AeroMirror — AirPlay screen mirroring for Windows

Mirror an iPhone screen and audio to a Windows 10/11 PC over the local network. AeroMirror is a free, open-source AirPlay receiver powered by UxPlay. It starts with Windows, waits quietly in the tray, and opens the stream in a movable, resizable Windows window—without an iPhone app, account, subscription, ads, or telemetry.

Download the latest AeroMirror installer for Windows

Public builds are review releases: automated build and package checks pass, while the remaining physical Windows/iPhone acceptance is documented with each release.

1. Download and run AeroMirror-Setup-0.12.30.exe.
2. Leave AeroMirror running quietly in the Windows tray.
3. On the iPhone, open Control Center → Screen Mirroring, choose the PC, and enter the large four-digit code shown on the PC the first time.

This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. AirPlay, iPhone, and Apple are trademarks of Apple Inc.

They need to be on the same local network. The iPhone can use Wi-Fi while the PC uses Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Guest-network isolation, some VPNs, and router client-isolation settings can prevent AirPlay discovery even when both devices have internet access. AeroMirror normally waits in the background: open Control Center → Screen Mirroring on the iPhone and select the PC name.

Bonjour is the local-network discovery service that makes AeroMirror appear in the iPhone's Screen Mirroring list. AeroMirror monitors discovery health and republishes the receiver automatically when it can; normal use should not require opening the app or pressing a restart button. Setup asks for Windows administrator approval only for a best-effort, exact Apple Bonjour service and Private-network firewall configuration. The running application only observes that system state. A missing, replaced, or damaged Bonjour installation is reported instead of being started through a button in AeroMirror. For a safely validated but stopped Apple Bonjour service, a contextual Запустить Bonjour action is available. Only your click may request one administrator confirmation; the app never raises that prompt automatically.

When a new iPhone needs trust, AeroMirror shows a four-digit PIN on the PC. The PC display darkens and the code is shown in a large fullscreen overlay for one minute; Escape cancels the request. Enter the code on the iPhone once. The receiver identity and trusted-device record stay in the current Windows user's local application data and survive an in-place update. A different iPhone or Windows user establishes its own trust, and Reset trust in Settings makes all devices pair again.

No. Video and audio stay on the local network, and AeroMirror has no account, analytics, advertising, or cloud mirroring component. Update checks contact the public GitHub Releases service; diagnostic logs remain local unless the user chooses to share a reviewed, redacted copy.

Windows 10 version 1809 or newer on x64, and Windows 11 on x64. The current package does not support Windows on ARM or 32-bit Windows.

No. AeroMirror receives the iPhone's screen and audio; it does not provide mouse, keyboard, touch, or remote-control access to iOS.

No. AirPlay screen mirroring and AirDrop file transfer are different Apple protocols. AeroMirror is an AirPlay receiver and does not implement AirDrop or AWDL file sharing.

Automatic updates are optional and disabled by default. With them disabled, an update starts only after the user asks AeroMirror to check and approves the download. If automatic updates are enabled, AeroMirror can install a verified GitHub Release at a later safe AeroMirror start. It does not close an active receiver to apply a newly found version. In either mode, it accepts only the exact versioned installer from the fixed project repository, verifies its SHA-256 digest, installs in place, and preserves the receiver identity, trusted devices, settings, and existing shortcut choices.

Local 0.12.29 uses the confirmed permanent repository ID for metadata and accepts exact Setup assets from the canonical repository or its historical alias, always with SHA-256 verification. It bounds metadata to 30 seconds and 1 MiB. A slow server produces a retryable update error without stopping mirroring. Actually closing settings or exiting cancels that owner's update requests; hiding settings to tray does not. Disabling automatic updates also cancels their background check/download, while manual updates remain independently available.

Setup 0.12.22 and later prevents two current AeroMirror installers from changing the same installation at once. Let any older Setup window finish or close it before starting a current Setup; historical installers cannot use the new transaction guard.

Use the normal maximize button on the stream window or Alt+Enter to enter the clean borderless view. Press Escape to return to the previous movable window. Fullscreen is owned by the renderer itself, so there is no separate floating button that can lag behind the window.

The audit found why the preceding candidate could still open black: saved desktop coordinates were mistakenly applied to an inner video window. The shell now restores only the outer window, leaving the video surface in its parent's coordinate system. Gallery proportions and native decoding stay unchanged. The same audit makes late manual-update results safe when the settings form is disposed and retains failed window-policy changes for retry. An executable regression reproduces the old displacement and passes with the correction. The user reports .28 works on the test PC; the full codec/window and Bonjour matrix remains unrecorded. Local .29 continues the update-work audit without changing the .28 native/video baseline. Neither was published as a standalone release; their corrections are included in public .30.

The review release changes the viewer's Close button from minimize to a session-only disconnect request. A delayed Close is tied to the displayed phone stream, not whichever connection happens to be current later. The receiver listener and discovery stay running. Loopback lifecycle checks pass; the iPhone leaving Screen Mirroring and immediate reconnect still need a physical test. It also includes the portrait Photos, black-viewer and update corrections developed in the earlier local candidates.

Closing the lost-connection warning requests the same session-only disconnect. That warning retains its original process and stream identity: closing an old warning cannot stop a newer connection. A warning whose process has already ended can still be dismissed, without restarting the receiver.

If an older build cannot find or download an update after the GitHub repository rename, download the current Setup from the release page and run it manually. The in-place update preserves settings and device trust.

• starts the receiver automatically and stays in the system tray;
• opens to a compact connection-status page; normal and advanced settings are separate pages inside the same application window;
• follows the Windows light/dark app theme by default and allows a manual light or dark override;
• starts with Windows and starts hidden in the tray by default;
• lets the user choose whether the main-window close button hides to the tray or exits the application;
• starts, stops, and restarts the UxPlay core;
• changes the receiver name shown under Control Center → Screen Mirroring; names are normalized to one Bonjour-safe value of at most 50 UTF-8 bytes, and an interactive save explains and persists the effective value if it had to remove controls, repair invalid text, trim, or shorten the input;
• requires per-device PIN trust on every network: a previously unknown iPhone receives a fresh random four-digit code in a fullscreen PC overlay, while a trusted device reconnects without another prompt; the receiver key and trusted-client register stay under the user's local application data, independently of the current Wi-Fi network and application install folder;
• lets the user revoke the trusted-device register without exposing a fixed PIN, password, identity path, or register path through Advanced arguments;
• detects the active physical Wi-Fi/Ethernet profile while ignoring VPN and virtual adapters, and reports how many overlay profiles were excluded;
• keeps the physical Windows network name and category visible for diagnosis, while mandatory per-device PIN trust removes the old Private/Public protection choice; a usable physical Wi-Fi/Ethernet IPv4 address is still required and VPN/virtual adapters cannot redefine that LAN;
• offers simple 720p/30, 1080p/30, 1080p/60, and HEVC 4K/60 quality presets in the normal settings;
• offers Windows Mobile Hotspot only as an optional advanced action while a Public physical network is active;
• defaults to a pinned Direct3D 11 decoder and video sink for stability, while retaining Direct3D 12 as an experimental opt-in; the 0.12.7 headless wrapper preserves shell-provided sink/fullscreen arguments instead of replacing them with hidden wrapper preferences;
• can use the default Windows audio output through wasapi2sink continue-on-error=true, or mute receiver audio; the resilience property covers the sink's documented Windows endpoint failures and is not a claim that every native media error is nonfatal;
• keeps latency and audio controls in the normal settings, with Balanced latency selected by default; renderer selection and raw UxPlay arguments remain under Advanced settings;
• renames the stream window, gives a newly found renderer a provisional fit, captures an early phone-shaped size before the video-size debounce, orders correlated geometry/size events with a monotonic core-lifetime sequence, and lets repeated identical candidates retain the original 350 ms deadline so marker traffic cannot starve a stable decision; a duplicate stable value does not reopen the debounce, while a target-class change remains distinct; ignores later media-canvas ratios that do not match the learned device frame, and treats only the complete observed Photos 3840x2160 aux=0x0 signature as an ambiguous canvas when it arrives first; a later phone-shaped frame can still establish portrait, while unresolved automatic fits cannot overwrite a valid saved placement; the window refits when the selected device-frame/media- canvas class or exact aspect changes, including same-orientation changes, while a scaled marker with the same class/aspect is consumed without another move; the window also adapts on real portrait/landscape changes, and automatic fitting restores the learned proportions after a manual resize unless the user turns it off; the rejected 0.12.23 4:5 viewer experiment has been removed, so the current local source does not reshape the normal window to compensate for Photos; the complete frame stays at normal scale instead of using the unverified 0.12.18 cover transform, and the temporary media target cannot become trusted orientation or saved placement; the native viewer explicitly retains aspect ratio and receives no crop rectangle, so some letterboxing remains; the former schema-12 Photos A/B key and the 0.12.17 incremental zoom controls are retired; property-backed fullscreen suspends every shell resize/save path, while the native viewer's caption action, Escape, Alt+Enter, and tray request share one acknowledged idempotent state setter instead of a floating overlay; the last normal position, size, and DPI are restored on the next session and clamped into an available monitor; saved bounds are applied from the early window-show event, unchanged native-window policy is cached, and the window can stay on top and remains on the taskbar by default;
• debounces Windows network events, keeps a healthy receiver running after a normal disconnect, and in 0.12.16 keeps idle discovery maintenance active: the first eligible re-registration runs after ten minutes and later attempts recur every 20 minutes while the receiver remains idle; a guarded Windows session unlock can request another refresh after cooldown, and active mirroring/client grace preserve due work; the capable core first prepared in 0.12.13 services normal automatic idle, unlock, and discovery-health maintenance by refreshing the paired RAOP/AirPlay DNS-SD generation in the same process and on the same listener ports; active clients defer that operation; only the first two automatic command failures retain the legacy full-process fallback, while later failures keep the listener alive and rearm the recurring schedule; the 0.12.22 source treats a stopped Apple Bonjour service as a blocked prerequisite instead of a reason to retry or restart the receiver: BLE cannot create a false ready state, background monitoring remains read-only, and successful Windows service recovery triggers one bounded same-process, same-port DNS-SD republication without a main-window or tray repair button; a real physical IPv4 change still restarts the core because the separate BLE helper receives its advertised address at startup; an incoming high- level AirPlay request starts a fresh ten-minute epoch so maintenance cannot interrupt the next handshake, and a stale end marker from the previous session preserves the newer request/PIN grace instead of triggering deferred maintenance; after completed lost-client cleanup, the recovered native process and AirPlay port are preserved instead of immediately being replaced, while an ordinary clean disconnect still leaves the receiver running; after a capable native three-second warning, the shell can show continuity at a deterministic four-second local deadline, cancel it on earlier recovery, and show connection-restored/waiting-for-image while a current recovery is evaluated; the 0.12.8 proof gate carried into 0.12.9 requires a matching current-PID/session/recovery-epoch Direct3D 11 present proof before fade and otherwise changes the waiting state to explicit Screen Mirroring reconnect guidance; Direct3D 12 and other advanced sinks retain that hint until they provide an equivalent reviewed proof; the view stays immediately above the renderer without taking focus; confirmed loss keeps a softened in-memory view of unobscured renderer client pixels, or a dark fallback otherwise, until a proven handoff or the user closes it;
• checks a fixed public GitHub Release channel when requested, or in the background only after the user enables automatic updates, accepts only exact three-part release tags such as v0.12.5, requires the exact versioned asset name AeroMirror-Setup-<MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH>.exe, displays curated release notes, and verifies the Setup SHA-256; automatic mode stages the verified file for a later safe application start instead of interrupting the current receiver;
• provides a basic diagnostic report, a local log, and a Report a problem action that prepares a separately redacted log snapshot and opens a pre-filled GitHub Issue; the user reviews and attaches the file manually;
• captures UxPlay stdout/stderr in the rotating log while masking PINs, passwords, MAC addresses, user-profile paths, and labelled cryptographic material; the current review line records feedback-gap totals, the full raw AirPlay geometry header, and the selected GStreamer decoder/sink without treating the raw auxiliary geometry pair as crop, PAR, or rotation metadata; the 0.12.6 release also logs explicit native HTTP reset readiness/failure and a mirror-only capability marker; the 0.12.7 release adds typed-TEARDOWN connection-ownership and external-argument-pass-through markers; the 0.12.8 candidate separates recovery epochs, video push/PTS/sink diagnostics, and the D3D11 presentation proof that alone can authorize continuity handoff; the 0.12.9 release also records guarded idle/unlock discovery maintenance and provisional Photos/media canvas fits; the 0.12.13 candidate adds request/generation/PID/port-correlated discovery results, paired DNS-SD generation health, BLE helper lifecycle, and receiver-name byte counts without logging the receiver name or mirrored content; the 0.12.14 diagnostic candidate added a two-second numeric media-health summary covering mirror ingress, appsrc, sink, Present, pipeline state, and timestamp outcomes; the 0.12.15 candidate also records a validated-frame implicit-resume action without logging media content; the 0.12.16 shell records the unbounded renewal number while retaining content-free request/PID/port results;
• keeps streaming local to the LAN; the shell has no account, analytics, or cloud component.

The actual AirPlay handshake, decryption, H.264/H.265 decoding, audio, mDNS, and player window come from UxPlay/uxplay-windows.

• Windows 10 version 1809 or newer, x64; or Windows 11, x64;
• the iPhone and PC on the same local network;
• local-network access allowed in Windows Firewall;
• HEVC-capable decoding for the 4K/60 preset.

The pinned redistributed runtime uses Qt 6.10.1 and GStreamer 1.28.1. The separate reproducible native build/staging prefix uses GStreamer 1.28.5; it is not the runtime downloaded by the public network installer. Qt 6.10.1 officially supports Windows 10 1809 x64 and newer. Windows 10 is outside Microsoft's normal consumer support lifecycle, but remains an explicit application target. ARM64 and 32-bit packages are not included.

Physical testing rejected the 0.12.25 post-Present redraw as the complete fix for a fresh normal viewer that stayed black until fullscreen. Version 0.12.26 therefore fixes the earlier child-HWND/D3D11 ordering boundary. Mirror codec pipelines stop in READY; after the actual H.264 or H.265 codec is selected, AeroMirror shows and validates the child surface, binds only that selected GstVideoOverlay sink, and only then lets its pipeline enter PLAYING. No fullscreen or synthetic resize is used to create the first surface.

The native renderer now gives every start/stop generation an explicit owner. Media and bus callbacks retain the generation they were created for, while stop/destroy invalidate it before an old pipeline can publish state or feed a new decoder. The earlier first-Present/expose handshake remains as a guarded redraw aid after correct binding. Automated contracts, two clean builds, and a rebuild from the prepared no-Git source archive reproduce native SHA-256 FAA8A1575EAC7C26BA41DF09A81EB08E03DE05A621FA3C504289EA8E98DAB84A. Those checks prove the shipped ordering and provenance, not visible pixels; repeated untouched iPhone starts remain required under the 0.12.26 test plan.

The same candidate handles the observed case where Apple Bonjour crashed until Windows exhausted its configured recovery actions. There is still no permanent Bonjour or discovery button. Only while the exact trusted Apple service is stopped, the network error card shows Start Bonjour. A click requests one Windows administrator confirmation, starts only the allowlisted service through the protected system service controller, then waits for a validated Running state and resumes DNS-SD in the same core. The service object's owner and configuration ACL, the Apple executable chain, and every component of the Windows sc.exe chain must all pass fail-closed checks first. Startup, timers, cancellation, and failure never trigger another UAC prompt automatically; a timed-out command cannot overlap a second click in the same AeroMirror run while its process is still live.

On connection, the viewer is raised once over an ordinary foreground window without taking keyboard focus. If an external foreground window covers its complete monitor, AeroMirror stays behind it and defers an initial automatic fullscreen request so a fullscreen game or video is not covered. This is an initial placement decision, not an always-on-top mode; an explicit user fullscreen command remains available afterward.

The accepted one-device 0.12.24 gallery result is retained unchanged. For the 4k60 preset AeroMirror still requests 998x2160@60, and the reported iPhone showed the portrait gallery photo correctly. That result does not claim compatibility across other iPhone, iOS, GPU, or preset combinations.

The rejected 0.12.23 candidate tried to compensate by widening the normal viewer to 4:5. That code has been removed, and any old 0.12.23 local artifact is superseded and must not be installed or published. There is no public v0.12.23, v0.12.24, v0.12.25, or v0.12.26 Release. The accepted portrait negotiation and later viewer corrections are included in public .30.

Normal latest Release 383636375 contains the viewer/gallery/update fixes and session-only Close work developed since .22. Its annotated tag v0.12.30 resolves to de0545edacd4ad0515e4835f870c7bd73e3e42f5. All four public files, anonymous re-downloads, API digests and latest routes pass; the packaged .30 updater reads this version. See the build report and release notes.

This remains a review release: actual iPhone Close/reconnect, lock-then-close, codec/window, Bonjour and installed-update checks remain pending. If an older updater cannot use the renamed repository, download Setup manually from the release page. No previous public tag or asset was replaced.

That release turned the stopped-Bonjour diagnosis into a setup-and-forget flow. There is no Bonjour or discovery repair button on the main screen or in the tray. After the application files commit, Setup uses a separate bounded administrator step to configure only an exact, safely installed Apple Bonjour service for Automatic start, three Windows recovery delays, and one narrow Private/UDP 5353/LocalSubnet inbound rule. The per-user install still succeeds if that best-effort system step is declined or fails. The running application only assesses the service and firewall state; after Windows returns Bonjour to Running, AeroMirror requests at most two same-process DNS-SD publications on the existing AirPlay ports and waits for an acknowledged ready marker.

Unknown iPhones now use mandatory first-device trust. A cryptographically random four-digit code appears in a high-contrast fullscreen overlay on the active PC display for up to one minute and is sent only to the current native pairing request through redirected stdin. It is not placed in process arguments or ordinary logs. A successful device record survives an in-place update; the user can revoke all trusted devices in Settings. Legacy fixed/no-PIN choices and protected Advanced-argument overrides are removed during migration.

Fullscreen remains inside the native viewer: caption maximize and Alt+Enter enter a clean borderless monitor-sized window, while Escape returns to the remembered normal geometry. Optional automatic updates are disabled by default; when enabled, an exact-name/digest-verified Setup is staged for a later safe AeroMirror launch and never closes the current receiver merely because a new release was found.

The inherited HLS/gallery path now also treats HTTP header names case-insensitively, parses language playlists within explicit bounds, rewrites shorter or absent URI prefixes safely, and rejects incomplete decoded fields without terminating the receiver process.

Automated build, native, installer, update, and security gates are recorded in the 0.12.22 test plan. Annotated tag v0.12.22 and normal GitHub Release 379732527 were updater-visible latest with exactly four verified public assets; exact identities and fresh-download evidence are in the build report. Installed Windows 10/11 behavior, physical iPhone pairing/visibility, fullscreen keys, and the complete update handoff remain pending until their evidence is recorded. The unpublished 0.12.21 candidate was superseded and will not be tagged or reconstructed.

The public release replaces the 0.12.19 floating fullscreen overlay with one native framed viewer and embedded video surface. The normal Windows caption action, Escape, Alt+Enter, and the tray command use the same acknowledged fullscreen state. Photos remains at neutral scale with explicit aspect-ratio containment and no crop rectangle; retaining the portrait outer window can therefore show letterboxing until a trustworthy inner-photo rectangle exists.

In published 0.12.22 and local builds through .29, Caption Close keeps the active stream alive by minimizing its viewer. The taskbar restores it normally; if the optional taskbar entry is disabled, use Show stream window in the AeroMirror tray menu.

The verified update flow now treats Download and install as the one application confirmation. It resolves existing unsaved settings before the download and locks update-page navigation during the installer handoff. A missing exact Bonjour firewall prerequisite is shown on the main network card and proceeds to one Windows UAC prompt. That assessment is refreshed on receiver start/restart/manual discovery refresh and after a short cache lifetime; unavailable or incorrectly installed Bonjour is reported without an automatic bundled service install.

Native runtime paths now use the wide Windows environment API, so Cyrillic Windows-profile and installation paths do not corrupt GStreamer discovery. Fresh-registry runtime self-tests pass through both ASCII and Cyrillic paths; Setup separately checks that the reviewed core loads against its pinned upstream runtime before it commits an installation.

Managed, native, corresponding-source, package, and non-installing Setup gates pass. Annotated tag v0.12.20 resolves to commit 288b8976d413861ab77bf1721e20f047e0480952; normal GitHub Release 376224221 was the updater-visible latest release with exactly four verified assets. The physical Windows/iPhone matrix remains pending in the 0.12.20 test plan and release notes; exact public identities are in the build report. The public v0.12.19 tag and its assets remain immutable.

The public release keeps every pixel of the encoded Photos frame, adds a shell-owned fullscreen/exit control for both framed and actual fullscreen states, and replaces timer polling with bounded event-driven Escape. It also diagnoses one exact missing Private Bonjour mDNS firewall rule and offers only an explicit, confirmed, UAC-gated narrow repair. It does not alter the Bonjour service or remove that external rule during uninstall.

Annotated tag v0.12.19 resolves to commit 997e29324ec092ad46ae83a00fa6d08525c1b863. Normal GitHub Release 375664260 was the previous updater-visible review release with exactly four verified assets. Its automated, exact-tag, Setup, API digest, latest-route, and fresh public-download gates passed; physical Photos, fullscreen, DPI, firewall, and long-idle iPhone rows remain historical PENDING evidence.

See the 0.12.19 release notes and test plan; exact public identities are in the build report.

The source targets 0.12.18/0.12.18.0. Annotated tag v0.12.18 and normal GitHub Release 373984443 remain immutable review history after 0.12.19 became updater-visible latest. All prior tags and assets also remain immutable.

The tray now has one direct Полный экран (Esc — выйти) action. While the native D3D11 window actually covers its monitor without a frame, the shell does not refit, resize, restore, remember, or persist it. This prevents a Photos geometry change from turning fullscreen into an unmanageable borderless window. Alt+Enter remains native behavior, and foreground Esc requests the same native fullscreen toggle.

The three incremental photo-zoom controls are removed. For only the exact recorded Photos ×ばつ2160 transport canvas, AeroMirror keeps a learned portrait phone shape—or a conservative ×ばつ1950 target when the session starts directly in Photos—and applies one centered uniform fill. Fullscreen uses 100% scale; the portrait fill returns after exit. A trusted landscape target stays unscaled. This rule reads geometry only: it does not inspect pixels, infer a general content rectangle, rotate the stream, or rewrite media.

Managed/native contract tests, two reproducible native builds, staged runtime inspection, the loader test, the final 147-entry corresponding-source archive plus extracted no-Git rebuild, exact tagged package, x64 Setup, API digests, canonical/legacy latest routes, and fresh public re-download equality pass. Installed update and physical Photos/Camera/rotation remain pending. See the 0.12.18 release notes and test plan; exact public identities are in the build report.

Public v0.12.17 remains immutable history with native fullscreen and explicit 100–250% Photos zoom. Its exact evidence remains in the 0.12.17 build report, release notes, and test plan.

The published v0.12.16 source targets 0.12.16/0.12.16.0. Its narrow change is the long-idle receiver policy: AeroMirror no longer disables automatic DNS-SD re-registration after two attempts. It waits ten minutes once, then refreshes the paired RAOP/AirPlay registrations every 20 minutes while idle. Each normal refresh stays inside the current core process and preserves both listener ports. Mirroring and active-client grace defer the operation.

Only the first two automatic attempts in an idle epoch may use the historical full-process fallback when the native refresh is unavailable, times out, or fails. Later failures leave the receiver listening and try again on the next 20-minute deadline. That historical release still exposed a strong discovery restart that replaced DNS-SD and the separate BLE helper. The current 0.12.22 UI no longer exposes that troubleshooting control; a real physical IPv4 change still requires an internal full restart.

For an already installed copy, an update started inside AeroMirror, a newer Setup, or a same-version Setup reinstall proceeds without presenting the three shortcut/launch choices again. The installer preserves whichever Start menu and desktop shortcuts currently exist and starts AeroMirror after replacement. A clean first install still presents the normal choices; installing an older version over a newer one still requires explicit confirmation.

The managed Release build and complete resilience suite pass, including the ten-minute first deadline, indefinite 20-minute recurrence, a saturating counter, Windows-unlock recurrence, anti-churn, readiness and active-session guards, and the first-two-attempt fallback boundary. Native source and runtime remain the frozen 0.12.15 build. The managed update policy and installer self-check pass. A fresh exact 13-entry review package, packaged-shell resilience, x64 Setup with byte-exact embedded inputs and all three non-installing self-checks, and corresponding-source build also pass after the unattended-update change. A local Bonjour-ready result still does not prove that an iPhone continuously lists the row; physical two-hour idle, lock/unlock, sleep/wake, repeated browse checks, and a real installed update remain pending. The normal updater-visible public review Release, exact four-asset set, API digests, and fresh public re-downloads pass. See the 0.12.16 build report, release notes, and test plan.

The frozen 0.12.15 source targeted 0.12.15/0.12.15.0. It hardens the supported default native receiver path from socket accept and HTTP/RTSP SETUP through pairing, mirror/RTP/NTP parsing, crypto, worker shutdown, and GStreamer renderer ownership. Mirror, HTTP, audio RTP, and NTP now share explicit start/exit/stop/join semantics; accepted streams restore blocking mode and use Windows-correct timeouts; protocol sizes, peer identity, allocation, and partial startup are checked before state is published.

The media-specific recovery is deliberately narrow. After a type-0 video access unit has been received completely, decrypted, and NAL-validated, its arrival is authoritative evidence that the sender is active. If the renderer still appears suspended, the core records AEROMIRROR_VIDEO_IMPLICIT_RESUME reason=valid-type0, requests a nonblocking resume, and delivers that same access unit. It does not use the experimental leaky/max appsrc properties or intentionally discard the recovery frame.

Renderer selection, timestamp work, bus callbacks, reset, and destruction now use lock-protected retained GStreamer references. A bus is mapped to its actual video or audio renderer, and final video destruction waits for callbacks that already acquired that renderer. These are source-level lifetime and recovery corrections; they do not prove that the reported physical freeze is fixed.

A fresh complete native build, the exact production NIST AES-CTR happy-path harness, eight production worker-lifecycle cases, source-bound core contracts, and independent frozen-source review pass with no P0/P1 finding in the default mirroring path. Two clean compatible builds reproduce core SHA-256 38C6A63CE3CA40D3D1E23E5ECB5E0D152F9978986C4384A780C5767EAE0650A4; patch/provenance materialization passes with libuxplay patch SHA-256 E8233FFD59BFC49181D32BBD64A6C94A338FD31939B28A18C7FC7A3B5F14195D and 37 libuxplay/41 total patched-source hashes. The source workflow creates a validated 147-entry, 826,213-byte archive with SHA-256 DA95EC58A17C37DA53948F770DABEAF29FAD75405CDF69F005F84ACF56362EB7. Its no-Git extracted tree validates all hashes and a clean 57/57 rebuild reproduces the same core. Staged-runtime inspection (199 binaries, 148 DLLs, 44 features mapped to 27 plug-ins), manual --loader-test, the fresh managed build, complete receiver resilience, and same-PID/same-port discovery-pipe gate pass. The initial package/Setup gate now passes: the thin ZIP has exactly 13 entries; the current and packaged shell are byte- identical and pass resilience; Setup is x64 0.12.15.0, embeds the payload byte-for-byte, and passes all three self-checks. The focused final rebuild against the frozen embedded documentation also passes, including packaged- shell resilience, exact embedded payload/provenance matching, and all three Setup self-checks. Installed update and physical/public gates remain pending. There is no 0.12.15 tag, public asset, Release, public installer, or BUILD_REPORT.md. See the 0.12.15 release notes and test plan.

The last retained physical result is still the installed 0.12.13 run: one H.265 picture appeared and then froze while the native process and control session stayed responsive, and iPhone Stop ended the PC session immediately. The 0.12.14 health diagnostics remain in 0.12.15, but neither a health class nor an implicit-resume marker alone proves visible motion or root cause.

Photos inner-content detection/crop and Camera rotation remain unresolved. Terminal join-failure parent lifetime, broader audio/HLS synchronization, remaining startup assertions, optional PIN/SRP depth, and tolerant dual teardown consolidation remain explicit P2 follow-up. Local discovery readiness still cannot force iOS browse-cache invalidation, and BLE in-process refresh, AWDL, and AirDrop remain separate. Internal 0.12.10–0.12.15 candidates are not renumbered or published. The 0.12.17 review release adds presentation controls; all earlier public assets remain immutable history.

For normal use, open the latest AeroMirror release and download:

AeroMirror-Setup-0.12.22.exe

v0.12.22 is the normal updater-visible review Release. It removes manual discovery repair, gives every unknown iPhone a one-time large four-digit pairing code, keeps fullscreen inside the native viewer, adds installer-owned Bonjour recovery, and offers verified automatic updates as an opt-in setting. Installed Windows/iPhone, Photos, fullscreen, and long-idle acceptance remain explicitly pending; earlier published assets are never replaced.

Scope and pending physical acceptance are in the 0.12.22 release notes and test plan. Exact tag, public assets, digests, and re-download evidence are recorded in the versioned build report. The historical 0.12.8 release notes and test plan remain available; 0.12.8 was never tagged or published. Published 0.12.7 remains immutable history.

The canonical repository is pyram1da/aeromirror. The historical Nadejny/aeromirror marker remains in update-repository.txt for compatibility. Local .29 fetches metadata directly from confirmed repository ID 1324108899 so it does not depend on that slug's redirect. Exact versioned Setup paths from these two confirmed names are accepted; other repository names are not.

The installer:

• is a network review installer: it downloads the unchanged pinned uxplay-windows runtime directly from the upstream GitHub Release, verifies SHA-256, and fails closed if the download or checksum is wrong;
• installs the application files for the current Windows user; a separate best-effort administrator prompt appears only when the exact Apple Bonjour recovery/firewall state still needs configuration;
• places the application under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\AirPlayReceiverMvp (the legacy internal path is retained so v0.7/v0.8 upgrade in place);
• adds AeroMirror to Windows Installed apps;
• asks about Start menu, desktop, and post-install launch only on a clean first install;
• closes the setup window before launching the receiver when installation finishes;
• updates or reinstalls an existing copy without reopening that option form, preserves the current shortcut choices, relaunches AeroMirror, and rolls back application files plus installer metadata if replacement fails;
• refuses to replace a newer installed version and reports that the older Setup was cancelled;
• keeps the exact pinned upstream runtime in a content-addressed local cache after SHA-256 verification, so a reinstall or later update using the same runtime does not download the 100+ MB archive again;
• includes an uninstaller while preserving user settings by default.

An internet connection is therefore required during installation. The pinned third-party asset, source location, and checksum are recorded in UPSTREAM.lock and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. AeroMirror's Release does not mirror or silently fall back to another runtime.

AeroMirror Setup extracts the pinned portable Qt/GStreamer application runtime, but installs no system-wide .NET/VC++ redistributable, driver, or framework prerequisite; a full Windows reboot is not an expected normal completion step. Bonjour is a separate, shared machine-wide discovery service. After the per-user application transaction commits, 0.12.22 Setup may request Windows administrator approval for one best-effort system configuration pass. It accepts only the exact Apple service and a protected canonical mDNSResponder.exe path, configures Automatic start plus bounded Windows recovery actions, starts the service when necessary, and ensures one exact Private/UDP 5353/LocalSubnet inbound rule. An absent, replaced, or unsafe service is left untouched, and declining this step does not remove or roll back the installed application. AeroMirror's normal runtime remains unelevated and read-only. Because Bonjour is shared system software, this narrow recovery and firewall state intentionally remains after AeroMirror is uninstalled; a later reinstall is idempotent. Diagnose any remaining first-run problem before rebooting, as described in troubleshooting.

The installer is currently unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may display an unknown-publisher warning. Code signing is required before a broad public release. The GitHub-provided digest and HTTPS protect against corruption and an accidental mismatch; until Authenticode publisher verification is added, they are not a substitute for a signed release if the repository account itself were compromised.

The offline portable package is intentionally not attached to the 0.11 review Release. It contains the full Qt/GStreamer/FFmpeg/MSYS2 DLL closure, whose per-file source and license inventory is still being completed. Use the network installer for review distribution.

Maintainers can still build the portable ZIP locally for engineering tests. Windows does not register that variant as an installed application, and deleting or cleaning its folder deletes the program.

1. Extract the whole ZIP to a normal folder. Do not run it from inside the ZIP.
2. Start AeroMirror.exe.
3. Allow network access if Windows Firewall asks.
4. If Bonjour is missing, install it from a trusted Apple/vendor source; the headless core reports the prerequisite and does not register its bundled per-user responder as a system service. Portable engineering runs have no Setup-owned machine configuration and no in-app Bonjour repair button.
5. Put the iPhone and PC on the same local network.
6. On iPhone, open Control Center → Screen Mirroring and select the PC name.
7. Use the tray icon to change settings or stop the receiver.

Every previously unknown iPhone must complete the per-device PIN flow. The PC shows a fresh four-digit code in a fullscreen overlay; after successful entry, that device reconnects without another prompt until trust is reset. The old fixed/no-PIN protection choices no longer exist. The Windows physical-network name and category remain visible diagnostic information, and a usable physical IPv4 address is still required.

VPN, tunnel, Hyper-V, and other virtual profiles do not replace the physical Wi-Fi/Ethernet address or category. A personal hotspot is never enabled automatically, and per-device trust remains active on Private, Public, and Unknown networks alike.

Settings and logs are stored under:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\AirPlayReceiverMvp

Supported settings are normalized when loaded and before saving. AeroMirror writes a same-directory temporary settings file and atomically replaces the previous settings.ini, so an interrupted save does not publish a partially written new configuration. Receiver keys and trusted-client data are separate files and are not replaced by a normal settings save.

Receiver diagnostics are written to receiver.log; installer and update failures are written to the separate rotating setup.log.

The Report a problem link creates a temporary, additionally redacted snapshot and opens GitHub. Browsers do not allow AeroMirror to attach a local file silently, so Explorer selects the snapshot and the user drags it into the Issue after reviewing it. Nothing is uploaded automatically.

For a reproducible bug report, follow docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md. Never publish settings.ini, receiver-key.pem, or trusted-clients.txt.

The patched core receives arguments directly from the shell. AeroMirror does not duplicate the PIN in uxplay-windows' legacy arguments.txt file.

No downloaded SDK is required on a standard Windows 10/11 installation. The build script uses the C# compiler included with .NET Framework:

.\build.ps1

If Windows marks a locally reviewed script as downloaded, inspect it first and unblock that one file only:

Unblock-File .\build.ps1

The result is:

artifacts\Release\AeroMirror.exe

After the diagnostic gates pass, create the local thin candidate payload and build the per-user network installer from that exact ZIP with:

.\package-review.ps1 `
 -Version 0.12.26 `
 -HeadlessRuntimePath .\artifacts\headless-runtime
.\build-installer.ps1 `
 -Version 0.12.26 `
 -PortableZip .\artifacts\AeroMirror-review-payload-x64-0.12.26.zip

The result is:

artifacts\installer\AeroMirror-Setup-0.12.26.exe

Public release names use three-part semantic versions such as the current public 0.12.22. Windows executable metadata internally requires four numeric fields. The local review candidate therefore shows 0.12.26.0 in a file- property dialog and 0.12.26 in the AeroMirror UI, but it has no matching GitHub Release.

For local offline engineering tests, create the full portable package with both explicit inputs:

.\package.ps1 `
 -Version 0.12.26 `
 -UxPlayPortablePath .\artifacts\headless-runtime `
 -HeadlessCorePath .\artifacts\headless-runtime\uxplay-windows.exe

package.ps1 now rejects a runtime without the reviewed headless build manifest, requires the patched executable explicitly, verifies its hash after staging, and writes a versioned local ZIP. Do not attach the 0.12.26 review ZIP to a GitHub Release. The network installer instead downloads the unchanged pinned upstream asset at install time and verifies the locked SHA-256.

artifacts\release0円.12.26\AeroMirror-native-source-0.12.26.zip is the prepared corresponding-source archive for the local review candidate. The uxplay-windows and libuxplay patches are already applied, so do not apply them a second time. After providing the pinned Qt 6.10.1 and MSYS2 toolchains listed in AeroMirror-build-inputs\BUILD_INFO.md, run from the extracted archive:

# Use a short extraction path: the MinGW/CMake object tree can exceed the
# Windows filename limit under a deeply nested Downloads/workspace folder.
$source = Resolve-Path .\AeroMirror-native-source-0.12.26\uxplay-windows
& "$source\AeroMirror-build-inputs\build-compatible-core.ps1" `
 -UpstreamRoot $source `
 -Qt610Prefix C:\path\to\Qt-6.10.1 `
 -MsysRoot C:\path\to\msys64

The script validates both reviewed patch files, every pinned modified source and build input, the distinct public GStreamer 1.28.1 and build-time GStreamer 1.28.5 contracts, the bundled Bonjour header and dnssd.def against source-provenance.json. It copies the verified header into the prepared Bonjour SDK layout, generates the x64 dnssd.lib import library with MSYS2 dlltool, and rejects a resulting executable whose SHA-256 differs from the reviewed core hash. It fails early with a clear instruction if the extraction path is too long for the MinGW/CMake object layout. Git metadata is not required in the prepared archive; when building from Git checkouts, the same script additionally verifies both pinned commits.

AGENTS.md stable entry point for coding agents
src/
 Properties/
 AssemblyInfo.cs managed assembly metadata
 Application/
 AppVersion.cs public display version from assembly metadata
 Program.cs process startup and single-instance behavior
 Configuration/
 AppSettings.cs settings migration, validation, and atomic save
 Receiver/
 ReceiverContext.cs tray application context and shared state
 ReceiverContext.Core.cs native lifecycle and discovery/recovery policy
 ReceiverContext.Pairing.cs first-device PIN overlay and trust lifecycle
 ReceiverContext.Updates.cs opt-in background update staging
 ReceiverContext.HttpReset.cs native HTTP reset marker state
 ReceiverContext.Rendering.cs renderer-window sizing and Win32 policy
 ReceiverContext.LostConnection.cs fatal-loss placeholder lifecycle
 ReceiverContext.Diagnostics.cs logging and problem-report workflow
 UI/
 SettingsForm.cs active home/settings/updates window
 PairingPinOverlayForm.cs fullscreen first-device code overlay
 DiagnosticsForm.cs diagnostic text viewer
 LostConnectionForm.cs softened reconnect placeholder window
 ThemeHelper.cs light/dark control styling
 AppIcon.cs embedded application icon loader
 Controls/
 NamedValue.cs
 WheelSafeComboBox.cs
 Updates/
 AutomaticUpdateService.cs protected staging and next-start handoff
 ReleaseMetadataClient.cs bounded, cancellable release-metadata transport
 UpdateInfo.cs
 UpdateService.cs strict release parsing, download, and verification
 UpdateWorkScope.cs owner cancellation and worker completion lifetime
 Network/
 BonjourServiceRecoveryService.cs read-only runtime service assessment
 NetworkProfileInfo.cs
 NetworkSafety.cs physical-profile trust and adapter filtering
 Interop/
 NativeMethods.cs Win32 process and renderer-window interop
assets/
 logo.png transparent application logo
 AirPlayReceiver.ico multi-resolution executable and tray icon
build.ps1 builds the Windows shell
build-installer.ps1 embeds the thin review payload in the per-user setup
release.ps1 builds/copies versioned release assets and checksums
build-native-source.ps1 packages exact corresponding native source
app.manifest Windows 10/11, DPI, and asInvoker declarations
package.ps1 combines the shell with the official core bundle
package-review.ps1 makes the thin, pinned network-installer payload
update-repository.txt public OWNER/REPOSITORY used for release checks
download-core.ps1 fetches and verifies the pinned upstream core
UPSTREAM.lock exact upstream release, commit, and SHA-256
CHANGELOG.md user-facing release notes
LICENSE license for this project
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md component and license inventory
native-core/
 README.md native core pins and build notes
 build-compatible-core.ps1 builds against the pinned Qt 6.10.1 SDK
 dnssd.def import definition for the bundled mDNS library
 gstreamer-features.txt exact plug-ins staged for this build
 build-headless-runtime.ps1
 source-provenance.json reviewed commits, patches, sources, and core hash
 uxplay-windows-headless.patch
 libuxplay-aeromirror.patch
installer/
 AirPlayReceiverSetup.cs per-user installer and uninstaller
docs/
 ARCHITECTURE.md integration boundary and next steps
 PROJECT_STATE.md current release, blockers, and immediate handoff
 DECISIONS.md durable product and architecture choices
 DOCUMENTATION_POLICY.md mandatory documentation for every patch
 RELEASE_AND_SIGNING.md GitHub updates, Store, and signing plan
 TROUBLESHOOTING.md log collection and first-run reproduction
 TODO.md product and protocol roadmap
 releases/
 0.12.26/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md first-surface ordering and Bonjour recovery summary
 TEST_PLAN.md untouched-start and stopped-service matrix
 0.12.25/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md native video-surface lifecycle summary
 TEST_PLAN.md fresh-start, restore, and window-stack matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md local artifacts, hashes, and test status
 0.12.24/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md portrait negotiation diagnostic summary
 TEST_PLAN.md automated and physical causal-test matrix
 0.12.23/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md rejected outer-window experiment record
 TEST_PLAN.md archived rejection and invalid-artifact boundary
 0.12.22/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md automatic recovery and first-device trust summary
 TEST_PLAN.md automated evidence and pending physical matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.19/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md non-cropping gallery/fullscreen release summary
 TEST_PLAN.md gallery, fullscreen, and discovery gates
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.18/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md automatic Photos layout review-release summary
 TEST_PLAN.md fullscreen-state and gallery acceptance gates
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.17/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md Photos presentation review-release summary
 TEST_PLAN.md fullscreen, zoom, rotation, and package gates
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.16/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md persistent idle-discovery review summary
 TEST_PLAN.md recurring visibility and fallback gates
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.15/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md native-core hardening candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md lifecycle, parser, renderer, and physical gates
 0.12.14/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md media-liveness diagnostic candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md timestamp, health, and physical freeze gates
 0.12.13/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md persistent discovery candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md same-PID discovery and fallback gates
 0.12.12/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md bounded idle-discovery candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md timed stages and physical idle gates
 0.12.11/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md automatic Photos-fitting candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md settings, geometry, package, and physical gates
 0.12.10/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md prior local geometry/test-isolation summary
 TEST_PLAN.md prior geometry, logs, and physical gates
 0.12.9/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md public discovery and Photos review summary
 TEST_PLAN.md discovery, Photos, install, and reconnect gates
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.8/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md evidence-gated reconnect candidate summary
 TEST_PLAN.md recovery-epoch and present-proof acceptance
 0.12.7/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md media-session continuity hotfix summary
 TEST_PLAN.md Photos/video session-continuity acceptance
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.6/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md renderer, Photos, and reconnect acceptance
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.5/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md Photos-first and recovery acceptance matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.4/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md recovery, frame-pacing, and renderer acceptance
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.3/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md loss, placement, and Photos acceptance matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.2/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md reconnect, orientation, and fitting acceptance matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 0.12.0/
 RELEASE_NOTES.md curated GitHub Release text
 TEST_PLAN.md candidate acceptance and physical test matrix
 BUILD_REPORT.md published tag, assets, hashes, and test status
 BUILD_REPORT*.md immutable 0.11 release verification history
 TEST_PLAN_0.11.*.md immutable 0.11 acceptance history

The managed files under src/ still compile into one AeroMirror.exe. Splitting them by responsibility is a maintenance boundary, not a new process, plugin model, public API, settings location, or native IPC protocol. The current SettingsForm intentionally remains one file in this conservative pass; deeper UI extraction should be reviewed separately from receiver fixes.

• The portable package is x64-only.
• The native receiver is a minimally patched build of uxplay-windows 2.0. Its --headless mode removes the upstream tray, leaving one application icon. The remaining Qt UI code is still linked into the core and can be split into a smaller dedicated process later.
• The stream is rendered in the GStreamer window, not embedded inside the settings window.
• Portrait/landscape rotation is carried by the AirPlay stream and supported by UxPlay. The renderer should follow the iPhone automatically; iPhone Rotation Lock naturally prevents source rotation. This still requires device-by-device testing.
• Renderer-window detection is heuristic. AeroMirror gives a newly opened renderer a provisional fit and can retain an early phone-shaped raw marker before a later stable media-canvas marker wins the debounce. The 0.12.11 candidate retains monotonic core-lifetime ordering from 0.12.10; identical pending candidates keep the original 350 ms deadline, so they cannot starve the decision. Its exact fit state follows a change in target class or exact aspect even when portrait/landscape class stays the same, and suppresses another move for a scaled marker with the same class/aspect. Later ratios within a small tolerance can reshape the client area for real portrait/landscape rotation. Only the complete correlated Photos signature with primary, source, and encoded 3840x2160 plus auxiliary 0x0 automatically becomes a provisional outer-window landscape target; it does not replace the trusted device baseline, and a later 998x2160 device frame returns the window to portrait. Other media-only sessions remain ambiguous until an authoritative frame or session. Automatic fitting restores the learned aspect after a completed manual resize by default, respects an explicit opt-out, and keeps Restore window proportions as a manual fallback that also uses the learned device frame rather than a later non-matching media canvas. Normal renderer bounds and their DPI are saved across sessions; stale/off-screen bounds are moved into an available Windows work area.
• A Photos 3840x2160 stream can contain the photo and black bars inside the encoded canvas itself. AeroMirror can keep the outer phone orientation, but it does not yet have native content-rectangle metadata or safe pixel analysis with which to crop or zoom that inner canvas. Photos may therefore still look very small even when the outer renderer proportions are correct. The 0.12.11 candidate applies the exact recorded Photos/media outer-window fit automatically instead of exposing the former default-off A/B. It changes no pixels and cannot enlarge inner content. That automatic provisional landscape is not trusted or persistable; an explicit user move or resize remains a separate user-owned placement action.
• After an abnormal Wi-Fi/client loss, AeroMirror preserves UxPlay's recovered process and listening port after completed in-process cleanup. The first stale row tapped on iOS may still fail before any request reaches Windows, and iOS may take time to refresh its browse cache. In 0.12.13, automatic idle/unlock/native-health maintenance prefers a current-request paired DNS- SD refresh in that same process and on the same RAOP/AirPlay ports. Bonjour callbacks prove only local registration for the new generation; they do not continuously attest iPhone visibility or force a phone to discard a cached row. The unchanged BLE helper is not refreshed in place, so a real physical IPv4 change still uses internal full-process recovery; the current UI exposes no manual discovery-restart button. The older 0.12.16 keeps the first ten-minute deadline and then repeats same-process re-registration every 20 minutes while idle. Only the first two automatic attempts may fall back to a full process restart; later failures retain the listening core and retry. Physical long-idle behavior is still pending.
• The 0.12.15 candidate retains the 0.12.14 checked video-PTS mapping and passive two-second health summaries, adds explicit worker/parser/renderer ownership, and may request a nonblocking implicit resume only after a fully validated video access unit. It has not yet repeated the physical frozen- last-frame run; do not treat class=healthy, an implicit-resume marker, or any individual counter as visible-motion proof or root-cause confirmation.
• In the first public 0.12.7 physical smoke, a reporter-estimated wall-clock Wi-Fi interruption of about ten seconds recovered automatically; the exact log interval records a five-second feedback gap. After a reporter-estimated wall-clock interruption of about 15 seconds, whose exact log interval records an 11-second feedback gap, reconnect cleared the continuity placeholder but video remained frozen; closing AeroMirror briefly exposed the latest frame. That longer reconnect/handoff path remains unresolved.
• The untagged 0.12.8 correction, carried into the 0.12.9 release, addresses only the misleading handoff decision for that path. Feedback recovery, appsrc push/PTS, sink observation, and a visible cached renderer cannot close continuity; a matching current-PID, current-session, current-epoch D3D11 presentation proof is required. If it never arrives, AeroMirror keeps the view and shows a reconnect hint. This includes Direct3D 12 and other advanced sinks; Interactive -vsync no deliberately skips this synchronized proof and retains the hint. The public review release does not yet repair the underlying long-gap video freeze. Selecting the receiver again may arm a new proof epoch, but mirror-start alone keeps the continuity view visible until matching D3D11 present proof arrives.
• The 0.12.6 release accepts same-process HTTP recovery only after an explicit current-PID marker confirms the original AirPlay port; bind failure or mismatch exits for full-process recovery. This still does not prove DNS-SD/BLE re-publication or force iOS browse-cache refresh.
• The 0.12.7 release removes an immediate server-forced control-socket removal from the typed AirPlay TEARDOWN handler while retaining upstream's typed-stream behavior and Connection: close response header. The affected 0.12.6 log proves a software-request disconnect, not which disconnect call site ran; the new marker makes that request type directly testable.
• Normal audio in 0.12.7 explicitly selects the redistributed GStreamer 1.28.1 runtime's wasapi2sink continue-on-error=true behavior for documented endpoint open, I/O, and removal failures. Other native audio/decoder/video bus errors are not claimed to be isolated from the session.
• AeroMirror continues the 0.12.6 mirror-only experiment of omitting unimplemented AirPlay photo, slideshow, and photo-preload advertisement bits; 0.12.7 inherits this behavior. Physical direct-in-Photos behavior remains pending, and this is not a crop/zoom fix.
• The continuity placeholder keeps only a softened renderer-client screenshot in process memory, writes no mirrored frame to disk, and uses a dark fallback whenever another visible window overlaps the renderer. With the patched feedback-health marker, a native three-second warning schedules it for a four-second local deadline. Recovery before that deadline cancels the view. In the 0.12.8 proof gate carried into 0.12.9, feedback after the view appears changes it to waiting, but only a correlated D3D11 present proof may begin the 180 ms fade; absent proof becomes explicit reconnect guidance. It does not make iOS discovery, native video recovery, or reconnection instantaneous.
• Arbitrary window proportions cannot both fill the window and preserve the whole phone image: the alternatives would be black bars, stretching, or cropping. This MVP preserves the whole image and changes the window shape.
• The stream window is an external GStreamer HWND. A Mac-style hover-only frame, true borderless viewer, and live aspect lock during an edge drag need an embedded native rendering surface and versioned IPC; the shell does not cross-process-subclass that foreign window.
• "Always on top" or automatic fitting may need to be toggled again with an unusual GStreamer sink.
• The shell combines listening sockets with explicit DNS-SD/BLE health markers and a legacy Bonjour fallback before reporting startup readiness. The 0.12.13 core additionally provides a narrow version-1 redirected-stdin and framed-stdout discovery-maintenance protocol. It is intentionally not a general named-pipe status/RPC contract and does not prove that an iPhone is browsing or that an AirPlay session is active.
• The executables are not yet code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher.
• Local .29 pins metadata to repository ID 1324108899 and accepts only an exact versioned Setup URL in the canonical/historical repository allowlist, plus a verified SHA-256. An arbitrary new owner or executable is not trusted.
• Bonjour/mDNS and Windows Firewall remain external system dependencies. The 0.12.22 Setup can best-effort configure only the exact validated Apple service and Private/UDP 5353/LocalSubnet rule after Windows administrator approval; normal application runtime is read-only and exposes no repair button. The exact shared service-recovery policy and narrow rule intentionally remain after AeroMirror uninstall. Allow the receiver only on intended network categories. Some managed or guest Wi-Fi networks block device discovery. AeroMirror extracts a portable app runtime but installs no system-wide .NET/VC++ redistributable, driver, or framework prerequisite and should not normally require a full Windows reboot. Bonjour is machine-wide, so an uninstall/reinstall on the same PC cannot reproduce a truly clean first install; one unproven Windows 10 reboot report remains scheduled for a clean VM test against the exact bounded Setup-owned Bonjour policy.
• Public-network detection follows active physical Windows network profiles. The name/category remains useful diagnostic information, while mandatory per-device PIN trust applies on Private, Public, and Unknown alike.
• DRM-protected playback is not supported.
• No AirDrop, AeroDrop companion, clipboard sync, remote input, recording UI, multi-device UI, virtual camera, OBS integration, or Win+K integration. AirDrop is separate from AirPlay and requires its own Bluetooth/AWDL, identity, trust, and encrypted-transfer implementation.
• Phone notifications, SMS, and call handling are not included. The app's notification option only covers failures and unsafe network status; a normal Windows autostart is silent.
• Per-device PIN/SRP registration is provided by the patched UxPlay boundary and can still vary with iOS versions and stored pairing records; physical first/second-device acceptance remains release evidence, not an automated compatibility claim.

• HD 720p / 30 FPS requests the lowest workload for a weak network or PC.
• Full HD 1080p / 30 FPS keeps Full HD while halving the maximum frame rate.
• Full HD 1080p / 60 FPS is the default.
• 4K / 60 FPS enables HEVC and provides the highest requested quality. It worked well during testing on the target iPhone/PC, but still requires compatible HEVC decoding and substantially increases network, decoder, and GPU load.

These are receiver capabilities advertised to the iPhone, not a guarantee. The source device can send a lower resolution or frame rate. UxPlay accepts a 120 FPS request, but iPhone mirroring is not guaranteed to provide it, so the main UI does not advertise a misleading 120 FPS preset.

Changing quality, FPS, receiver name, renderer, latency, or raw UxPlay arguments restarts the native receiver because these capabilities are advertised when the AirPlay service/session starts. Stop Screen Mirroring on the iPhone and connect again to guarantee a new quality negotiation. UI-only settings such as notifications, close-button behavior, general window fitting, and always-on-top save without restarting an otherwise running receiver. The retired Photos-specific key is ignored and omitted on save.

The last saved quality preset is retained. The Save button compares the controls with the saved settings, so changing a preset and returning to the original preset disables Save again.

• Balanced keeps UxPlay's native timestamp synchronization and buffering.
• Interactive disables timestamp scheduling with -vsync no without the former 50 ms audio-buffer request. Motion may feel more immediate, but audio/video synchronization can be less exact.
• Stable reports a 350 ms audio buffer and adds visible delay.

The receiver now defaults to an explicitly pinned Direct3D 11 decoder family and video sink. Existing profiles that still used automatic GStreamer selection migrate to Direct3D 11; an explicit Direct3D 12 choice remains available as an experimental comparison. Advanced UxPlay arguments remain after the managed choice and can override it for diagnostics. UxPlay selects the codec-matched decoder at pipeline creation. In the 0.12.7 release, the headless wrapper also preserves external -vs/-fs arguments rather than replacing them with persisted Qt preferences. Physical Direct3D 11 versus Direct3D 12 Photos and resolution-change testing is still pending.

AirPlay itself and the iPhone encoder still add latency. Best results require the PC on Ethernet, the iPhone on strong 5/6 GHz Wi-Fi, no VPN in the local path, and no guest-network/client isolation. Public internet speed is not the AirPlay media path: local packet loss, interference, Wi-Fi scheduling, decode, and frame pacing matter. AeroMirror's optional Bluetooth beacon helps discovery only; it does not carry or combine bandwidth with the Wi-Fi video.

The AeroMirror-authored shell, installer, and build scripts are GPL-3.0-or-later. The patched UxPlay core and every downloaded runtime component remain under their respective upstream licenses. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The current license inventory is an engineering review, not legal advice.

For the public 0.12.22 review Release, share the GitHub Release page or its network Setup—not a loose AeroMirror.exe. Project policy keeps these assets together and immutable:

• AeroMirror-Setup-0.12.22.exe;
• AeroMirror-source-0.12.22.zip;
• AeroMirror-native-source-0.12.22.zip;
• SHA256SUMS.txt.

The native source archive contains the exact prepared uxplay-windows and libuxplay trees, both AeroMirror patches separately and already applied, source-provenance.json, the actual Bonjour interface header, dnssd.def, and the hash-validating build recipe that generates dnssd.lib. The offline portable/full runtime remains unpublished until its complete runtime SBOM and corresponding source set are ready.