How To Connect Galaxy S8 To TV

Connecting your Samsung Galaxy S8 to a TV is surprisingly simple. Once you try it for the first time, you will instantly get used to it and actually feel the need to use this cool feature more and more often. In this article, we are going to present you two different methods so you can choose the one that you prefer.

How to connect a Samsung Galaxy S8/S8 Plus to a TV:

With a wired connection;
Through your local Wi-Fi network.

Important to remember, whatever method you will choose, the end result will be the same, you mirroring the content of our smartphone to the screen of the TV. This means that even the tools that you use, however, will be a bit different from one method to another.

Yet another note before we proceed to our tutorial, the user manual points out that the original Galaxy and Galaxy Edge released after 2015, as well as the recent Smart TVs from Samsung, featuring the Bluetooth Low Energy support, make for the easiest mirroring process you will ever get. All you have to do is to place the smartphone next to the TV while the latter is turned on and simply launch the notification pane:

From there, tap on Quick Connect;
Select the option to Scan for nearby devices;
Tap on your TV as soon as the phone identifies it;
Select Register TV;
When the TV icon with an arrow shows up, tap on it and you can start mirroring your smartphone content;
If you want to play a media file on the TV, just open that file and hit the Share button;
Select the Smart View button that will appear at the bottom of the display;
Select the TV from the list of devices that will show up on the screen;
And the media file will be displayed on your TV screen.

As a final observation, keep in mind that you can also reverse this process and mirror something from the TV to the screen of the phone. This would require you to select the TV to Mobile Device option from the Quick Connect area of the Notification pane.

Just like we initially suggested, you have more than one option. The alternatives to the entire above are:

Miracast mirroring;
Chromecast;
A wired MHL connection.

Method #1 – Miracast mirroring

This is something that many TVs of other brands than Samsung will successfully support and you can use it with your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus. To test it, go back to the Quick Connect button from the Notification pane and select to Scan for nearby devices. Follow the directions and select your TV from the list of results.

If you can’t find your TV on that list, most likely it isn’t compatible with the Miracast feature. In this case, you can try using:

The Fire TV Stick from Amazon;
The HomeSync and AllShare cast dongles from Samsung.

While the Samsung alternatives are pretty intuitive to use, with Amazon’s Fire TV Stick you will first have to hold down the Home button of the remote control and tap on Mirroring so you can start seeing the Stick as an option on your smartphone’s list.

Method #2 – Chromecast

This is a product from Google, extremely simple and inexpensive as long as you don’t use the full screen mirroring. What you should do, however, is to install the Chromecast dedicated app and then to connect your Chromecast dongle to the TV. Right after that, you will be able to display Chrome tabs, Play Music and YouTube videos on the screen of your TV by simply tapping a button. Sharing photos from your holiday with the entire family or watching funny videos will be much easier on the large screen of the TV.

Method #3 – the wired MHL connection

This one used to be a very popular option up until Galaxy S6. But Samsung took a controversial decision and removed this support for Android devices via MHL – HDMI. Without a doubt, it was an attempt to force the consumers’ hand into buying Samsung’s dedicated mirroring products and that’s why the recent Samsung Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus didn’t introduce the wired MHL connection support anymore.