Update: Nicholas Zambetti has updated LiveView to support the iPad. If you’re a developer looking to create pixel-perfect iPad creations this is a no-brainer must-have. Look for landscape support coming soon!
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January 2009: Well, our Nicholas is at it again. This time he’s taken up iPhone application development, and has released a very cool (and, for a limited time, free!) little app intended to help interaction designers and other would-be iPhone software developers easily test pixel-perfect prototypes on their iPhones.
The system has two parts: the LiveView ScreenCaster and the LiveView iPhone application. The ScreenCaster is a simple application that puts a virtual iPhone skin on your screen, its dimensions corresponding to a real iPhone such that the pixels inside of the virtual skin are precisely as many as on a real iPhone display.
Once you’ve got the ScreenCaster running on a mac, all you need to do is make sure your iPhone is on the same wifi network and launch the LiveView iPhone app. Instantly you should see the name of your mac (and any others running ScreenCaster at the time). Clicking on your machine instantly brings up just the portion of the screen that you’ve ‘highlighted’.
But wait – there’s more! The ScreenCaster has an option to interpret touches as mouse clicks. Turn this feature on and your screencast becomes a two-way interactive prototype. Virtually any application on your mac, from the Finder to custom Flash apps, can quickly be ‘launched’ on your iPhone.
If you’re even thinking about building iPhone apps in the future we highly recommend grabbing this little app. Kudos, Nicholas!
James Kirkup
20/01/2009 at 7:04 am // PermalinkThis is really amazing, well done nick!
Bastiaan
20/01/2009 at 8:21 am // PermalinkAwesome, great job guys! I’ve been looking for something like this for my prototyping and it work really well, thanks for making this available!
Cone
20/01/2009 at 10:49 am // PermalinkIs that WordPress 2.5.1?
Paolo D Passeri
20/01/2009 at 5:46 pm // PermalinkThanks Nicholas … This app is great and really well done! It will be really usefull for my interface design for iPhone Home Automation, check them out at:
http://www.flickr.com/paolopasseri
Sean
20/01/2009 at 9:02 pm // PermalinkThis looks really great. Is the screencaster.app available?
Googe
20/01/2009 at 9:40 pm // PermalinkHey Sean,
I was just wondering the same thing.
Think I just found it here:
http://www.zambetti.com/projects/liveview/
Sean
20/01/2009 at 10:06 pm // PermalinkAh! Yeah if you are looking for the link to the screencaster app it is linked to from the app store page.
Alex Robert
20/01/2009 at 11:03 pm // PermalinkWhat a great App, and what a great idea! Keep up the good work and
thanx for sharing!!
John Eckman
24/01/2009 at 10:28 am // PermalinkVery nice – seems that the Mac OS app, live view screencaster, is not playing well with Mac OS “Spaces.”
If you launch the screencaster in one space, and then switch to another, it screecasts whatever space is currently on screen (which is good) but leaves the visible iphone “frame” on the space where it was started, making it difficult to line up the view.
But that’s a minor annoyance easily worked around – thanks for the app!
parker
18/02/2009 at 8:58 pm // PermalinkIs there a way to be able to rotate the viewer on the OSX screen to match if I make a horizontal prototype instead of always vertical?
Landscape instead of portrait?
Stijn Willems
04/03/2009 at 2:20 am // PermalinkThis is a usefull app but would be evan more usefull if the app could send accellerometer data too. A framework under construction is build at http://code.google.com/p/itouchfw/. Take a look maybe it is something to include.
David webber
06/03/2009 at 11:52 am // Permalink@Cone Looks like it
Ron Kurti
06/03/2009 at 7:36 pm // PermalinkThis little app is worth its weight in gold.
Extremely useful.
Extremely easy to run.
Makes all the developers I’ve shown it to get very very giddy.
thanks Nicholas & IDEO.
- r
cory
30/03/2009 at 2:27 am // Permalinkthis should be able to work over the net (streaming even) that way you could setup a trusty old security cam to view directly from your imac’s built in cam to your iphone when out and about
sk
02/04/2009 at 5:34 pm // PermalinkIs there a windows screencaster available? Possible?
Jay
02/04/2009 at 6:16 pm // PermalinkThis is great, no hassle at all, thanks for putting it together. I agree with parker about landscape mode.
Werkplace
02/04/2009 at 6:53 pm // PermalinkAh, finally a hack to get Flash to play on an iPhone. This has some installation art potential. Would never use it for prototyping a business app though.
Stuart Eaton
18/06/2009 at 12:35 am // PermalinkThis is such a great app, really it is f**king spot on
I have been using this for a while for developing iPhone apps. It is a great way to get your mock up layouts on the iPhone screen quickly, from there I can do screen shots on the iPhone. Perfect. I am having some problems getting it to work with OS3.0. The iPhone app often does not find the Mac screencatser anymore. You having the same issues? Its seems to work if i restart both the Mac and iPhone but then it stops working again if the Mac goes to sleep 
Eilidh Dickson
28/09/2009 at 12:14 pm // PermalinkThis tool is absolutely fantastic, I have just graduated from CIID (Copenhagen Institute if Interaction Design) and we have used it numerous times all year! Its great for creating interfaces to appear in video prototypes
Justin Dean
24/11/2009 at 9:10 pm // PermalinkSick. Just sick. One of those “why didn’t I think of that” tools that I suddenly can’t live without.
Jess Holt
05/01/2010 at 8:37 am // PermalinkVery cool – Is there currently a similar app for the Droid Eris HCT? We are trying to have a well-rounded suit of mobile testing apps. Suggestions?
Yennji
07/01/2010 at 7:32 am // Permalinkit’s awsome !!
Chris O'Donnell
10/01/2010 at 10:20 pm // PermalinkThis is wonderful! My thanks goes out to the developer—keep up the great work!
Mark McLaughlin
24/04/2010 at 4:41 am // PermalinkFabulous app we’ve used a few times at work – are there any plans to release an update that makes use of the larger screen on the iPad?
Heiko Behrens
07/05/2010 at 1:54 pm // PermalinkGreat tool and thanks for adding the iPad support! I’ve just wrote a review on my blog http://www.heikobehrens.net/2010/05/07/preview-your-photoshop-design-directly-on-the-iphoneipad/
Nicholas, I asked via the contact form before: I’d be glad to support you with a windows port.
Dave
07/02/2011 at 9:06 am // PermalinkAny plans to open source this project? I’d love to play with the idea a bit, but would love to hop over some of the “plumbing” required to screen grab and communicate between mobile app and mac app.
iphone spy app
20/06/2011 at 12:45 pm // PermalinkHey, Thanks guys….we appreciate the support and are working to make the app better and better!
Bill
03/08/2011 at 6:49 am // PermalinkWhenever I connect my iPod Touch to Live View, for some reason the Live View screen switches to the iPad size and there’s no way to switch it back to the standard iPod Touch size.
Anyone else had this problem?
kallepa
27/09/2011 at 7:22 am // PermalinkBill, I just had this bug too, on my iPhone 4 with iOS5. Funny thing is, I ran without problem just yesterday. Going to reboot and check again to see if it solves itself.
javier
13/12/2011 at 2:55 am // PermalinkI’m experiencing the same issue with the size of LiveView ScreenCaster, for default only it’s appearing the ipad size, in the menu i can’t find a switch for change the size of the device. Anyone know how to fix this?
Thanks
Matej
26/12/2011 at 4:35 pm // PermalinkThis is simply brilliant for prototyping and mockups!
There is one thing that I would love to see happen.
1) if there would be an option that “draging” on iphone would translate to scrolling on mac. (if I make pdf prototype and page is longer then visible area, draging on iphone would make the page scroll so it would look natural on iphone)
love it!
Matej
26/12/2011 at 4:54 pm // Permalink…and for some reason it is not screencasting Keynote presentations
(keynote 5.1.1 lion)
When that will work, I will go celebrating the discovery of ultimate prototyping tool!
Matej
26/12/2011 at 5:02 pm // PermalinkOh, great! Found the fix for keynote!
set screencaster to center of page and hide it, then run keynote
Bryan
18/01/2012 at 5:45 pm // PermalinkIm experiencing the same prob as Bill and kallepa, the shell defaults to ipad when trying to view on my iphone, anybody figure out how to solve this?!?!