Frequently asked questions

Telepromptme is a small studio building focused, beautifully-made apps for iOS and macOS: teleprompters, a video narrator, a virtual lightboard and live translation tools that help you present, record and communicate brilliantly.

If you read to camera, start with Telepromptme or, for hands-free scrolling, Autoprompt. Presenting in two languages? Try DualScroll. Adding voice-over to footage? Narrate. Drawing explainers? Lightboard Pro. Translating audio or conversations? Earwig and ChatterFish.

Most apps are a one-time purchase. Telepromptme, Autoprompt and DualScroll also offer an optional annual Pro Plus tier. Each app has a free Lite or Trial so you can try before you buy.

Yes. Our apps are universal purchases: buy once and use the app on both iOS and macOS.

Privacy is a core principle. Scripts, recordings and translations stay on your device, speech recognition runs on-device, and syncing (where offered) uses your own iCloud account. See each app's privacy policy for details.

The teleprompter and narration apps work fully offline; an internet connection is only needed for optional iCloud sync. Translation features use your device's on-device capabilities.

Email [email protected], or write to the dedicated address listed on each app's page. We're a small team and we read everything.

Open your script and press the edit button at the top right: you'll then see a 'wand' icon at the bottom left of the screen which opens the AI Assistant. Open it with a script loaded and it offers to improve what you have; open it with nothing loaded and it will help you write one from scratch. On a long script it works section by section, and you always get to accept or reject a suggestion before it replaces anything. Note: the AI Assistant is only available on devices capable of Apple Intelligence with it enabled, and it is not available in the DualScroll app.

Plain text (.txt), rich text (.rtf) and PDF import on every device. On macOS, Word documents (.doc and .docx) import as well; on iPhone and iPad they do not, so use Word or Pages to save those as .txt or .rtf first. You can also drag files straight onto the script library: drop several text or rich text files at once and each is added as its own script, named after the file.

PDF files are funny things: they may look like text when you view them, but they can actually be images or other objects that make the text hard to extract. There are five filter types to pull the text out whatever the format. Ideally the Document type gets the text; if that doesn't capture everything, try one of the other options.

That is the free plan's limit: on Lite a PDF import keeps the first page only. Upgrading removes it and the whole document comes in. If the whole document imported but text is missing from some pages, that is a different problem, try one of the other PDF filter types instead.

Set a timer for any amount of time and your script scrolls from top to bottom in exactly that time. Remember: a long time with a short script scrolls slowly, and vice versa, so make sure your script is long enough. Select Timer mode at the bottom left of the teleprompter screen (tap the scroll-mode icon to change it), tap the clock to set the duration, then press play or record.

They are the three ways the script can move, and you pick one with the scroll-mode button at the bottom left of the teleprompter. Speed scrolls continuously at a pace you set with a slider, and is the one to use for most talking-to-camera work. Timer scrolls the whole script from top to bottom in an exact duration, which is what you want when the finished piece has to run to time. Manual Page does not scroll at all: it moves a page at a time when you press a key or a remote button, which suits news reading and anything where you do not know how long a section will take. Telepromptme has no voice-following mode; if you want the script to follow your speech, that is our Autoprompt app.

Yes, you can hide the top and bottom menu bars to give yourself much more room on a small screen. Change this in the app Settings.

On iOS, long-press the play button; on macOS, right-click the play button, then choose the loop option. The script loops back to the top and plays again when it reaches the end. The same works in record mode by performing the same action on the record button.

First make sure your script is in Speed mode, at the bottom left of the teleprompter view, tap the scroll-mode icon until Speed is selected. Then use the slider to control the scrolling speed. Scrolling starts when you press play or record.

In the main script list, tap the 'Q' symbol at the top right to create and manage queues. A queue can hold any number of scripts or folders, and you can create as many queues as you like. Add or remove items with the + and – buttons (adding a folder includes its scripts, and new scripts added to that folder later appear automatically). Reorder items by selecting a row and using the up/down arrows, then press play to start the queue, each script plays after the previous one finishes.

Yes. While the script auto-scrolls you can always scroll up or down to backtrack or skip ahead. For ultimate control, set scrolling to Manual Paging (great for news readers using a remote): select it from the scroll-mode icon at the bottom left, then use the page up / page down buttons to move through your script. You can set or remap those buttons in the Keyboard Mapping section of Settings.

While viewing your text in the teleprompter window, use the flip / mirror buttons (if you don't see them directly, open the options button). You can control whether these buttons appear, and set the default behaviour, in Settings. On iOS you can also long-press the text in the teleprompter window to get the flip options.

The text-size button in the dock has two modes, and they do different things. In font-size mode the slider is an absolute setting from 20 to 300: drag it and every word becomes that size. In magnification mode it is a multiplier from 0.25x to 4.00x that scales whatever size each word already is, so headings stay proportionally larger. One press of the icon switches modes, and the icon itself tells you which one you are in. To type an exact value instead of dragging, right-click the icon (touch and hold on iPhone and iPad) and choose 'Enter font size...' or 'Enter font magnification...'. Both are saved with the script, so the size you set is still there next time you open it.

You were in font-size mode rather than magnification. Font size is an absolute setting, so it sets every word in the script to the one size and flattens any variation you had built in. Magnification multiplies whatever size each word already is, so mixed sizes are kept in proportion. If you have deliberately mixed sizes, use magnification. Note that this is a change to the script itself and is saved, so undo it or reset the size before saving if it was not what you meant.

Enter edit mode, then open the formatting controls to change colours, fonts and other formatting.

Two settings handle this and both are on by default. 'Fix colors on paste' normalises pasted colours so light text does not disappear against the prompter background, and 'Paragraph Formatting' re-applies your own alignment, line spacing and indents instead of keeping the source document's. If a paste still looks wrong, check both are switched on in Settings.

No. Square brackets, hashes and asterisks are ordinary characters and appear on screen exactly as you typed them. To make a stage direction stand out, change its colour or size instead. If you change its size, use magnification rather than font size when you scale the script afterwards, or the difference is flattened away.

Choose your camera and microphone in Settings first, or the app will stop and tell you so. Open a script, set the mode selector in the dock to Record (video with sound) or Record Audio (sound only), then press the big round button. The first time you will be asked to allow access to the camera and microphone. The button turns red while recording; press it again to stop. The take is saved automatically and appears on the Recordings tab, named after the script.

Turn on 'Perform Countdown' in Settings and set 'Countdown seconds' to how long you want. A large numeral then fills the screen before scrolling begins, and the big round button becomes a cancel button while it runs, so you can stop without recording anything.

Open your device's System Settings, go to Camera and toggle the app on, then do the same for Microphone. You may need to restart the app. Also make sure the correct camera and microphone are selected in the app's Settings.

Yes. Camera background replaces what is behind you with a blur, a colour, an image or a video, and there are twelve filters from B & W and Noir through to Vivid, Warm and Cool. Both apply live, so what you see is what is recorded. Live background replacement is demanding, though: if your Mac cannot keep up the app will tell you frames were dropped. In that case record without the background and apply it afterwards in Studio, which gives a better result anyway.

Yes. Either set 'Continue Recording' in the app Settings to keep recording for a set number of seconds after scrolling ends, or for small pauses simply add a few blank lines to the bottom of your script.

This applies to Native captions, which viewers switch on themselves: on iOS turn them on in Settings → Accessibility → Subtitles & Captioning and enable Closed Captions + SDH. If you want captions that are always visible, choose the Custom caption type instead, those are drawn into the video itself.

In the recordings view, right-click (macOS) or long-press (iOS) the recording you want to remove, then choose Delete.

Recording stops as soon as the end of the script is reached. To keep recording afterwards, either set 'Continue Recording (secs)' in Settings, or add extra blank lines to the bottom of the script in the editor.

Captions are created automatically from your script as you record. To edit them, open the captions editor: right-click (macOS) or long-press (iOS) a recording and choose Captions, or press the Captions button while editing a video. There you can change the text, timing, style and animations of every caption, then save or create the captioned video.

Native captions are embedded as a subtitle track that viewers can turn on or off in their video player, and they always use the player's standard look. Custom captions are drawn into the video itself using your chosen font, colours, position and animations, so they look the same everywhere. In the video editor you can also choose Off to save the video without any captions.

Yes. In the captions editor choose Generate from Audio and the app transcribes the recording's speech with word-level timing. This is handy when the caption timings are missing or the spoken words drifted from the script.

Yes. The captions editor has a Sentence/Word switch. Word mode shows one word at a time, timed to the speech, while Sentence mode shows whole sentences. Switching converts your existing captions in place, so you can try both.

Word Pop makes each word of a sentence caption bounce slightly larger at the moment it is spoken. Turn it on in the captions editor when captions are set to Sentence, and optionally pick a pop colour, by default the popping word keeps the caption's text colour. Word Pop applies to Custom (burned-in) captions.

Select a caption in the captions editor and choose an Appear effect and a Disappear effect: Fade, Pop, Drop or slides. The preview plays the effect immediately so you can see how it looks. Effects apply to Custom (burned-in) captions; Native captions are drawn by the viewer's player and can't animate.

In the captions editor you can set the font, size, text colour, background and outline, and simply drag a caption in the preview to position it, with handles to resize and rotate. Changes can be made per caption or applied to all captions at once.

Stickers are timed image overlays. In the captions editor press the sticker button to add an image from your sticker library, then drag, resize and rotate it in the preview and set when it appears and disappears on the timeline, including appear and disappear effects. Stickers are always drawn into the saved video, whichever caption type you use.

Studio is the full editor, for anything beyond a trim. The timeline gives you a track each for video, captions, stickers, the replaced background, filters and an overlay clip, so each can be edited independently and can change part-way through a take. The inspector on the right holds speed, volume automation, stabilisation and colour. You can also join several takes on one timeline. For a straight trim, the trim tool on the recording itself is quicker.

Open the recording in Studio and use the crop tool. It has presets for Free, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5, which cut straight to the shapes each platform wants, or you can drag the handles on the preview yourself. Ken Burns sets a slow move between a start and an end frame if you want the shot to drift rather than sit still.

Press export and pick a preset. 'Current' keeps the framing you shot, and there are portrait and square presets sized for TikTok, Instagram Reels and LinkedIn, each showing the aspect ratio, the resolution and the file size you will get. 'All export options' opens the full set, where you can set an exact resolution, choose Landscape or Portrait, pick a codec or aim at a target file size.

When you import or create a script and press save, you're asked for a script name and a folder name. Script names must be unique across the app. Entering a folder name that doesn't exist creates it automatically, and your script is saved in that folder.

From the script list, long-press (iOS) or right-click (macOS) the script tile and choose 'Rename'.

From the script list, long-press (iOS) or right-click (macOS) the script tile and choose 'Delete Script'.

From the script list, long-press (iOS) or right-click (macOS) the script tile and choose 'Move to folder'.

Turn on 'Remote / Watch Enabled' in Settings on both devices, the one showing the script and the one acting as the remote, and put them on the same Wi-Fi network. A Remote tab then appears alongside Scripts and Recordings, and becomes active once the other device is showing a script. Both the iOS and macOS versions can act as either end, so you can drive a Mac prompter from an iPhone or the other way round. The same switch enables the Apple Watch app.

Yes. Turn on 'Remote / Watch Enabled' in Settings, the same switch that enables the software remote. The watch app gives you play and pause, taps at the edges to jump to the top or bottom of the script, and the Digital Crown sets the scroll speed, which is a good way to ride the pace during a talk without going near the machine.

Yes, in two ways: the software remote built into the app, or an external hardware remote, keyboard or game controller.

The app works with any external controller that acts like a keyboard: most pointing devices, game controllers and, of course, keyboards. Set your device to keyboard mode, then map its buttons in Settings under 'Hardware Remote and Keyboard Mapping', either by selecting an action and pressing the button, or by choosing which button to map.

Remote buttons have to be mapped to teleprompter actions before they do anything, and some remotes need an extra setting switched on first. Work through this in order, and stop as soon as the remote responds.

1. Open the app's settings with the gear icon, then choose the Advanced tab.
2. Search for "Map", or scroll down to the Hardware Remote and Keyboard Mapping section.
3. Turn on "Use media buttons on hardware remote".
4. Tap the action you want the remote button to trigger, for example Play.
5. A new view opens. Press the button on your remote. If it is being seen, that button lights up on screen, which tells you the mapping worked.
6. Leave that screen, open a script in the teleprompter and press the same button to check it plays. Repeat for each button you want to map.
7. If the button did not light up, go back and also turn on "Use scroll and click buttons on hardware remote", which is usually what a ring or finger remote needs, then try the mapping again.
8. If it still does not respond, open the iOS Settings app, go to Accessibility, then Touch, and turn on AssistiveTouch. Then try the mapping again from the first step.

Place your iOS device on the rig and flip the text using the flip buttons (or the options buttons). You can control scrolling directly on the device, or use the same app on another device as a remote, see the Remote Control FAQ for more.

This works on the macOS version. Press the background-change button repeatedly until you reach the transparency you want, then move the script window on top of your video-conferencing app.

This works on the macOS version. You can either mirror the whole screen (see the screen-mirror question) or create a duplicate script window and move it to your secondary monitor or rig. To duplicate, press the duplicate-window button and choose which display to place it on. The duplicate has its own controls to flip the text, make the background transparent or go full screen, and you can reposition it by dragging or via the controls window.

Mirroring the whole screen is available on the macOS version: handy when you want more than just the teleprompter view on another monitor or rig (for example, video-conferencing software with the script scrolling on top). On the app's menu bar choose ScreenMirror → Start, then select the source screen and destination monitor, flipping the mirrored output from the same menu if needed. It records the source screen and plays it back to the destination in real time, so you'll be asked to grant screen-recording permission, the recording never leaves your computer.

Lite is free and is a real working prompter, not a countdown to a purchase: one script, one recording, and thirty seconds per scrolling session. Pro is a one-off purchase that removes those limits, giving unlimited scripts, unlimited recordings and unlimited session length. Pro Plus is a yearly subscription that adds the production features and keeps them permanently. Current prices are shown on the upgrade screen in your own currency.

Because the two plans are aimed at different things and this genuinely surprises people. Remote control, the Apple Watch app, camera backgrounds and filters, captions and Studio editing are all usable on the free plan, but they are not included in Pro: Pro buys you an unlimited prompter and recorder. Pro Plus is the plan that keeps the production features. Duplicate prompter windows and Screen Mirror on the Mac are Pro Plus only.

Use Restore Purchases on the upgrade screen. It brings back anything already bought with the same Apple Account, and there is nothing to type in.

We're happy to answer questions or take new feature requests at [email protected].