I’ve been gaming with a controller quite a bit since the release of iOS 13. Until a few days ago I was using one of those flexible arms to hold my phone and to keep my hands free, but now I have the Lightning to Digital AV adapter. Functionally it’s a Lightning to HDMI, but iPhones don’t technically support HDMI out so Apple has a special SoC inside this adapter doing some magic to make it all work. That’s why they charge $50, and it’s why you really need to avoid the third party adapters. It’s not a simple device.

Anyway, it works great with my iPhone XR. I’ve been playing Sky, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Steam Link and Apple Arcade on the big screen. When you are playing a game the screen is mirrored on your TV(turn your brightness down to keep your phone cool while mirroring). Games will be shown to your TV in the aspect ratio of your phone. I’m using an iPhone XR so the games that support ultra widescreen show up with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. If you mess around your TV’s aspect ratio settings you can get an image that fills the screen if you really want to, but it will cut off the sides of the image.

If you are looking for that console experience with your favorite iOS games, then I highly recommend this accessory. Let me know if you have any questions.