Professional teleprompters don’t show you the screen — they show you a reflection. A sheet of beam-splitter glass sits at 45° over the camera lens, and the text from a display below reflects on it. The camera shoots through the glass; you read text that appears to float over the lens.
Reflections mirror things. So the text displayed on the screen must be pre-flipped horizontally to read normally once it bounces off the glass. That pre-flip is what mirror mode does.
This page explains when you need it, how to switch it on in NanoPrompter, and how it relates to the other flip — the vertical one.
When you need mirror mode
- Beam-splitter rigs (the classic hood-and-glass teleprompter): mirror mode on, always. The glass mirrors the text; the software un-mirrors it in advance.
- Reading directly from a screen — laptop, monitor, tablet mounted under the lens: mirror mode off. The text is already correct.
- Overhead or periscope-style rigs where the image reflects an additional time: mirror, vertical flip, or both, depending on the geometry. Test with a short line of text before the session.
The practical test is thirty seconds long: put the text up, look through the glass, and toggle. One of the two states reads. That’s the correct one for your rig.
How to enable it
In the teleprompter view, mirror mode is a control-panel button away, or the default keyboard shortcut Z (vertical flip is X). Both are reassignable in the shortcuts panel — the keyboard shortcuts page lists every default — and each can be mapped to a gamepad button for rigs where the computer sits out of reach (gamepad control).
For fixed studio setups there’s a shortcut worth knowing: settings persist between sessions, so you configure mirror once and every later session starts already flipped.
What mirror mode is NOT for
Because the name invites confusion:
- It’s not for mirroring the camera output — it affects the prompter text, not the video.
- It’s not a reading aid. If the text is hard to read on a plain screen, the fix is font size and speed, not flips (the first-time guide covers setup).
- It doesn’t change the recording. Whatever the camera captures is unaffected; mirror mode only changes what the reader sees.
Mirror + flip, in one sentence
Mirror = left-right reversal (glass rigs). Vertical flip = upside-down (projection setups). Combined, they rotate the text 180° — which is exactly what some ceiling-mounted and floor-monitor configurations need.
If you’re deciding whether to buy glass at all, the honest comparison lives here: tablet vs physical teleprompter — when the cheap screen wins, and when the rig earns its price.
Try it on your rig
Open the teleprompter with a line of text, press Z, and see which state your setup reads. If you’re building toward a glass rig, the mounts and hoods we recommend are below.