Stop notifications popping up when screen sharing on iPhone
Screen sharing shows everything — including the message that arrives halfway through.
In short
When you share your screen with SharePlay or Screen Mirroring, iPhone allows notifications by default. Turn them off in Settings › Notifications › Screen Sharing, turn on Do Not Disturb as a backstop, and put what you will show in an album prepared in advance, so you never scroll through your library on screen.
Key takeaways
- Settings › Notifications › Screen Sharing controls banners while you share.
- Do Not Disturb silences notifications whichever app you share from.
- Show an album you prepared, never your whole library.
Before you share
- Go to Settings › Notifications › Screen Sharing and turn off Allow Notifications. Apple allows them by default when you share with SharePlay or Screen Mirroring.
- Open Control Center, tap Focus, then turn on Do Not Disturb. It also covers sharing through a third-party video-call app, which the setting above may not.
- Put the photos you want to show in an album, and open only that album.
- Open the app you will present before you start sharing, so the Home Screen spends as little time on screen as possible.
If you present often
Schedule a Focus instead of remembering it each time: go to Settings › Focus, tap a Focus, tap Add Schedule, and choose an app — your presentation or video-call app — so the Focus turns on whenever you open it.
For messages, you can also set Settings › Notifications › Show Previews to Never, so banners don’t show what a message says.
What can still appear
- Your Home Screen and its widgets. A Photos widget shows featured photos; you can turn featured content off in Photos under Collections › your account › Show Featured Content.
- The app switcher, if you swipe between apps while sharing, with a preview of each recent app.
- Search results and suggestions, if you search in Photos with the screen shared.
- In a FaceTime call, the other person can tap or draw on your shared screen, and can control it if you allow remote control.
Showing photos on a TV
To show photos on an Apple TV 4K or an AirPlay 2 smart TV, you don’t have to mirror the whole screen. Open a photo in Photos, tap the Share button, swipe up and tap AirPlay. Start from the album you prepared rather than your full library.
Mirroring, by contrast, shows everything on your iPhone. To end it, open Control Center, tap Screen Mirroring, then Stop Mirroring.
Keeping private photos off the screen entirely
The most reliable protection is that private photos aren’t in the library you scroll through. In Latent, they sit in a vault that stays locked until you open it with its own pattern, and the app’s preview is hidden in the app switcher. If you hand your phone over instead of sharing the screen, Guided Access locks iPhone to a single app.