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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
| Format | Mac | iPhone & iPad |
|---|---|---|
| Plain text | Yes | Yes |
| Rich text (RTF) | Yes | Yes |
| 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
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
Timer: finish in a set time
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.
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.
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.
| 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× |
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
- 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
Text formatting
Remotes and captions
Dock buttons
Defaults for new scripts
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 |
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.
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.
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.
Still stuck?
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