MagicMirror²: an open source Raspberry Pi smart mirror

MagicMirror² began in 2014 as a personal project by Michael Teeuw. The repository is now maintained under the MagicMirrorOrg organization on GitHub, with 24,153 stars, 4,581 forks and 6 open issues, and a push on 2026-10-24 (github.com/MagicMirrorOrg/MagicMirror, via gh api, read 2026-10-24). The most recent tagged release is v2.38.0, published 2026-10-01. The project was voted number one in Raspberry Pi magazine MagPi's 50th-issue Top 50 feature, and its own forum has run over 14,000 topics since launch.

It is a framework rather than a finished product. You provide the Raspberry Pi, a screen, and typically a two-way mirror and a case to hold it, then install and configure MagicMirror² yourself by editing a JavaScript config file. That makes it a good fit for someone who wants a Raspberry Pi project to build and is comfortable in a terminal, and a poor fit for someone who wants to plug something in and have a family calendar running five minutes later. DAKboard, covered under Alternatives below, is built for that second case instead.

Seven modules ship by default: Clock, Calendar, Weather, News Feed, Compliments, Hello World and Alert (docs.magicmirror.builders/modules/introduction.html, read 2026-09-28). The Weather module alone supports a dozen data providers, including OpenWeatherMap, Pirate Weather, Weather.gov, the UK Met Office, Weatherbit, Environment Canada, Open-Meteo, WeatherFlow, SMHI, WeatherAPI, Buienradar and Yr, each with its own required options and, for most of them, its own API key. Since version 2.35.0, a separate theme system lets you restyle the weather module's look without writing a new module from scratch (docs.magicmirror.builders/modules/weather.html, read 2026-09-28).

The real scale is in the third-party ecosystem. The project's own module gallery lists 1,496 community-built modules across 16 categories, from Calendar and Weather to Smart Home, Sports, Public Transport and Voice Control (modules.magicmirror.builders, read 2026-10-24). Popular examples include MMM-Remote-Control (603 stars, shuts down or reboots the mirror and manages modules from a phone) and mmpm, an unofficial package manager for installing and updating other modules. The gallery states plainly that these modules "are not tested for security and their use is at your own risk."

The only officially supported install is manual. With a compatible Node.js version and git already in place:

git clone https://github.com/MagicMirrorOrg/MagicMirror.git
cd MagicMirror
node --run install-mm
cp config/config.js.sample config/config.js
node --run start

(source: docs.magicmirror.builders/getting-started/installation.html, read 2026-10-24.) The docs warn that the install-mm step can take around 10 minutes on a Raspberry Pi 3 and closer to 25 minutes on a Pi 2, often with little terminal output while it runs.

The full version of Raspberry Pi OS is required, not the Lite build, because Electron, the app wrapper MagicMirror² uses to display itself, needs a desktop environment; Electron also only supports Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 4 and 5, leaving the Pi 0 and 1 unsupported (docs.magicmirror.builders/getting-started/requirements.html, read 2026-09-28). If a mirror-style Electron window isn't needed, a documented server-only mode runs headless and serves the display to any browser on the network, once the config's address is set to 0.0.0.0 and the ipWhitelist is widened to allow the connecting device.

Past the official route, the community maintains a Docker image, a Kubernetes Helm chart, an npm package and separate installer and update scripts; the docs state directly that none of these are maintained by the core team, and using them is at your own risk.

Free. MIT licensed, no account, no subscription, and no vendor anywhere in the loop, confirmed against the repository and its docs today. The real cost is hardware: a Raspberry Pi, a screen, and if you want the traditional look, two-way mirror glass and a case, none of which the project sells itself.

Configuration is entirely manual. There is no settings interface; every module is added and tuned by hand-editing config.js in JavaScript object syntax, and the install step itself can run for 10 to 25 minutes with almost no feedback on a Raspberry Pi.

Security is explicitly the installer's responsibility. The docs state that MagicMirror² "was originally designed to run on a Raspberry Pi and display on a connected screen" with "no consideration... given to other use cases, at least not from a security perspective," and warn against ever exposing an instance directly to the internet without a properly configured reverse proxy, authentication and HTTPS in front of it.

The built-in module set is thin by design: only Clock, Calendar, Weather, News Feed, Compliments, Hello World and Alert ship out of the box. Anything past that, including nearly every smart home, transit or sports integration, means pulling a module from the 1,496-strong third-party gallery, and the project itself flags that those modules are not tested for security.

There is no dedicated hardware. Unlike TRMNL or Skylight Calendar, nothing ships ready to mount; sourcing a Raspberry Pi, a screen and, usually, two-way mirror glass is left entirely to whoever installs it.