Why We Built Mirror Mode — And When You Actually Need It

Mirror mode is one of the easiest features to misunderstand, so we want to explain exactly what it does and — just as important — when you can ignore it completely.

The problem it solves

A professional teleprompter rig does not put a screen in front of the camera. It puts a screen below or beside the camera and a piece of angled, semi-transparent glass in front of the lens. The screen shows the script; the glass reflects it toward the speaker. Because it is a reflection, the image is reversed left-to-right. Read that reversed text directly and it is backwards.

To make the reflection readable, the text has to be mirrored before it hits the glass. That is the entire purpose of mirror mode: it prepares the script for a reflective rig, not for a person reading a screen directly.

How we implemented it

We flip the text container with a CSS transform, so the change is instant and does not touch your script. There are two directions:

• •Horizontal mirror (scaleX) — the common case, for glass that reflects left-to-right.
• •Vertical mirror (scaleY) — for setups that reflect off a horizontal surface.

You can toggle either one from the playback toolbar, or use the keyboard: M for horizontal, Shift+M for vertical. The two can be combined if a rig needs it. Only the text is flipped — the current-line highlight band stays fixed, so your reference point never moves.

When you actually need it

• •You are filming with a physical beam-splitter teleprompter and your reflection is reversed.
• •You are using a rig where the screen and the lens are separated by glass.
• •You are building a custom setup and need the text to read correctly off a reflective surface.

When you do not need it

This is the part most people miss. If you are reading straight off a laptop, tablet or phone — no glass, no rig — mirror mode makes your text backwards and unreadable. It is a tool for reflective hardware, not a general display option. If your text suddenly looks reversed, you have probably turned mirror mode on by accident; press M again to turn it off.

Mirror mode is not a style choice. It exists because physics reverses a reflection, and we undo that one specific reversal.

If you are not sure whether your setup needs it, the answer is almost certainly no. Mirror mode is for people standing behind glass.