BareCast
Document camera for iPhone
Present what your iPhone sees
BareCast turns your iPhone into a document camera. Point it at a worksheet, a book, an object or your own hands, mirror the screen to a Mac or a projector, and the room sees the live image and nothing else.
Coming soon to the App Store
- iPhone, iOS 18 or later
- Works with AirPlay
- No account, no sign-in
01The image
Nothing on screen but the image
The whole screen is the camera. The status bar, the Home indicator and every control stay hidden, so the wall shows the page on your desk and not a single icon around it.
It's made for anyone who explains something with their hands in front of a group: a teacher going through a worksheet, a trainer showing a small part, a therapist demonstrating an exercise, a lecturer working on a printout.
The screen doesn't dim or lock while BareCast is open, however long the lesson runs.
02Live Controls
Controls only when you need them
Swipe up anywhere on the image and the panel follows your finger. If a swipe is awkward with the phone on a stand, touch and hold for three seconds instead. When you're done, swipe it away.
- Lenses and cameras
- Ultra wide, wide and telephoto with one tap, depending on your iPhone, and a button that switches between the back and the front camera.
- Zoom and exposure
- Pinch on the image or use the slider, up to 10×. Exposure brightens a dim desk or calms down a glaring white page. The value next to each slider is also its reset button.
- Focus Lock and Light
- Focus Lock stops the camera from refocusing on your hands as they move over the page. Light switches on the flashlight at Low or High.
- Quality
- HD for long sessions, 4K when small print matters.
03On the big screen
Portrait or landscape on the wall
Screen Mirroring sends the whole iPhone screen in the shape it has. A Mac display and a projector are wide, so an upright phone ends up as a narrow strip in the middle, with black bars on both sides. Turned on its side, the same image fills almost the whole wall.
Portrait
Landscapeabout 3× more picture
Calculated for an iPhone with a 19.5:9 screen, a 16:10 Mac display and a 16:9 projector. On an iPhone with a Home button, landscape fills a 16:9 projector completely.
How to set it up
- Put the iPhone on a stand or holder above the desk, with the back camera pointing down at the page.
- On the Mac, turn on AirPlay Receiver in System Settings, General, AirDrop & Handoff. On macOS Monterey it's under System Preferences, Sharing.
- Connect the Mac to the projector with a cable and set the displays to mirror, so the projector shows what the Mac shows.
- On the iPhone, open Control Center, tap Screen Mirroring and choose your Mac. Open BareCast and turn the phone sideways.
If the image stays upright when you turn the phone, Portrait Orientation Lock is on in Control Center. Switch it off there, and use Rotation Lock in BareCast instead: it holds the image steady if someone bumps the stand, and it's one tap away in Live Controls.
You don't need a Mac for this. BareCast works the same way with an Apple TV, a TV or projector that supports AirPlay, or a wired adapter from the iPhone to HDMI.
04Presenting
Tools made for presenting
- Freeze
- Holds the current image on the wall while you turn the page, swap the object or move the phone. Tap again to go live.
- Mirror
- Flips the image horizontally. With the front camera, anything you hold up to it reads backwards on the wall. One tap and it reads normally.
- Rotation Lock
- Keeps the image steady even if the phone gets bumped on its stand.
- Center and Grid
- A crosshair and a rule-of-thirds grid help you line up the page. The audience sees them too, so both stay off until you turn them on.
05Photos
A photo without a shutter sound
Tap the image to save what's on the screen to your photo library. There's no shutter sound and the live image doesn't pause. A soft glow around the edge of the screen confirms the photo, and the audience keeps the picture the whole time.
Photos are always saved the right way round, even with Mirror on.
06Presentation Frame
Your name and logo on the projected image
Presentation Frame adds a slim black bar along the edge with the camera cutout, so the Dynamic Island or the notch disappears into it. The image gets softly rounded corners.
The bar holds your logo and two lines of text: your name, your school or company, the title of the session. The logo is cropped to a square automatically, and the text never runs under the cutout. In landscape the bar moves to the side.
Before your photo library opens to choose a logo, BareCast warns you, because everyone watching can see what's on the screen.
07Long sessions
Made to last a whole lesson
- Comes back on its own
- After a phone call, an alarm or another interruption, the image returns without you touching anything.
- Stays cool
- When the phone warms up during a long session, BareCast lowers the frame rate and switches the flashlight off before iOS would stop the camera.
- Remembers your setup
- Settings, logo and text are waiting next time. Zoom and the flashlight always start fresh.
- VoiceOver
- Full support, including the photo, freeze and zoom actions.
Privacy
No accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. The camera image is shown on your screen and nowhere else. BareCast doesn't record it and doesn't send it anywhere.
Photos, your logo and your text stay on your iPhone. For photos, BareCast asks only for permission to add them to your library, so it can't look through the ones you already have.
Read the privacy policyFree and Pro
The free version has every feature, in sessions of up to 2 minutes. Enough to try everything and to show something quickly.
BareCast Pro removes the time limit. It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and it's yours on every device signed in with the same Apple Account. Already bought it? Use Restore Purchase.
Requirements
- iPhone with iOS 18 or later
- For the big screen: a Mac with AirPlay Receiver (macOS Monterey or later), an Apple TV, an AirPlay TV or projector, or a wired video adapter
- The app is in English
