iOS 18 and macOS 15.1 Sequoia have introduced a number of new features to iPhone and MacBook. One of them is iPhone mirroring where you can see your iPhone’s screen on your Mac and control it without touching your phone. However, there is a flaw. You can’t use the iPhone’s hotspot while mirroring your iPhone to the MacBook and you can’t use iPhone hotspot if iPhone is being mirrored to the Mac.

iPhone
The steps to use the iPhone Mirroring feature are quite straightforward. You lock your phone, open iPhone Mirroring app on Mac, and authenticate using password or biometric, and the iPhone screen is visible on your Mac’s screen. You can then check notifications, open or close apps, navigate around, etc.
Here is how iPhone Mirroring looks when both my iPhone and Mac are connected to my office’s Wi-Fi network.

I will now switch to mobile data on my iPhone and connect my Mac via hotspot to the iPhone. But this time, when I launch iPhone Mirroring, I see an error instead – iPhone Not Found and that both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi must be enabled.

Let’s try the reverse. Both my iPhone and Mac are connected to the office Wi-Fi network. I will now start iPhone mirroring and then try connecting Mac to the iPhone hotspot. Again, I see an error – Failed to enable Personal Hotspot on “iPhone”.

iPhone Mirroring is a really good feature and works seamlessly but only when conditions are fulfilled. You can control your entire phone like picking up calls, reading messages, viewing notifications, dragging and dropping files, and more.
However, it won’t work when you are not connected to a Wi-Fi network. I found out the hard way on my recent trip to Kerala. I was sipping some coffee at the airport waiting for my flight and because there was still time, I thought I will do some work. I needed to transfer some images from my phone so launched the iPhone mirroring feature on the Mac to use the drag-n-drop feature. Sadly, it didn’t work.
So you can only use one of the two features at a time. Either you can use iPhone mirroring on the Mac or the hotspot. Those who are traveling and would like to use both while on the go will find their productivity hampered.
Usually, Apple’s Continuity features work flawlessly but this time, there seems to be some oversight or technical limitations. Hopefully, the word will spread, and Apple will take note, and fix this with an update.