On the weekend I came across the Side Mirror app for macOS via some blog post. And I bought it. It’s sort of pricey at US$ 25, and I don’t think I’ll ever be using it, but it’s one of those apps that’s interesting and I like the idea and who knows I might find use for it someday.
The idea behind the app is that if you have a second display that you are sharing to others, and you keep looking at it (either sideways or behind you) while also looking at the camera on your primary screen (or a live audience maybe), you can instead capture that second display as a window on your primary display and thus keep eyes on the primary display always. It’s just more professional.
The cool thing is Side Mirror passes on any clicks within the window to the actual display. So this means you can also use this with a dummy HDMI dongle if you ever need to share an entire screen and any click in Side Miror is as if it were in a real display. Share the dummy dongle in Zoom or Teams, then open that in Side Mirror and you can interact with it. Below, for instance, I have Firefox open in this dummy HDMI dongle and I can interact with it via Side Mirror.
Btw, getting the dock to appear on the second display is a bit tricky. I had to move the pointer to the space between the edge of the screen and where the dock begins (but not exactly where the dock begins), pause a second or two, and then move up and down and the dock appears. I guess it’s sort of like what’s mentioned in this post.
Two useful keyboard shortcuts to keep in mind. Cmd + Shift + Enter (can be
customized; it was originally Option + Shift + Enter) lets me exit Side Mirror. And Cmd + Shft + 0 starts Side Mirror (coz it stops when you move away, for some reason).