How to use Telepromptme: a guide for Mac, iPhone & iPad

01Quick start: your first take in five steps

Telepromptme is a teleprompter you control. You choose how the words move, so there is nothing to train and nothing to calibrate. Here is the shortest path from a blank library to a finished recording.

Telepromptme: 1 - Intro & Overview — A ten-minute tour of the whole app, if you would rather watch than read. How to use a teleprompter: a beginner's guide

Open Telepromptme. On the Scripts tab click Create (top right), type or paste your script, then click Save and give it a name.
The teleprompter opens. Pick how it should scroll with the mode button in the dock: Speed for a steady pace, Timer to finish in a set time, or Manual Page to turn pages yourself.
Set the text size so you can read it from where you will be standing, using the text-size control in the dock.
Choose Play, Record or Record Audio in the dock, depending on whether you also want a recording.
Press the big round button, or Space, and start reading. Press it again to stop. Recordings appear on the Recordings tab.

The Telepromptme scripts library showing scripts as tiles with a folder sidebar — The **Scripts** tab. Your library, with folders down the side and the search, sort and view controls above.

02Finding your way around the library

The app has two or three tabs along the bottom: Scripts, Recordings, and Remote when you have turned remote control on. Scripts is where you start.

Telepromptme: 5 - Script and Recordings Manager — The script and recordings manager in full, including search and organising. How to keep your scripts and recordings organised

Write it on your Mac. Read it on your iPhone.

Above the list

Search scripts: Searches your whole library, not just the folder you are looking at.
Filter by folder: All Scripts, Unfiled, Recent, or one of your folders. On a wide window this is a sidebar instead.
Sort scripts: By Name, Modified, Created or Folder, Ascending or Descending. New libraries sort by Modified, newest first.
Grid / List / Table: Three ways to see the same scripts. Table is the one to use when you have a lot of them, because you can sort by clicking a column heading.
Script queue: Opens the queue, where you set up several scripts to run in order.

The scripts library in List view, with scripts as rows grouped under folder headings — **List** keeps the folder grouping but fits far more on screen than **Grid**.

The scripts library in Table view, a flat sortable table with name, folder and date columns — **Table** drops the grouping for one flat list you can sort by clicking a column heading.

The sort menu open, showing Sort by with Name, Modified, Created and Folder, and Direction with Ascending and Descending — Sorting is two choices: what to sort by, and which direction.

Recent collects anything you have opened, changed or created in the last thirty days, which is usually the fastest way back to what you were working on.

Folders, renaming and tidying up

Right-click a script (touch and hold on iPhone and iPad) for everything you can do to it: Move to Folder..., Duplicate, Rename, Edit Script, Export and Delete Script. You can also drag a script straight onto a folder to file it.

The right-click menu on a script tile showing Move to Folder, Duplicate, Rename, Edit Script, Export and Delete Script — The script menu. Select several scripts first and the same actions apply to all of them.

The Move To Folder dialog with a folder name field and a list of existing folders — **Move to Folder...** takes a new folder name, or pick one of your existing folders underneath.

To rename without opening the menu, click the name on the tile and type over it. Return saves, Escape cancels.
Select several scripts and the menu acts on all of them at once, with the count shown in the item, such as Delete (N).
Folders have their own menu on the sidebar: Rename Folder and Delete Folder and Scripts…

The script queue

Telepromptme: 7 - Script Queues — Building a queue and running several scripts back to back. How to record several videos in one sitting

Singing a set? Queue your scripts.

A queue is a running order. Add scripts or whole folders, make the queue active, and the prompter moves through them in sequence instead of stopping at the end of each one. It suits a show with several segments, or a day of takes you want to work through without going back to the library each time.

The Script Queue window with the queue list, available scripts to add, and the running order — A queue. Pick it on the left, add scripts or whole folders from the middle, and the running order builds up on the right.

03Writing and editing a script

There is no separate editor window. You edit in the teleprompter itself, which means what you see while writing is exactly what you will see while reading.

Telepromptme: 3 - Editing Scripts — Writing and editing in the built-in editor, including the AI assistant. How to write a script that reads well on camera

To write a new script

Click Create on the Scripts tab. The teleprompter opens ready for typing.
Type or paste your text. Use the font bar to set the typeface, bold, italic and colour.
Click Save. Give the script a name, and optionally a folder, then confirm.

To change a script later, open it and click Edit. While editing, Save keeps your changes and Cancel throws them away and puts the script back exactly as it was.

A script open in edit mode with the floating font bar showing the typeface, bold, italic and colour controls — Editing. The floating bar sets the typeface, bold, italic and colour for whatever you have selected. A size slider joins it when the script is in magnification mode.

The Script Name dialog with fields for the script name and a folder, and a list of existing folders — Naming a script. You can type a new folder name or pick an existing one from the list underneath.

Names cannot start with a dot or contain a slash or a colon. Anything else is fine, and a name that already exists is quietly given a number rather than overwriting your work.

The AI Assistant

Let Apple Intelligence punch up your script.

On recent versions of macOS and iOS with Apple Intelligence switched on, AI Assistant can help draft or tighten a script. Open it with a script loaded and it offers to improve what you have; open it with nothing loaded and it will help you start from scratch. It works section by section on a long script, and you always get to accept or reject the result.

The AI Assistant window with a request to improve the script and the rewritten script returned in a card — **AI Assistant**. Opening it with a script loaded asks it to improve what you have; the result comes back in a card you can **Copy** or send straight to the prompter with **Teleprompt**.

Pasting from elsewhere

Text pasted from a word processor often brings unwanted colours and spacing. Two settings deal with that, and both are on to begin with: Fix colors on paste normalises the colours so light text does not vanish against the prompter background, and Paragraph Formatting re-applies your own alignment, line spacing and indents.

04Importing a script you already have

If the script already exists as a file, bring it in rather than retyping it. Click Import on the Scripts tab, or drag the file straight onto the library.

Telepromptme: 2 - Importing Scripts — Importing from PDF, RTF and plain text, and tidying up what arrives. How to import a PDF or Word script into a teleprompter

Format	Mac	iPhone & iPad
Plain text	Yes	Yes
Rich text (RTF)	Yes	Yes
PDF	Yes	Yes
Word (.doc and .docx)	Yes	No

Drag several plain text or rich text files in at once and they are all added straight to the library, each named after its file. A single file, or any PDF, goes through the import screen first and then opens ready to save.

Importing a PDF

Turn any PDF into a teleprompter script.

PDFs are the awkward one, because some carry real text and some are just pictures of text. The import screen asks you to pick the option that best matches your file.

Document: For a PDF made from a word processor. Takes the text layer directly, which is the fastest and most accurate route when it works.
Actor: For a classic black typewritten script.
High: Reads black text only.
Medium: Reads text of any colour.
Low: Reads everything it can find. Use this when the others miss lines.

The Import Script screen listing Actor, Document, High, Medium and Low as ways to read a PDF — The PDF chooser. Start with **Document**; the others read the page as an image at decreasing strictness.

There is no paste-to-import command. To bring in text from the clipboard, create a script and paste into it.

05The teleprompter screen

This is where you actually present. The script fills the screen, a floating dock sits along the bottom, and everything else gets out of the way once you start.

The Telepromptme teleprompter screen with a script filling the view and the floating dock along the bottom — The prompter. The dock carries the mode selector, the scroll controls, the play button, a status chip and the text-size controls.

The dock, left to right

Play / Record / Record Audio: What pressing the big button will do: prompt only, prompt while recording video, or prompt while recording audio.
Scroll mode: The icon shows the current mode: a speedometer for Speed, a clock for Timer, an arrow for Manual Page. Click it to change mode. In Speed a slider sits next to it; in Manual Page two chevrons sit there instead.
The big round button: Start and pause. It shows a progress ring as the script scrolls, and turns into a red stop button while recording.
Status: Ready, Playing, Paused, Recording and so on, so you can tell at a glance what the app thinks is happening.
Text size: The font mode button and its slider. See the section on text size below, because this button does two quite different things.
More teleprompter actions: The ellipsis at the end: mirroring, margins, captions, stickers, and on a Mac the duplicate prompter and screen mirror.

The teleprompter more-menu listing Loop, mirroring, margins, captions, stickers and the Mac-only outputs — The more-menu. Anything here except the media items can be promoted onto the dock in settings.

The View Options sheet with the four margin fields, hide navigation, collapse direction and the flip controls — **Teleprompter options** holds the per-script margins and the flip controls. These belong to this script alone.

The reading position is marked for you. Settings gives you a Pointer in the margin (a Triangle or a Rectangle), and a Pointer Box that is either a Box outline across the reading line, a Letterbox that dims everything above and below it, or None.

The teleprompter with Adjust margins turned on, showing drag handles at the edges and corners of the text area — **Adjust margins** puts handles on the edges and corners. Drag an edge for one margin, a corner for two.

The teleprompter with the text mirrored left to right, and the dock and navigation pill mirrored with it — **Mirror horizontally**, for a beam-splitter rig. The dock and nav pill mirror too, because **Mirror Controls** is on; turn that off in settings to keep them the right way round.

06The three ways to scroll

Telepromptme does not listen to you. You decide how the script moves, and there are exactly three choices. Click the mode icon in the dock to switch between them. The choice is remembered per script, so a two-minute piece to camera and a long talk can each keep their own setting.

The scroll mode selector open on the teleprompter, listing Speed, Timer and Manual Page — Click the mode icon in the dock to pick **Speed**, **Timer** or **Manual Page**.

Speed: a steady pace you control

The script scrolls at a constant rate and you set the rate with the slider beside the mode icon. The scale runs from 1 to 100; it is a dial rather than a real-world measurement, so find the number that suits you and stay with it. New scripts start at 20.

The slider takes effect immediately, even mid-take, so you can nudge the pace while you read.
For an exact number, right-click the mode icon (long-press on iPhone and iPad) and choose Enter speed…. The box accepts anything between 1 and 100, then click Set Speed.
Keyboard: the default keys are - to slow down and ] to speed up, one step per press.

The context menu on the mode icon showing the current speed and an Enter speed item — Right-click the mode icon for the exact value. The header shows where you are now.

The Enter Speed dialog with a hint reading between 1 and 100 and a Set Speed button — **Enter Speed** takes anything from 1 to 100.

Timer: finish in a set time

Got exactly 60 seconds? Make the script fit.

Tell the app how long you have and it works out the pace for you, scrolling so the script finishes exactly as the clock runs out. There is no speed slider in this mode, because the length of the script and the time you set decide the pace between them.

Switch the mode to Timer. The clock in the top-right appears automatically, whether or not you normally show it.
With playback paused, click the clock. A small pencil shows when it is editable.
Set Hrs, Min and Sec on the Set Timer picker. There is no confirm button: the duration is saved as you change it.
Press play. The clock now counts down rather than up.

The Set Timer picker with columns for hours, minutes and seconds — **Set Timer**, reached by clicking the clock while paused.

The teleprompter running in Timer mode, the clock counting down and the dock collapsed to a pause button and Playing status — **Timer** running. The clock counts down, the navigation hides, and the dock collapses to just a pause button once you stop touching it.

If the time you ask for is so long that the text would barely creep, the app stops and tells you so, with Scrolling too slow to see it move. Change speed / duration. Shorten the time, or use Speed instead.

Manual Page: nothing moves until you say so

In Manual Page the script does not scroll at all on its own. You move it a page at a time, which suits an unpredictable delivery: a talk with questions from the floor, a demo where you do not know how long a step will take, or notes you only dip into.

Two chevrons appear in the dock where the speed slider normally sits. They move the script up and down.
A page is a little over half a screen, so the line you were reading stays in view.
Keyboard: Up and Down by default. A hardware remote or a clicker mapped to those actions works too, which is what makes this mode practical from a lectern.
A soft grey band marks the middle of the view so you can see where the next page will land.

The teleprompter in Manual Page mode, with a grey band across the middle of the view and two chevrons in the dock — **Manual Page**. The grey band marks the page area, and two chevrons replace the speed slider.

07Two ways to change the text size, and why it matters

The text-size button in the dock has two modes, and they do genuinely different things to your script. Picking the wrong one is the quickest way to lose formatting you meant to keep, so it is worth a minute to understand the difference.

The dock's font mode button and its slider on the teleprompter screen — One click on the icon switches between the two modes. The icon tells you which one you are in.

	Font size	Magnification
Icon in the dock	A letter with size marks	A letter with a magnifying glass
What it does	Sets every word in the script to one exact size	Multiplies whatever size each word already is
Mixed sizes in your script	Flattened to a single size	Kept in proportion
The slider reads	A number, 20 to 300	A multiplier, 0.25× to 4.00×
Where the slider sits	At the script's current size	Always back at 1.00×

The dock's text-size control in both modes: a letter-size icon above, a magnifying-glass icon below — The same control in both modes. Top: font size, where the slider sits at the script's actual size. Bottom: magnification, where it always returns to 1.00×.

Font size: one size for everything

In this mode the slider is an absolute setting. Drag it to 90 and every word in the script becomes 90 point, whatever it was before. That is exactly what you want for a plain script you just need to read comfortably from where you are standing.

The catch is in the word every. If you had made your headings larger than the body, or dropped a stage direction down small, this mode flattens all of it to the one size, and that is a change to the script itself.

Magnification: bigger, but in proportion

In this mode the slider is a multiplier, not a size. At 1.25× everything grows by a quarter: your large headings stay proportionally larger, your small notes stay proportionally smaller. Nothing is flattened.

The slider always starts at 1.00× and springs back to 1.00× as soon as you let go, because it has just been applied. That is not a bug, and it does mean the effect stacks: drag to 1.25× three times and the text ends up roughly twice its original size.

Typing an exact value

Right-click the text-size icon, or touch and hold it on iPhone and iPad. The menu shows the current value and offers Enter font size… or Enter font magnification… depending on the mode you are in. Sizes run from 20 to 300, magnification from 0.25 to 4.00.

The context menu on the text-size icon, showing the current value and an Enter font magnification item — The same menu on the text-size icon. Note the header says *Font size* whichever mode you are in; the value tells you which it is, a plain number or a multiplier.

The Enter Font Magnification dialog with a hint reading between 0.25 and 4.00 — In magnification mode the box asks for a multiplier, from 0.25 to 4.00.

Both are changes to the script, and both are saved. Neither is a temporary zoom that wears off when you close the prompter, so if you enlarge a script to read it across a studio it will still be that size next time you open it.

08Keyboard, clickers and remotes

Reaching for a trackpad mid-take is the thing most likely to spoil a recording, so almost everything on the prompter can be driven from a key or a button.

The keys as they come

Space: Start and pause
Up: Page Up
Down: Page Down
-: Decrease Speed, one step
]: Increase Speed, one step
Q: Skip Top, jump to the start
A: Skip Bottom, jump to the end

Keyboard control is ignored while you are editing a script, so you cannot start a take by accident while typing.

You can change any of these. Settings has a Hardware Remote and Keyboard Mapping section: pick the action you want, then press the key you want it on. One key does one job, so assigning a key takes it away from whatever had it before.

The keyboard mapping screen with teleprompter actions and their assigned keys — Every action and the key it is on. Click one, then press a key to reassign it.

Clickers and presentation remotes

Most presentation clickers simply send ordinary keys such as the arrows, Page Up and Page Down, or the space bar. Those work straight away with no setup at all: map the action you want onto the key your clicker sends.

Two kinds of remote need a switch turning on first, both in the same settings section.

Use media buttons on hardware remote: For remotes whose buttons are Play/Pause, Next and Previous. macOS only hands those buttons to whichever app is playing media, so while the prompter is open Telepromptme takes that role and your remote will not control music for that time.
Use scroll buttons on hardware remote: For ring-style remotes that behave like a mouse. On a Mac the pointer has to be over the prompter window for these to be heard.

09Recording while you prompt

Telepromptme can record you reading, so the prompter and the camera are the same app and you never have to sync anything up afterwards. Pick Record for video with sound, or Record Audio for sound alone.

Telepromptme: 4 - Recording — Recording while prompting: camera, resolution and reviewing a take. How to record a video while reading from a teleprompter

Record yourself while you read. One app.

Shooting for TikTok on a Mac? Check your crop first.

Move yourself anywhere in the frame.

Choose a camera and microphone in settings first. Without them the app will stop and tell you so.
Open a script and set the mode selector in the dock to Record or Record Audio.
Press the big round button. If you have a countdown switched on, it runs first and the button becomes a cancel button.
Read. Press the button again to stop; it turns red while recording.
The take is saved automatically and appears on the Recordings tab, named after the script.

The teleprompter in Record mode, the script filling the screen with a self view inset in the corner and the dock switched to Record — Record mode. The self view appears so you can check framing, and the big button becomes a record button. The mode selector on the left decides what it does.

A large countdown numeral filling the teleprompter screen, with the dock showing a cancel button and the status Starting — With **Perform Countdown** on, a numeral fills the screen before scrolling starts. The big button becomes a cancel button while it runs.

How you appear

Default View: What the camera does on a new script: No Camera, Inset Self View in a corner, Background Self View filling the screen behind the words, or Audio Only.
Self view mirrored: Shows you the mirror image you are used to seeing. It affects only what you see, not what is recorded.
Camera background: Replace what is behind you: Blur, a Colour, an Image or a Video.
Filters: A look applied to the picture, from B & W and Noir through to Vivid, Warm and Cool.
Video Quality: 480p through to 8k, depending on what your camera can do.

The Camera background picker showing None, Blur, Colour, Image and two Video tiles over the self view — **Camera background**. The two **Video** tiles are the same thing with and without sound.

The filter picker showing twelve looks from None and B and W through to Comic — Twelve looks, applied live to the picture. **None** turns it off again.

Telepromptme: 6 - Captions and Background Removal — Captions and background replacement in detail, including when to apply them afterwards. How to burn captions into a video, and drop the background

Your script becomes your captions. Automatically.

Word pop. Word highlight. Your captions, your style.

No green screen. No problem.

The Captions sheet with None, Native and Custom, a live preview and font, size, colour and background controls — **Custom** captions are drawn onto the picture and can be styled and dragged into place. **Native** writes a track viewers can switch off instead.

The Stickers sheet with a preview of the frame and an Add sticker button — Stickers sit on top of the picture and are saved with the recording.

Sound is worth a moment of thought. Audio Quality runs from Good up to Lossless, Audio Channels offers Mono or Stereo, and Noise Reduction has Off, Light and Strong. Light quietens background hiss while keeping a natural tone; Strong is the most aggressive and records in mono.

Continue recording (secs) keeps the camera running for a few seconds after the script ends, which saves you losing the last word to an abrupt cut.

10What you can do with a take

The Recordings tab works like the scripts library: search, folders, sorting and the same three view styles. Open a recording to play it, and a dock of editing tools appears underneath.

Telepromptme: 9 - Video Studio Editor — The Studio editing tools end to end: trimming, cutting, captions and filters. How to edit a talking-head video without a separate editor

There's a whole video editor inside.

The Recordings tab in Table view, listing takes with their folder, date, length and size — The **Recordings** tab. Takes are named after the script they came from, with the folder, date, length and size beside them.

The editing tools

Trim: Cut the dead air off the start and end. The quickest and most common fix.
Captions: Generate subtitles from the audio, or reuse the script text you were reading, which is usually more accurate.
Remove background: Replace what is behind you after the event rather than during it.
Filters: Apply a look to the finished video.
Stabilize: Smooth out a handheld or knocked camera.
Add Clips: Join other takes on to this one.
Studio: The full editor: several clips on a timeline, music, speed, colour and volume adjustments.

Telepromptme: 10 - Exporting Videos — Exporting a finished take, and the quality settings worth choosing deliberately. How to use a teleprompter app on your Mac

One recording. Every platform.

The right-click menu on a recording listing Get Info, Move to Folder, Edit Recording, Stitch, Export and Delete Recording — The recording menu. **Stitch** joins several takes into one, and **Get Info** shows the codec and channels.

A recording open in the player with a replaced background, stickers and captions, and the editing tool dock below — A take open for review. The dock underneath holds the editing tools; this one has a replaced background, stickers and burned-in captions.

The Studio editor: a preview above a multi-track timeline with video, captions, stickers, background, filters and overlay tracks, and a clip inspector on the right — **Studio**, for anything more than a trim. Each row is a track you can edit independently: captions, stickers, the replaced background, filters and an overlay clip. The inspector on the right holds speed, volume automation, stabilisation and colour.

The Studio crop tool with Free, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5 presets, Ken Burns start and end, and crop handles on the preview — Cropping and reframing. The presets cut straight to the shapes each platform wants, and **Ken Burns** sets a slow move between a start and end frame.

A background segment selected in Studio, with quality, edge and smoothness controls in the inspector — The background is a track of its own, so it can change during the take. **Quality**, **Edge** and **Smoothness** trade tidiness of the cut-out against how hard your Mac has to work.

A caption selected in Studio, showing the captions track controls and the caption text with its appear and disappear times — Captions are editable one at a time: fix the wording, and set when it appears and disappears. **Sentences** or **Words** decides how the text is broken up.

When you are happy, export. The sheet offers ready-made presets for the places people usually post: Current keeps what you shot, and there are portrait and square presets sized for TikTok, Instagram Reels and LinkedIn, each showing the aspect, the resolution and the file size you will get.

The Export Video sheet listing Current plus TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram Reels presets with their aspect ratios and file sizes — Export presets. **Current** keeps the framing you recorded; the rest crop and resize for a particular platform.

All export options opens the full set, where you can set an exact resolution, choose Landscape or Portrait, pick a codec and even aim at a target file size.

11Prompting on a bigger screen, and driving it from elsewhere

Reading from a laptop on a desk is fine for a quick take. For anything staged you will want the words somewhere else, and the controls in your hand.

Telepromptme: 8 - Mirror Script for Teleprompters — Mirroring the text and driving a second display for a beam-splitter rig. How to mirror teleprompter text for a beam-splitter rig

Got a teleprompter rig? Flip it.

Send your script to any screen.

Screen Mirror step one, Source Display, asking which screen should be mirrored — **Screen Mirror**, step one: which screen to send.

Screen Mirror step two, Destination Display, asking where the mirror should appear — Step two: where to send it. Both steps show your actual display arrangement.

Using a phone or tablet as the remote

Turn on Remote / Watch Enabled in settings on both devices and they will find each other on your local network. A Remote tab appears, and from it you get a control panel with the transport buttons, the scroll-mode picker, the speed and text-size sliders, and the script text if you want it.

The Remote tab showing Waiting for Teleprompts while it searches the local network — The **Remote** tab while it looks for another device. If it keeps waiting, check the setting is on at *both* ends.

The Remote tab listing an available iPhone to connect to — Once both ends have it switched on, the other device appears under **Available**.

The remote Control Centre with tiles for Scripts, Recordings and Settings — **Control Centre**: what you can drive on the other device. More tiles appear while it is prompting.

The remote Scripts panel showing the other device's script library with a Live indicator — Its library, live. Pick a script here and the other device opens it.

The Apple Watch app

There is a watch app, which is the neatest option when you are standing up and away from the machine. It gives you play and pause, taps at the edges to jump to the top or bottom, and the Digital Crown sets the scroll speed, which is a genuinely good way to ride the pace during a talk.

12Every setting, section by section

Settings is the gear in the top bar. General holds your plan, the app's language and your devices; Advanced holds everything that changes how prompting looks and behaves. There is a search box at the top of Advanced, which is much faster than scrolling.

General

Display Language: The language of the app itself, independent of your system language.
Spoken Language: Used when transcribing audio to make captions. It follows the display language until you change it.
Theme: Auto, Dark or Light. It starts on Dark, which suits a prompter.
AI Assistant: Turns the writing assistant on and off. On by default where the device supports it.
Camera / Microphone / Video Quality: The devices used for recording, and the capture resolution. Set these before your first take.
Remote / Watch Enabled: Lets this device drive another, or be driven by a remote or the watch. Off until you turn it on.

Text Display and Playback

Built for dyslexic readers.

Show scroll bar: A slim bar down the edge. On a Mac you can drag it to scrub through the script.
Flip text horizontally / Flip text vertically: The app-wide defaults for mirroring, for beam-splitter rigs.
Mirror Controls: Whether the dock and pointers mirror with the text. On by default.
Start from top on play: Whether pressing play always jumps back to the beginning.
Perform Countdown / Countdown seconds: A countdown before scrolling starts, so you can settle before the first word.
Show StopWatch: Shows the clock even outside Timer mode, counting up.

Pointer and camera

Filters, window and recording

Read your script over video conference. Nobody knows.

The webcam filter tiles, the Teleprompt Window card and the Recording card — Sound settings live here too: **Audio Quality**, **Audio Channels** and **Noise Reduction**.

Text formatting

Remotes and captions

The Hardware Remote and Keyboard Mapping card above the Caption Defaults card — **Caption type** decides whether captions are a track viewers can switch off, or drawn permanently onto the picture.

Dock buttons

Defaults for new scripts

The Teleprompt Defaults settings card with play type, speed, duration and margins — These apply to *new* scripts only. Changing them does not touch anything already in your library.

13Lite, Pro and Pro Plus

There are three plans. Lite is free and is a real working prompter, not a countdown to a purchase. Pro removes the limits on how much you can keep and how long you can run. Pro Plus adds the production features.

	Lite	Pro	Pro Plus
Scripts you can keep	One	Unlimited	Unlimited
Length of a scrolling session	30 seconds	Unlimited	Unlimited
Recordings you can keep	One	Unlimited	Unlimited
PDF import	First page	Whole document	Whole document
Remote control & Apple Watch	Yes	Upgrade needed	Yes
Camera background & filters	Yes	Upgrade needed	Yes
Captions & Studio editing	Yes	Upgrade needed	Yes
Duplicate prompter & Screen Mirror (Mac)	Upgrade needed	Upgrade needed	Yes

The Upgrade window comparing Lite, Pro and Pro Plus across the production features — The app's own comparison. Read *trial* in the **Lite** column as “the free plan can use this”: it is not a countdown, and there is no time-limited trial in the app.

That table has one genuinely surprising row, so it is worth saying plainly: several of the production features are available on the free plan but not on Pro. Pro is aimed at someone who wants an unlimited prompter and recorder; Pro Plus is the one that keeps the production features permanently.

The thirty-second limit on Lite applies to any scrolling session, not only to recording, so it is the limit you will meet first.

14iPhone and iPad differences

This guide is written for the Mac. Telepromptme is the same app on iPhone and iPad, with the same three scroll modes, the same text-size controls and the same recording. What follows is everything that is genuinely different.

Getting around

Tabs instead of windows: Settings, the queue, the assistant and the Studio editor push onto the screen rather than opening their own windows. On a Mac each of those is a separate window.
Sharing instead of exporting: Where the Mac says Export and asks for a folder, iPhone and iPad say Share and hand the file to the share sheet.
Touch instead of pointer: Where this guide says click, tap. Where it says right-click, touch and hold. That is how you reach Enter speed… and Enter font size…

Different defaults

Bottom margin: New scripts start with a 60 percent bottom margin, so the text sits in the upper part of the screen where a phone camera is. On a Mac it starts at zero.
Camera: A new script shows the camera behind the words by default. On a Mac it starts with no camera.

Telepromptme prompting on iPhone, the script filling the screen with the transport dock across the bottom — The prompter on iPhone. The same dock, stacked into two rows to fit.

The captions and stickers editor on iPhone with a timeline and appear and disappear times — Captions and stickers are edited on the phone too, with the same timeline.

The floating prompter

On iPhone and iPad the prompter can leave the app. Touch and hold the play button in the dock and choose Play Floating: the script moves into a small picture-in-picture window and keeps scrolling on top of whatever you open next, a video call, a livestream, another camera app or your slides.

A teleprompter that floats over any app.

To float the prompter

Set speed, text size and margins first. The window is small, so go a size or two larger than you would full screen.
Touch and hold the play button in the dock.
Choose Play Floating. The script shrinks into a floating window and starts scrolling.
Switch to the other app. Drag the window to the corner nearest the camera, and pinch to resize it.
Tap the window to come back to the full prompter.

Things only iPhone and iPad have

A floating prompter. Touch and hold the big button and choose Play Floating to put the script in a picture-in-picture window that stays on top while you use another app.
Mirror front camera, for the front camera only.
The click button on a mouse-style remote can be mapped, which a Mac cannot do.
On iPad, Use multiple windows opens settings, recordings, the queue and Studio in their own windows, much like the Mac.

Things only the Mac has

Duplicate prompter and Screen Mirror, so the paywall marks those two as Mac-only.
Transparency for floating the prompter over a video call, and Teleprompt always in front.
Word documents. iPhone and iPad import plain text, rich text and PDF only.
Dragging a script out to the Finder, and marquee selection in the library.

An iPhone driving a Mac as a remote: transport buttons, the scroll-mode picker and speed and font sliders — An iPhone driving a Mac. **Top** and **End**, page buttons, the **Speed** / **Timer** / **Manual Page** picker and both sliders, with the script mirrored above.

The same remote panel on iPad, with more room for the script and the controls — The same panel on iPad, with room for more of the script.

Three Apple Watch screens: choosing which device to control, a play button with a progress ring, and the paused state — The watch app: pick the device, then play and pause. The **Digital Crown** sets the scroll speed, and the number under the button is the speed you are on.

15When something is not working

Most problems come down to the scroll mode, the text size, a device that was not chosen, or a permission that was declined.

The script will not scroll

Check the mode. In Manual Page nothing moves on its own; that is the point of it. Use the chevrons or the arrow keys.
In Speed, check the slider is not at 1. At the very bottom of the range the text creeps almost imperceptibly.
In Timer, a long time set against a short script gives the same effect. The app warns you when it is too slow to see.
If the script is only a few lines it may not be long enough to scroll at all, and the app will say so.

The text changed size and my formatting is gone

You were probably in font-size mode, which sets every word to one size and flattens any sizes you had set deliberately.
Undo is not available for this, so if the script matters, duplicate it before experimenting.
Use magnification instead when you want to keep relative sizes. See the text size section for the full explanation.

It will not record

A camera and microphone have to be chosen in settings. The app stops and offers to open settings if they are not.
macOS and iOS ask for camera and microphone permission the first time. If you declined, grant it in System Settings and restart the app.
On the free plan you can keep one recording. Delete or export the one you have to make another.

The remote or watch cannot find the prompter

Remote / Watch Enabled has to be on for both devices, not just the one holding the remote.
Both have to be on the same network, and the app asks for local network permission the first time.
The controlling device needs the remote feature on its plan.

Still stuck? Settings has Go to FAQ and Support, and Watch How-to Videos for the same ground covered on screen. The version number at the bottom of settings is worth quoting if you write in.