Browser Permissions & WebRTC Diagnostics
Why Your Webcam Output Looks Mirrored on Browser Test Pages
Your local self-view preview is mirrored on purpose — it matches how a real mirror behaves, which is what your brain expects when watching your own reflection move. The video actually transmitted to other people on a call is a completely separate, unmirrored stream; they see you exactly as you naturally appear, which is why text held up to the camera reads backwards to you but perfectly normal to everyone else.
The Difference Between Local Preview Mirroring and Recorded Stream Output
This is one of the most consistently misunderstood aspects of webcam behavior, and it's worth explaining clearly: your camera captures one single, unmirrored video signal. What happens after that single signal is captured is where local preview and transmitted stream genuinely diverge, even though they originate from the exact same source data.
The preview shown to you locally is deliberately flipped horizontally before display, specifically because it matches lifelong mirror intuition — when you move your hand to the right, a mirror shows it moving to the right from your own perspective, and this mirrored self-view preserves that same expected relationship. An unmirrored self-view, by contrast, would show your hand appearing to move left, which most people find genuinely disorienting even though it's technically showing exactly what a camera captured.
The stream actually sent to other participants skips this local mirroring step entirely — they receive and see the same unmirrored signal a camera pointed at you always produces, identical to how they'd see you in person. This is also why any text, logos, or writing visible in your shot appear backwards specifically in your own self-view, but read correctly to everyone else on the call.
How Virtual Mirrors Prevent Cognitive Disorientation
Nearly universal software behavior confirms this pattern deliberately: Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, FaceTime, and browser-based tools like the one on this page all mirror the local self-view by default while transmitting an unmirrored stream, precisely because this consistently tests better with users than the alternative. It reflects a real, considered design decision rather than an inconsistency or bug anyone needs to work around.
Understanding this distinction matters most specifically when framing yourself using visible text or an object with clear directional orientation — since what you see locally is mirrored, positioning something so it looks correct to you will actually appear reversed to everyone else, and accounting for that when precise positioning genuinely matters is worth the extra thought.
A Simple Way to Prove This Yourself
If you want to see this distinction directly rather than just taking it on explanation, hold up a piece of paper with text written on it in front of your camera during any video call. In your own local self-view, that text will appear backwards, exactly like looking in a real mirror. Ask the other person on the call what they see, and they'll confirm the text reads completely normally to them — direct, immediate proof that two genuinely different versions of the same video exist simultaneously, one mirrored for you and one unmirrored for everyone else.
This same test works identically across virtually every video-calling platform, since the mirror-locally-but-not-remotely behavior is close to a universal industry convention at this point, not something specific to any one piece of software.