The Insights widget

A panel for what the house has noticed — a window open with rain coming, lights on in an empty house, a freezer warming up — on a wall with no camera and no microphone.

The widget is on every plan, free included, and needs nothing connected. Two things depend on your plan rather than the widget: most of what it says today comes from Home Assistant, whose own widgets need Home; and leaving times, when they arrive, will need Home or above because each one is a paid routing lookup.

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What it is for

This widget exists for a household that wants no camera and no microphone on the wall.

The assistant's ears and eyes are the part people are wary of, and reasonably so. The part they actually want is the usefulness — that a window is open with rain coming, that the heating is on in an empty house, that a freezer door has been left ajar. None of that needs a sensor in the room. It is worked out from things the house already reports.

So this is not the assistant in a reduced mode. For a lot of households it is the whole of it, and it is meant to be worth placing on a wall that will never hear anybody speak.

The things it can say

Everything below is worked out from what your home already reports, and each one appears only while it is true. Most come from Home Assistant.

A window or door open with rain coming: Anything filed as a door, window or cover that is open while the forecast puts the chance of rain at half or better.
Something open with the house empty: The same openings, when presence says nobody is in. Named together on one line rather than one line each.
Lights on in an empty house: A count rather than a list — "four lights are on with the house empty" is the sentence somebody acts on.
Unlocked, late: A lock still open at night. Held to once per lock per day, so it does not become the wallpaper.
A battery about to go: A sensor down to its last few per cent, before it dies quietly and takes a smoke alarm or a door sensor with it.
A freezer warming up: A freezer temperature that has climbed — usually a door not quite shut, which is worth hearing about before the contents are.
Something drawing more than usual: A power reading well above its normal for the hour.

Each of these appears once and then stays quiet while the same thing is still true. A panel that repeats itself is one people stop reading, and that costs the one morning it mattered.

Silence is the normal state

Most of the day this widget has nothing to say, and that is the feature working rather than a fault.

It is worth knowing before you place one, because an empty panel looks like a broken panel for the first day or two. It is not. A widget that manufactures something to fill itself is a widget people stop reading, and the whole value here is that when a line does appear it is worth a glance.

You can choose which kind of nothing it shows: a quiet line saying there is nothing to report, or genuinely nothing at all. On a mirror, nothing at all is usually the calmer choice.

Title: An optional heading. Leave it empty on a mirror, where a bare line of text reads better than a labelled box.
How many at once: Up to six, three to begin with. Two or three reads as a glance; six reads as a list nobody finishes.
When there is nothing to say: A quiet line, or show nothing at all.

Who sees what

Anything about the house — a window, a lock, a freezer — appears on every screen that has the widget.

Anything about a particular person is treated differently, and this is the part worth understanding before you rely on it. A personal line only ever reaches screens that person has been given, and that decision is made on our servers rather than on the screen: a screen is never sent a line it is not allowed to show. There is no setting on a display that can reveal one.

The default is nothing. A household that has configured none of this gets a widget that talks about the house and never about the people in it, which is the right way round for a panel in a kitchen.

The leaving-time line, and why you do not have it yet

There is a second half to this widget which is built but not switched on, and it would be dishonest to describe it as though it were.

The intention is a line that says when to leave: your next appointment, where it is, how you travel, what the traffic is doing, and therefore "leave at 08:15". Everything up to the last step exists — the widget, the privacy rules, the schedule that works it out.

What is missing is the routing itself. Working out how long a journey takes means asking a company that knows about traffic, and every one of those questions is a paid one. Mirra does not yet have that arrangement in place, and until it does this part produces nothing at all rather than producing a guess — a wall that invents a leaving time is worse than a wall that stays quiet.

When it does arrive it will need the Home plan or above. That is not the usual sort of plan line, so it is worth being straight about why: unlike everything else here, a leaving time costs money every time it is worked out, and it is worked out again every few minutes for as long as the appointment is coming. The rest of this widget reads sensors you already own and will stay on every plan, free included.

No leaving times appear today, on any plan — not even paid ones. Everything else on this page works now, on every plan.

Every widget there isThe complete list of widgets Mirra ships with, grouped the way the scene editor groups them, with what each one shows and what it needs before it will show anything.
The assistant: how a conversation worksHow you summon Mirra, what happens between hearing you and answering you, which tools it can reach, where the transcript goes, and what a conversation costs against your monthly allowance.
GreetingsHow Mirra greets people — the greeting widget on the glass, the spoken greeting when a screen recognises somebody, and the rules, quiet hours and cooldown that decide what is said and when.
Home AssistantHow Mirra reaches Home Assistant through a screen on your own network, what it syncs, what it notices, and what each failure message means.
People and presenceHow to add a household member, enrol their face on a screen, and understand what Mirra stores about them and where recognition actually happens.
Your dataSet how long Mirra keeps assistant transcripts, presence and the activity log, take a copy of everything held about your household, and close the account for good.