Task-focused recipes. Each one assumes you already know the basics and gets you straight to a single goal.
Creating a space doesn't hand you an invite. Open the space and use Invite when you're ready to add someone.
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mirall://join/… link and the bare code work.Unless the invite was set to auto-approve, joining is a request: your screen reads Waiting to be let into the space until an existing member approves you. You can leave the window open — you'll be admitted automatically as soon as a member is online, and you don't need to be online at the moment they approve. Until then the space's contents stay closed to you, and the only action available is Cancel request.
Once someone approves you, the space opens and its files appear. If the invite had auto-approve turned on, nobody has to decide — you are let in as soon as your device reaches a member of the space.
An invite link has an expiry. If yours has lapsed, Mirall tells you the link has expired — ask the person who sent it for a new one.
Open the space and click Invite. The dialog asks you two things before it mints a link:
Click Create invite link. Mirall shows a single mirall://join/… link, tagged with the choices you made, and a Copy button. Send it however you like — chat, email, anything. The same link works for as many people as you want to admit, until it expires. Change takes you back to adjust the settings; Done closes the dialog.
The link carries the space name, so the person joining sees what they're joining. It does not carry the key to the space — that is handed over by a device that is already a member, so someone has to be online and reachable when the link is used, auto-approve or not.
When someone uses an invite that isn't set to auto-approve, they stay outside the space until a member lets them in. Any member can do this — not just whoever created the space.
A banner appears at the top of the space reading “<name> wants to join”, with Approve and Deny beside it. Approving hands them the key to the space's contents; denying turns them away.
When several people are waiting, the banner collapses into a stack of avatars and a count — “3 people want to join” — with a Review button. That opens Requests to join, where you can tick individuals and Approve selected, take everyone at once with Approve all, or deny someone from their row.
Requests reach you in three places: the banner inside the space, a notice in the app with a Review button that takes you there, and a “1 waiting” pill on that space's tile in the Shared Spaces overview. The notice only appears while Mirall's window is open — there is no desktop notification for join requests, so one that arrives while the window is closed waits for you inside the space.
A request only needs handling once. As soon as any member approves or denies someone, the banner clears for everyone else in the space.
Someone follows your invite link, their screen reads Waiting to be let into the space, and nothing appears on yours. That almost always means the request never reached a member's device — not that you missed a button.
Auto-approve changes none of this. It removes the decision, not the hand-over: the link carries the address of the space, never the key to it, so a device that is already a member still has to be reachable to let someone in. Until one is, the person joining waits exactly as they would without it.
Star any space to pin it to Favorites. On the Shared Spaces screen you can filter the list by All Spaces or Favorites. You can also add a space to Favorites from the More menu inside the space.
Open the space, open the More menu, and choose Leave Space. Mirall cancels any in-flight transfers and drops the space's records from your device. Files you've already downloaded, and any folder you were mirroring, stay where they are — they're yours.
If you're waiting to be approved rather than already a member, the same button reads Cancel request and simply withdraws your request.
Drag files onto the Drop to Share zone in the sidebar, or use Share… to pick them from your computer. While you drag a file over the space, the drop zone grows to fill the whole area, so you don't have to aim carefully. Mirall offers the file to the space right away.
Mirall shares the file in place, straight from the original on your disk. Sharing never doubles a file's disk usage, and when you edit a shared file, the change is picked up where it lies.
There's no size limit. Hundreds of gigabytes, or a file into the terabytes, all work the same way — content is streamed in chunks rather than uploaded as a whole. Mirall does need a moment to index a file before sharing can start, so expect a short Preparing step on something that large. Members waiting on it can watch that preparation progress rather than staring at a blank spinner.
Want to share a whole folder instead of picking files? See Share a whole folder.
Click the download button on any file shared by another member. The file transfers directly from their device to yours, showing live progress, average speed, and an estimate of the time remaining. Downloads land in your chosen download folder.
When a download finishes, a green shield appears next to the file. That's Mirall confirming the contents it received match the owner's original exactly.
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If your network drops or the member you're downloading from goes offline, the transfer pauses on its own and picks back up from where it left off once that person is back. You can also take control by hand — the buttons on a file row change with its state:
In-progress downloads are written to a .mirall.part file and renamed to their real name only when the transfer completes — an interrupted transfer can't leave a half-written file under its final name.
A mirrored folder has no per-file download controls. To pause or stop everything a folder is pulling, use the mirror's own Pause Mirror, Resume Mirror, and Unmount Mirror actions.
For any file you share, Mirall shows you who is pulling it right now.
While someone downloads a file you've shared, their avatar appears on that file's row, along with a combined progress bar, the transfer speed, and an estimate of the time remaining. If several people are downloading at once, their avatars stack up with a count.
Click the row's indicator to expand it. You'll see each person individually — their name, how far along they are, their own speed, and their own time remaining. Someone who has paused shows as Paused; someone who has dropped offline mid-transfer shows as Waiting.
This works for loose files in a space and for files inside a folder you share. It only appears on files you own — you don't see other people's downloads from other people.
Use a file's menu and choose Unshare from Space to remove a file you added so it's no longer offered to other members. Files they've already downloaded stay on their devices — unsharing only stops offering new copies. Your own original is untouched.
Share a folder into a space and Mirall keeps it in sync — add, edit, or remove files and everyone in the space sees the change automatically. Subfolders come along too.
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + U.Folders you share are marked Shared by you. Mirall serves the files straight from the originals, so sharing a folder never doubles its disk usage.
Open a folder another member shared to see what's inside without downloading everything. A folder you're only looking through is marked Browse.
Subfolders are rows you can open and close. Each one tells you what's inside before you open it: how many files it holds and their total size, how many are already on your device, how many are downloading right now, and how many subfolders it contains. Expand all opens the whole tree at once, and flips to Collapse all to fold it back up.
Click Download on any individual file to save just that one, or use Mirror to Disk… to keep the whole folder synced instead.
Folders you leave open stay open as you move around the app. Restarting Mirall resets the tree to its default, with the top-level folders open.
Keep a live, always-up-to-date copy of a shared folder in a folder on your own computer.
A mirror is read-only. If you edit a file inside the mirror, Mirall restores it to the owner's version on the next sync. To keep your own edits, copy the file out of the mirror folder first.
A mirror can't be placed directly on a top-level personal folder such as Home, Desktop, Documents, or Downloads. If the mirror's folder already holds a file of your own with the same name as a shared one, your file is left alone and the mirrored copy lands under a different name.
If a write fails — a full disk, or a destination that's become read-only — the mirror pauses rather than erroring, and resumes once there's room.
A folder you own shows you the people keeping a live copy of it.
Open a folder you share and look for Mirrored by in the sidebar. One person shows by name with their current state underneath. Several stack into a row of avatars with a summary beneath — for example “2 Syncing… · 1 Synced”.
Each person is in one of three states: Synced (their copy matches yours), Syncing… (they're still catching up), or Paused (they've paused their mirror). The states stay accurate even while those people are offline.
Open Settings → Storage. The Download Folder section at the top shows where downloads land; Change… opens your OS picker. This is the folder every space uses unless it has one of its own, and the choice persists across restarts. It defaults to your OS Downloads folder.
Not every folder can be used. If the one you pick sits inside — or contains — a folder you share or mirror, Mirall refuses it, because anything downloaded there would be published to your peers. A folder that doesn't exist, or that Mirall can't write to, is refused too. Mirall never creates the folder for you.
Changing this folder doesn't move files you've already downloaded, and it leaves spaces that have set their own download folder alone.
A space can save its downloads somewhere other than your default — a scratch disk for the project you're cutting, say, while everything else lands in Downloads.
A space you leave alone keeps using the folder from Settings → Storage, and the dialog says so: Using the default download folder. Once a space has its own, a Use default folder button appears to put it back.
The same rule applies as for the default folder: a folder that sits inside — or contains — a folder you share or mirror is refused, since anything landing there would be published to your peers. Two spaces may happily share one folder.
Files you already downloaded are never moved. Ones now outside the space's folder simply read as Available again — point the space back at the old folder and they return to On your device without downloading anything twice. Let transfers finish or pause them before you switch.
Open Settings → Storage and look at App Storage. This is what Mirall itself occupies on your device — not your files. Because Mirall shares your files in place, it never keeps a second copy of them, so this figure stays small.
Show details breaks it into two parts:
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Mirall tidies up after itself as it goes, but you can prompt it. In Settings → Storage, open Show details under App Storage and click Free up space. Mirall compacts its own bookkeeping and reports how much it recovered — or tells you storage is already optimized.
This only touches Mirall's own data. Your shared files, your downloads, and your mirrored folders are never removed.
Click your avatar in the top-right to open the Profile page. The card at the top holds your display name and picture — change either, then click Save Changes, which appears once there's something to save. The update propagates to every space you're in. Your profile is only shared with the peers you connect with, and a picture must be under 16 MB.
Your identity in Mirall is a signing key held on your device. The Identity protection row under This device on your Profile page tells you how that key is being kept safe:
This row is information, not a button — there's nothing to click and nothing to configure.
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Your avatar gains a soft pulsing ring when something's wrong — red if you've lost internet, amber while Mirall is trying to recover. No ring means you're connected and ready. When a problem appears, a toast notification offers a Show details link.
Open your Profile page and click Connection for a friendly diagnostics view — useful when a friend can't reach you or a transfer stalls. The headline tells you where you stand:
Whenever you are not healthy, a Reconnect button sits beside the headline — it makes Mirall try again straight away instead of waiting for the next automatic attempt. Underneath, Suggestions spell out whatever Mirall can see about your setup.
Show advanced details opens the technical view: the addresses and ports Mirall is using, what it can tell about your router, and the state of the directory it uses to find peers. Some of the most useful suggestions only appear once it is open — including “Your router appears to be blocking inbound UDP” and the two warnings about how your network hands out ports.
Settings → Network is a different screen — it sets bandwidth limits and shows no connection status.
Mirall keeps a record on your device of who joined, left, or was approved, and what was shared and downloaded.
Click your avatar to open Profile, then choose Activity Log under This device. The row itself tells you how many events are recorded.
Search across people, files and folders with the box at the top, and narrow the list with three menus — All spaces, Anyone, and Any time (last 7, 30, or 90 days). The All / Members / Files / Folders / Security buttons filter by kind, and you can press more than one. Every filter you apply becomes a chip you can remove individually, or clear in one go with Clear all.
Events are grouped by day, newest first, with your own actions attributed to You. A refused request or a failed transfer carries a DENIED or FAILED badge. Twenty events load at a time — Load more fetches the next page.
Spaces you have left still appear here, and stay filterable, until their events age out.
Open Settings → Activity Log. Record activity turns recording on and off — it's on to begin with. Turning it off stops new events being written; it doesn't delete anything already recorded, and those events stay searchable and exportable.
Keep events for sets how long they're retained — 30 days, 90 days, or 365 days, with 90 the starting point. Anything older is deleted automatically.
Export as JSON saves every recorded event to a file called mirall-activity-log.json. Delete the log removes them all and asks you to confirm first; it can't be undone.
An export contains raw identifiers — public keys, file paths, and content hashes — rather than the readable sentences you see in the app. Treat the file as sensitive.
Mirall lives in your menu bar (macOS) or system tray (Windows and Linux). Closing the window keeps the app running so peers stay connected, transfers keep going, and notifications still arrive — click the icon to bring the window back.
Settings → General lets you opt out: Show Mirall in the menu bar on macOS, Run in the background on Windows and Linux. Launch at login starts Mirall quietly with your computer.
To quit Mirall outright rather than close it to the tray, use File → Quit Mirall (Ctrl + Q) on Windows and Linux, or Mirall → Quit (Cmd + Q) on macOS.
Mirall ships in five languages — English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. Your OS locale is detected on first launch. Switch any time under Settings → Appearance → Language; your choice persists across restarts.
Under Settings → Appearance, pick a Theme Mode — Light, System, or Dark (System follows your OS automatically). Set the Display Size to Compact, Cozy, Default, or Spacious, or step through any zoom level with Cmd/Ctrl +, −, and 0. Your choice persists across restarts.
On Windows and Linux, Auto-hide the menu bar tucks the menu bar away until you press Alt. Keyboard shortcuts keep working either way.
Mirall surfaces incoming files and space activity through your operating system's notification center. Open Settings → Notifications. Three switches cover the basics: Show desktop notifications (the master switch), Play sound, and Mute when Mirall is focused, which skips alerts while the window is in front.
Under Events, five per-event toggles let you opt in or out individually:
Requests to join a space always surface in the app itself, as a banner on the space and a notice you can act on. They don't depend on these settings.
Cap how fast Mirall transfers files, so a big download doesn't take the whole line with it.
Open Settings → Network. Under Transfer limits there's a row for Download and one for Upload, each offering Unlimited, 1 MB/s, 5 MB/s, 25 MB/s, or Custom. Both start out unlimited.
Custom reveals a box where you type a figure in kilobytes per second — a plain number, no units to pick. Enter 0 for no limit. Anything below 32 KB/s is rounded up to it, and Mirall tells you so.
A change takes hold within a moment, including on transfers already running. There's nothing to restart and nothing to reconnect.
A limit is a total, not a figure per transfer. Two downloads running under a 5 MB/s cap get roughly half each rather than 5 MB/s apiece, and serving several people at once splits one upload cap between them.
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You don't have to do anything — Mirall checks for new versions on its own and downloads them in the background. A staged update is applied the next time you quit and reopen Mirall, on your schedule.
When an update is waiting, a banner appears at the top of the window (you can dismiss it), and the pending version is also shown under App on your Profile page so you can always check what's coming.