Looking for an easy and free solution to mirror your PC screen to iPad or even use your iPad as the extended screen for your computer? Deskreen is the trick. It is free and open source. You don’t need to pay or even sign up. No ads. It works over Wi-Fi, no cable required. In another post, we discussed how you can share computer screen with mobile phone for free. Today, we will use a Windows 10 PC and an old iPad in this demo to show you how to wirelessly mirror your computer screen to iPad or extend Windows desktop to iPad using Deskreen for free.
First of all, go to download Deskreen here and install it on your computer. Then connect both iPad and PC to the same Wi-Fi.
Run Deskreen screen sharing program on your desktop or laptop, you will get a QR code and a connection IP address below it on its home screen.
Click on QR code to enlarge it if needed. Launch the Camera app on your tablet to scan this QR code, thus automatically open the connection address in your web browser. If you use an old iPad mode which does not support QR code scanning. Manually type the connection address in browser address bar to visit it from your iPad.
Click Allow in Deskreen on your PC to allow your iPad to connect to it. Then go to select screen source, Share Entire Screen or Share Application Window.
If you need share only certain software, launch the software on your computer, then choose Share Application Window, select the program to mirror it from computer to iPad screen.
You can also choose Share Entire Screen. By default, the entire computer desktop will appear on your iPad. It mirrors the whole PC screen to iPad, you will see the same content on both screens. If you want a blank desktop to appear on the iPad instead. You should Extend the display other than mirror the display.
To have a true extended desktop experience Deskreen should be used with Virtual Display Adapter, also known as Display Dummy Plug. When you plug them in to your computer, they are making your computer think that external display is connected. So you will be able to select the second screen in Deskreen.
Extend display from Windows 10 computer
On Windows 10 PC, here is how you can extend the PC display to a second monitor or screen. Press Windows key and P at the same time on your keyboard, you will see the Project menu appears on the right hand side on your PC screen. You can find various options including PC screen only, Duplicate, Extend and Second screen only. Click to choose Extend so you can see your desktop across multiple screens.
When you have displays extended, you will see different content on each display and you can move items between the two screens. Simply move a program window to the right edge to make it appear on the second screen.
You can configure other aspects of this Virtual Display Adapter or the second screen from the system settings. Go to Start menu > Settings > System > Display. At the top of this screen, you should see two displays in the Rearrange your displays section. By default Display Settings shows your primary display on left and your secondary display on right. Moving the pointer or dragging an item now over the right edge of the main display, it will enter from the left edge on the secondary display. However you can drag and drop to place the secondary display thumbnail where you want to. For example, you can move it over the left edge of the primary display, or move it above or below the main display, etc.
If the connected Virtual Display Adapter is not showing here as the second screen, click Detect to find and make it appear as external screen. Also in Extended mode you can set and change the resolution independently for each display.