True Mirror Online

A normal mirror reverses your face from left to right, so the face you know best is a flipped one. A true mirror shows you unflipped: your left side appears on the right, where someone facing you would see it. Physical true mirrors do this with two mirrors joined at a right angle; this online version shows your camera's image without the flip that most video apps add.

Use the switch under the video: True mirror shows you as others see you, Mirror shows the familiar flipped view, and Side by side puts both on screen so you can compare them.

1. Select Turn on camera and allow camera access when your browser asks.
2. Sit or hold your phone at arm's length, at eye level, facing a window or a lamp. In a dim room, switch on Light to turn the edge of the screen into a fill light.
3. Switch between True mirror, Mirror and Side by side.
4. Take a photo to keep a still. Save it, or measure the face with the attractiveness test right on this page, without uploading it.

Almost every face is slightly asymmetric. One eye sits a little higher, the nose leans a little, a smile lifts more on one side. In a flipped image those differences swap sides, so the face looks subtly wrong even though nothing about it has changed.

Familiarity plays a part too. In a 1977 study, Mita, Dermer and Knight showed participants photos of themselves printed normally and reversed: they preferred the mirror image, while their friends preferred the true one. People tend to like the version of a face they see most often, and for your own face that is the mirror.

To see how large your own left-right differences are, the face symmetry test measures twelve mirrored landmark pairs from one photo.

The preview usually is. Most phones show the front camera like a mirror so that moving feels natural, then save the photo the other way round, as others see you. That is why a selfie can look odd right after you take it.

On iPhone, Settings › Camera › Mirror Front Camera decides which way saved selfies face. Many Android camera apps have a similar option, often called Save selfies as previewed. Video calls usually show you a mirrored preview while the other person sees you unflipped.

Yes. The camera video goes straight to this page in your browser. It is not recorded, uploaded or stored, and the camera turns off when you select Stop or leave the page. A photo you take exists only in this tab until you save it, and measuring it also runs on your device. Our privacy policy has the details.