The first-run checklist

The Getting set up card on your Screens page lists five things worth doing and one optional extra, ticks each one off by itself, and can be put away for good.

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What it is

A new household lands on Screens with a card at the top headed Getting set up, and a count underneath reading something like "0 of 5 done". Beneath that are six lines, each a link to the page that finishes it.

Nothing on the card is compulsory and nothing is a wizard — you can ignore it entirely and set Mirra up in any order you like. It exists because a brand-new household is a set of empty pages, and "which of these matters first" is a fair question to have answered rather than guessed at.

The card checks itself every fifteen seconds. Finish a step in another tab and the tick appears here without a reload.

The card as it appears at the top of Screens, half the width of the page.

The six steps

Five count towards the total. The sixth is marked optional beside its title and is left out of the count, so a household that will never own a smart bulb can still reach five of five.

Pair your first screen: Open the screen app on a display and enter the code it shows. The link keeps you on Screens, where the Pair a screen button is — this is the one step whose page you are already standing on.Default: required
Connect a calendar: Paste an iCal URL so the agenda and briefings know your day. Takes you to the Calendar integration page, where you can add an iCal feed or a CalDAV collection. Google and Outlook sign-in appears on the same page only when this installation has been given their credentials; without them the buttons say they are not available yet and point you at an iCal link instead.Default: required
Add some photos: Upload an album to use as a photo frame or a backdrop. Takes you to the Photos widget's setup page. Creating an album is not enough on its own — the step wants at least one photograph in one of them.Default: required
Choose a voice and face: Name your mirror, pick how it sounds and how it appears. Takes you to the assistant settings page, where the name, personality, wake word, voice and face all live.Default: required
Add household members: Enrol faces so the mirror greets people by name. Takes you to Household. Adding the person with Add person is what ticks the step; Enrol face is a separate button on the same page, one per screen, and it is greyed out unless that screen is online.Default: required
Connect Home Assistant: Optional — control the house by voice and get useful warnings. Takes you straight to the Home Assistant integration page, where you give it a URL and a long-lived access token.Default: optional

How each step decides it is done

Every step reads one fact about your household. Knowing which fact removes the small mystery of a step that will not tick when you are sure you have done it.

Pair your first screen — you have at least one screen that has finished pairing.
Connect a calendar — you have at least one calendar connection, of any kind: iCal, CalDAV, Google, Outlook or an Outlook meeting room.
Add some photos — you have at least one photograph in at least one album. An empty album leaves this unticked.
Choose a voice and face — you have saved anything at all on the assistant settings page. The page saves as you go, so choosing a voice or typing a name is enough; you do not have to change all of it.
Add household members — you have added at least one person on Household.
Connect Home Assistant — you have a Home Assistant connection saved.

Nothing here is a one-way door. Remove your last calendar and the calendar step goes back to unticked, and the card comes back if you had not put it away.

Putting it away, and getting it back

The card is closable whether or not you have finished it. A checklist somebody has decided to ignore is a nag, so there is no state in which the ✕ is unavailable.

Press the ✕
Top right of the card, titled Close. The card disappears immediately rather than waiting for a round trip.
Find the line where it was
If steps remain, a small underlined line takes its place in the same spot, reading "Finish setting up" and how many are left. That is the way back, so dismissing it is not a door that locks behind you.
Press that line to bring the card back
It reopens with the same ticks it had. You can close it again as often as you like.

Dismissal belongs to the household, not to your browser

When you close the card, that decision is saved against your household rather than in the browser you closed it in. Two consequences follow, and both are intentional.

Your partner signing in on their own laptop will not see the card either — a household that has decided it does not want a checklist has decided that for the house, not for one machine. And because the card re-reads its state every fifteen seconds, a dismissal held only in the page would be undone by the very next poll, which would read as a close button that does not work.

When the last step is ticked

Finish the fifth required step while the card is open and it stays open, showing a full set of ticks — you get to see the thing you just completed rather than having the card vanish out from under you.

After that it does not come back. Load Screens again and the card is gone, and there is no "finish setting up" line either, because there is nothing left to finish. If you later undo something — remove your only calendar, say — the card reappears, unless you had already closed it for good.

Getting your first screen on the wallThe whole path from a new account to a working display: create a household, show the pairing code, enter it in the portal, and edit what appears.
What Mirra isMirra turns any screen that can run a web browser into a wall display and, when you speak to it, into an assistant with a face — managed from a portal in your browser.
Connecting calendarsEvery calendar source Mirra can read — an iCal link, a CalDAV account, Google, Microsoft 365 — with the steps for each, what actually syncs, and what quietly breaks it.
The photo frameHow to build an album, point a screen's photo frame at it, control how photos are cropped and dimmed, and turn one into a full-bleed background for the rest of a scene.
Naming your assistant, and choosing its voice and faceEverything on the Voice & appearance page: what your mirror is called, the wake word, the seven voices it can speak in, the four personalities, and the ten faces it can wear.
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.
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.