Guide · Outputs

How to get NDI, SRT, RTSP or HDMI out of an iPhone.

iPhones don't speak NDI or SRT natively — and pretending otherwise is how setups get flaky. The working pattern: the phone sends one clean feed to a free Mac receiver, and the Mac does the distribution.

Airlive team 4 min read

The honest layout

The phone runs Airlive Camera (free; iPhone 11+, iOS 17+) and streams over an open protocol to Airlive Bridge on your Mac (free, macOS 13+). Bridge takes whatever is on Program and republishes it to every output you switch on. The phone stays light — one feed, one job — and the Mac, which has the CPU and wired network for it, handles the fan-out.

Setup in three steps

  1. Install Bridge on the Mac and Airlive Camera on the phone (coming to the App Store — see Downloads).
  2. Connect: Airlive Camera → Live → pick the Mac; the phone appears as a Bridge channel.
  3. CUT the channel to Program and enable outputs in the right rail.
Screenshot · 16:9 · 2560×1440

Bridge output rail with NDI, SRT, RTSP and HDMI toggles.

What each output is for

  • NDI®Local network
  • SRTNetwork / WAN
  • RTSPPull by URL
  • HDMI / AirPlaySecond screen

NDI® — the program appears as a source on your network for any NDI-aware software or hardware to pick up. This is the "drop an iPhone into an existing production" path.

SRT — point it at whatever expects an SRT ingest: a hardware decoder, a streaming service, a remote studio across the internet.

RTSP — for tools that pull streams by URL: media servers, monitoring software, recorders.

HDMI / AirPlay — a clean program picture on a second screen: a projector, a venue TV, or a hardware switcher's HDMI input via an adapter.

And OBS gets its own path — the free Airlive Bridge source connects automatically on the same Mac, no settings.

Bridge → OBS: add the source, it connects itself.

FAQ

Can the phone output NDI directly? No — and that's deliberate. Distribution is heavy, phones are battery-powered and wireless; the Mac does the heavy lifting while the phone just sends one clean feed. (That split is also part of the thermal story.)

Several outputs at once? Yes — every enabled output carries the program simultaneously.

Several cameras? That's the whole point of Bridge: a multicam multiview in front of these outputs, with the same fixed latency on every channel.

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