once an iPhone and a TV it has used before are on the same Wi-Fi network, iOS can suggest that TV again, or connect to it automatically, the next time a video starts playing somewhere else.

Screen Mirroring itself, the feature behind Control Center's Stop Mirroring button, only ever starts when someone opens it by hand, so a set that lights up on its own is rarely a mirrored screen at all.

Some of this arrives as a notification asking first, rather than connecting outright, but either way it is the same setting deciding what happens, and the same switch stops both.

The Wi-Fi network decides more of this than the setting does. An iPhone away from that network, on mobile data or a different Wi-Fi entirely, cannot reconnect to a television automatically no matter what the setting says, so a TV that keeps lighting up is proof the two are on the same network right now.

The first time an iPhone reaches a new television, nothing connects on its own no matter how the setting is configured. The automatic part only ever applies to a television that phone has already used.

What keeps coming back on its own is almost always that other setting, not a mirrored screen and not the app on this page.

What Happens to Notifications During a Mirrored Session

Notifications do not disappear automatically once a screen mirroring session starts. Apple's iPhone guide says that during SharePlay or Screen Mirroring, notifications are allowed by default, and that a switch in the iPhone's notification settings turns them off if you would rather they stayed private.

That switch is specific to Screen Mirroring and SharePlay. Apple's own support page notes that the Allow Notifications setting in Screen Sharing is not related to iPhone Mirroring on a Mac, a different feature with a similar name, so switching it changes what a mirrored screen shows without touching anything else on the phone.

Someone on a work call while mirroring a screen may want that switch off before starting, since messages and calls keep arriving in the background either way; for a movie mirrored for the family, the switch changes nothing else about the session.

Either way, the switch only changes what a mirrored screen shows. It does not start or stop the session itself, and leaving it on default does not make a screen mirror for longer or shorter than it otherwise would.

What Turning It Off Does Not Change

Turning off Automatically AirPlay, or stopping a session from Control Center, does not remove screen mirroring or AirPlay from the iPhone. A television can still be chosen on purpose at any time, whether that means mirroring the whole screen or sending one video from an app. The only difference is who makes the decision: a person, rather than a setting reacting to a video that already started playing, or to a screen that was never meant to leave the phone.

A television chosen on purpose still shows whatever gets sent to it afterward, mirrored screen or single video, exactly as before.