Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face situations where the image from the front camera looks different from the one in the mirror, due to the default mirroring feature that turns the image upright, which can come as a surprise to the user, especially if you are used to seeing your reflection differently, or want to capture the real look of the face without artistic distortion.
The MIUI or HyperOS shell system interface offers flexible settings for working with the camera, allowing you to control this setting for photo and video recording separately. However, the location of these settings is not always obvious, and in some versions of the firmware it can change or hide in additional menus. Understanding how optics and software image processing work will help you quickly customize the gadget to your needs.
In this article, we will discuss in detail all the available ways to disable mirroring. We will look at the standard system tools, settings of third-party software for video communication and methods for solving software errors when the slider of the settings does not respond to clicks. You will learn to fully control how the lens sees you.
The nature of mirror reflection in smartphones
The phenomenon of seeing ourselves in a smartphone flipped is related to the psychology of perception and the technicalities of the front camera. The human brain gets used to its reflection in the mirror, where the left side becomes the right side and the right side becomes the left. When the camera shows the "real" image, the face appears asymmetrical and unusual, which causes discomfort.
Manufacturers, including Xiaomi, initially include a mirror view mode to make it easier for the user to frame themselves while shooting, which creates the illusion of working with a regular mirror. However, the final file (photo or video) is often saved by default in a “normal” form, that is, the way people see you, unless the appropriate settings are changed.
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Mirror display is useful when applying makeup or shaving, as the movements in the frame coincide with the movements in the real mirror, but for video blogging it is better to use the standard mode.
It's important to distinguish between preview in the viewfinder and the final result, and the MIUI settings allow you to separate these processes: you can see yourself in mirror mode for convenience, but save the file in normal, or make both processes identical, and you need to understand these subtleties to get the desired visual effect.
Settings of the built-in Camera application
The primary image control tool is directly in the Camera app, and this is where the main switches that control the geometry of the frame are located. The interface may vary slightly depending on the version of the shell, but the logic remains the same for most Redmi and POCO devices.
First, you open the app and switch to the front camera, then you call the settings menu, which is usually represented as three horizontal bars in the upper right corner of the screen, and in the list of parameters that opens, you need to find the section associated with the front camera or the general view.
☑️ Checking camera settings
The key element here is Mirror front camera. If this switch is active, both preview and the final photo will be mirrored. If it is turned off, the image will be the same as other people see you. For video mode, logic is often retained, but some versions of the firmware require a separate activation of the video mode.
⚠️ Note: Some global firmware versions may call it “Save Proportions” or have a two-triangle icon. Make sure you change settings for the front camera, not the main camera.
How to turn off the mirror when recording video
Video recording from the front camera has its own peculiarities, and users often notice that even with the photo mirror turned off, the video is written inverted, which is due to the fact that the system can apply different processing profiles for static and dynamic images.
To ensure that you remove SLR video, you need to make sure you are in video mode in the camera interface. The settings can be tied to a specific shooting mode. Newer versions of HyperOS often have unified settings, but checking the current shooting mode will be useful.
If the standard video mode does not produce the desired result, you should pay attention to the Vlog or Short mode if they are present in your model. These modes often use their own filters and effects, which can force mirroring to be turned on or off regardless of the general settings.
Why is the video still upside down?
Also, when using image stabilization or certain beauty filters, the system can automatically adjust the geometry of the frame.
Use of third-party applications for video communication
That changes dramatically when you use video calling apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, or Skype, which have their own camera settings that can overlap Xiaomi’s system settings.
Most messengers use the mirroring settings in the “Privacy” or “Sound and Video” section, for example, on Telegram you can find the “Mirror my video” option, which only affects how you see yourself during a call, but not how the person sees you.
- 📱 WhatsApp: Settings → Confidentiality → Mirror video (affects preview only).
- 💬 Telegram: Settings → Confidentiality → Mirror video.
- 🎥 Zoom: Settings → Video → Reflect my video.
It's important to understand the difference between local display and transmitted stream. Often, mirror video is only on for your convenience, so that you can easily adjust your hair or clothes when you look at the screen, and the interviewer sees a normal image, even if you have this option enabled.
If you want both you and the person you are talking to to see the same image (for example, to show text on a T-shirt), then you need to look for settings in the application, not in the system. Android system settings here often prove to be powerless.
Comparison of settings in different versions of MIUI and HyperOS
Xiaomi’s shells are constantly updated, and the location of settings can change. In older versions of MIUI (for example, MIUI 11-12), the settings were more fragmented, while in HyperOS and the new MIUI 14 there is a trend towards unification of the interface.
Below is a table that will help you navigate where to look for the right switch depending on the version of your system, which will save time when searching for the cherished slider.
| Shell version | Location of settings | Title of paragraph | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIUI 11-12 | Menu (3 stripes) → Settings | Mirror photo | Works globally for photo and video |
| MIUI 13-14 | Menu → Settings → Camera | Mirror photo / Mirror video | There was a separation for photos and videos |
| HyperOS | Menu → Settings → Camera | Mirror effect | Integration with AI-function |
| Chinese version (CN) | Settings → Additional settings | Front camera mirror | May require translation of the interface |
Owners of Chinese versions of smartphones (CN ROM) should be especially careful. In the original Chinese software, some functions may be called differently or hidden in the depths of the engineering menu. For global versions (Global, EEA, RU), the menu structure is usually standardized.
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With newer versions of HyperOS, camera settings have become more logical, but if you’ve recently updated, be sure to recheck all the items, as resetting settings could return them to factory values.
Problem Solving: When the settings are not saved
Sometimes users encounter a bug when the mirroring function is turned off again when the camera is next started, which may be due to an application cache error or a conflict of system processes.
The first step in this situation is to clean up the Camera app data, which will not delete your photos, but will return all camera settings to factory settings, which often helps to eliminate software failure. To do this, go to Settings → Apps → All Apps → Camera → Clear the data.
⚠️ Attention: Resetting the camera app data will also reset filters, watermarks and framing grids. You'll have to reset them manually.
If the data cleanup didn’t work, try removing the Camera app updates or, conversely, updating it through the GetApps store or Google Play. In rare cases, the problem lies in a specific firmware version bug, and fixing it is only possible after the next security patch from Xiaomi is released.
It’s also worth checking if you have third-party camera modifications (GCam) that can take control. If you’re using Google Camera, the mirroring settings are inside the GCam app itself, not the system camera.
The Effects of Beauty Effects and Filters
Xiaomi’s Beauty feature often works in conjunction with geometric distortions, and skin smoothing and face oval correction algorithms can visually change proportions, creating an effect similar to a misreflection of the mirror.
In an active beauty mode, the camera can force the mirror mode, as many users are used to evaluating their appearance in a mirror image.
- 🧖♀️ Skin smoothing: May make the face flat, increasing the feeling of the image being “wrong.
- 👃 Traits correction: Changing the shape of the nose or eyes can break the familiar symmetry of the face.
- ✨ Filters: Some filters have built-in mirroring as part of the artistic design.
It is recommended to do a test shoot with all the improvements turned off to make sure that the problem is in the display settings, not the operation of the image processing algorithms, and this is especially true for bloggers who care about naturalness.