iOS 14 gives your iPhone a cool mirror selfie trick. Here’s how to try it now

Use this new selfie trick once you download iOS 14 on your iPhone.

Angela Lang/CNET

Apple’s latest iPhone operating system iOS 14 is up and running (learn how to install it now), which means you can now install it on your phone and check out all of the new features, including home screen widgets, a Translate app and picture-in-picture capabilities. But one smaller camera feature may make the biggest difference for your selfie needs: There’s now a setting called Mirror Front Camera. 

Mirror Front Camera joins the iPhone 11’s “slofie” slow-motion selfie feature to bring us a subtler — and, dare I say, more useful — selfie tool. (It should be noted that it’s one of many iOS 14 features that’s already been available on Android devices for some time.) When you turn it on and change to your front-facing camera, it will snap a photo that’s your mirror image, instead of flipping it as the camera usually does. Some people find this jarring because the photo you take doesn’t match the image you see in the viewfinder. 

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Ultimately, it may not change your selfie much, but some people may prefer the more familiar reversed version of your face, like looking in a mirror. 

Here’s how to use the Mirror Front Camera feature, now that iOS 14 is live.

With iOS 14 installed, the Mirror Front Camera setting is disabled by default. Here’s how to turn it on:

Go to Settings > Camera. Under Composition, toggle Mirror Front Camera on. Head back to your camera app, and turn the camera to face yourself. The image will appear as you see yourself in the mirror, instead of flipped as it usually is. 

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of a regular selfie and one taken with Mirror Front Camera turned on. 

Selfie in default mode (left) vs. selfie with Mirror Front Camera turned on (right). 

Alison DeNisco Rayome/CNET

You can follow the same instructions to turn Mirror Front Camera off and go back to the default selfie setting.

For more, check out all of iOS 14’s new accessibility features, and three other iOS 14 cool features that have flown under the radar so far.

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