Online Teleprompter

How to use it

1. Paste or type your script in the box under the prompter, or press Open a .txt file. Leave an empty line between paragraphs to give yourself a breath.
2. Set the text size and line width so you can read comfortably from where you sit, and move the reading line to where your eyes should rest.
3. Press F or Full screen, then press Space or the play button. A 3, 2, 1 countdown gives you time to look up (you can turn it off).
4. Adjust the speed while you read with ↑ and ↓. The readout shows the speed in words per minute and the time left.
5. Click or tap the text to pause. Scroll with the mouse wheel or drag with a finger to go back a line. Press Esc to leave full screen.

Cues and directions. A line that starts with >> shows as a colored cue, for example >> Show the product. Words in [square brackets] such as [pause] or [smile] show dimmed. Neither counts toward the words per minute.

Keyboard, remotes and touch

Bluetooth page turners and presenter clickers. Many of them connect to a computer, tablet or phone as a keyboard and send the arrow keys or Page Up and Page Down. That means they move the script here with no setup: the forward button jumps ahead, the back button jumps back. If your remote sends other keys, it will not do anything here; check its manual for a mode that sends arrow or page keys.

Touch. On a phone or tablet, drag the text up or down to move it by hand, and tap once to pause or play.

Tips for reading to a camera

• Keep the words close to the lens. Viewers notice when your eyes look away from the camera. On a laptop or webcam setup, use a narrow line width and put the reading line near the top of the screen, right under the camera, so your eyes stay close to it.
• Sit farther back. The farther you are from the camera, the smaller your eye movements look. Make the text bigger to match.
• Narrow lines move your eyes less. Reading a short line takes less side to side movement than a long one, which the camera picks up less.
• Find your speed once. Start slow, read the first paragraph aloud, and press ↑ until the text keeps pace with you. Note the words per minute shown, and start there next time.
• Write the way you talk. Short sentences and paragraph breaks are easier to read aloud than long ones. Mark breaths with [pause].
• Light your face. A spare tablet or monitor running the video call light or ring light next to the camera lights your face evenly.

Using it with teleprompter glass

A teleprompter rig puts a screen under a sheet of glass (a beam splitter) set in front of the camera. You read the reflection, and the camera looks through the glass. A reflection is reversed, so the text must be flipped first.

• Turn on Flip horizontally so the reflection reads the right way round.
• If the words look upside down in the glass, also turn on Flip vertically, or turn the tablet or phone around in the rig.
• Use White on black. Black parts of the screen give off little light, so the glass shows the words and not a bright rectangle.
• Go full screen. The screen is kept awake while the prompter is in full screen, in browsers that allow it.

For a phone or tablet in a small rig, a remote that sends arrow keys lets you control the text without touching the screen.

Voice follow and your privacy

Your script is saved only in this browser on this device, so it is still there next time. It is never uploaded to this website. Clear it with Clear.

Voice follow is a beta feature shown only in browsers that offer speech recognition. When you turn it on, the browser listens and the text moves to the words you have just said, then waits while you pause. It works best when you read the script as written; if you add your own words, it waits until it hears script words again.

It is off by default. The microphone is used only after you press Turn on voice follow, and stops when you press it again or leave the page. Speech recognition is done by your browser, not by this site: in Chrome and other browsers your voice may be sent to the browser maker's speech service to be turned into text, so it needs an internet connection. This website never receives, records or stores your voice.