Teleprompter for presentations: live talks and recorded ones

Using a teleprompter for presentations starts with one question: is anyone in the room? A live audience forgives a glance down, because you look at people most of the time. A camera forgives nothing: every line you read off-axis shows as a look away. The setup, the script format and the speed differ for each, and mixing them up is the usual reason a presentation sounds read.

The facts below about PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides were checked against Microsoft’s, Apple’s and Google’s own help pages on 2 November 2026. These apps change their menus often; where we could not confirm a detail, we say so.

Live talk or recorded presentation?

Live, the prompter is a safety net you consult; recorded, it is the thing you read from start to finish.

A teleprompter for a live presentation

On a stage, what people notice is a head that stays down, so the goal is a prompter you can read in a glance from standing height, then look up from.

• Put it low and in front, not to the side. A laptop or tablet on the lectern, or a monitor on the floor at the front of the stage, keeps your face towards the room while you read. A screen off to one side turns your whole head every time you check it.
• Make the text bigger than feels sensible. At a standing distance of about a metre from a lectern screen, a line of four to six words in large type reads in one glance; a paragraph in body-size type does not.
• Use cues, not prose. More on this below; a full script at a lectern turns into reading aloud within a minute.
• Decide who moves the text. A fixed scroll speed fights you the moment someone laughs or asks a question. Either a person runs it for you, you advance it yourself, or the prompter listens and follows your voice.

A tablet or phone works as a lectern prompter. Orate’s prompter-only mode runs the script with no camera, and Follow my voice (Pro, included in the free trial) moves the text as you speak and holds when you stop to take a question, then picks up from the words you say next. Two honest limits for live use: Orate has no remote or Bluetooth clicker support, and it does not show or advance your slides. Your clicker drives the deck; the prompter is a separate screen.

If you can, learn the opening and close by heart: how to memorise a script for a presentation has a method for an evening, and how to practise a speech covers the run-throughs.

Presenter notes in PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides

If your presentation has slides, the slide app already has a basic prompter: the notes under each slide, shown only on your screen. For a live talk with a laptop in front of you this is often enough, and your notes change when the slide does.

Some details worth knowing before you rely on them:

• Speaker Coach is English-only. Microsoft’s help page says it only understands English and is only available when your Microsoft 365 interface language is English. It is listed for PowerPoint on Windows, Mac, the web, iPad and Android tablets.
• Notes do not scroll themselves in Presenter View. They are a pane you scroll by hand, which is fine for cues and awkward for a full script. Recording Studio’s Teleprompter view is the closer thing to a prompter, but it is for recording, not for a live room; Microsoft’s page does not say whether it auto-scrolls on every platform, and we have not tested it.
• Notes in Google Meet depend on your Workspace edition, per Google’s Workspace Updates announcement of January 2023. Check before the day if you are on a personal account.
• Notes sit wherever the slide app puts them, which on a laptop is usually the lower half of the screen — well below a webcam. For an in-person talk that does not matter. For a video call or a recording it does, and that is where a separate prompter earns its place. The call version of this setup is in teleprompter for Zoom, Teams and Google Meet.

Bullet cues or a full script?

Cues keep you talking; a full script keeps you exact. The choice depends less on how nervous you are than on what happens if you get a sentence wrong.

Here is the same section of a quarterly update written both ways:

• Cues: “Revenue up 18%. Why: two enterprise renewals. Risk: one renewal slips to Q1. Ask: approve the second hire.”
• Full script: “Revenue grew eighteen per cent this quarter. Most of that is two enterprise renewals that came in early. The risk is the third one, which may slip into the first quarter. So my ask is simple: approve the second hire now, so we are ready if it doesn’t.”

Formatting a full script for a prompter is covered in how to write a teleprompter script, and how to sound natural reading a script deals with the delivery.

Recording a video presentation with a teleprompter

A recorded presentation is where a teleprompter does most of its work, and where its position matters most. The camera is the audience, so the text has to sit as close to the lens as possible: a few centimetres below it on a phone, or on glass in front of it with a beam-splitter rig. The further the line you are reading sits from the lens, the more the viewer sees you look away — the reason is set out in why teleprompter videos look like reading.

The practical problem is slides. A phone teleprompter records you; it does not capture your slides. There are three ways to deal with that:

1. Face on the phone, slides on the computer, joined in an editor. The best picture, and the most work. Record each section on the phone, export the slides or screen-record them, and cut between the two. The full workflow is in how to record a video presentation on your phone.
2. One desktop tool for both. PowerPoint’s Recording Studio records your webcam over the slides, with its Teleprompter view showing your notes, and exports a video. The webcam picture is usually worse than a phone’s, and the notes sit wherever the window puts them, but it is one take in one app.
3. No slides. Many update, pitch and explainer videos are better as a person talking. If the slide only says the number, say the number.

For the first route, record sections of a minute or less, one take each, with the phone set up once as in a talking-head setup with a phone so the joins match.

Timing the script to the slot

A presentation slot is a word budget. At 120 words a minute, the right pace for a live room, a five-minute slot holds about 600 words; at 150, the natural pace for a camera, it holds 750. Each slide change costs a few seconds of silence, so take a little off for every slide.

Paste the draft into the speech length calculator to check its running time, and run it against the speech timer aloud at least once. The specific budgets are in how many words is a 3-minute speech and how many words is a 5-minute speech, and how many words per minute covers every length from 1 to 20 minutes.

Doing it in Orate

Orate, which we make, is a teleprompter and camera for iPhone, iPad and Android. It does not do slides or screen recording, and there is no Mac or Windows app; on a computer, the free online teleprompter runs in any browser. What the app does for a presentation:

• Each section as its own script, with a read time shown before you record.
• The text under the lens. The script scrolls in a band directly beneath the front camera, and moves to whichever edge the lens is on when you turn the phone, so a 16:9 landscape presentation reads as well as a portrait one.
• Rehearse, then record. Prompter-only mode runs the script with no camera; the same script then records with the prompter on screen, and you can change pace mid-take without losing your place.
• Safe and free to export. If the app is killed mid-take you keep the take except at most its last couple of seconds, and export is free up to 1080p with no watermark.

If you are new to reading from a phone, how to use a teleprompter on your phone covers distance, text size and speed.

Questions people ask

Can you use a teleprompter for a live presentation?

Yes. Put a laptop, tablet or floor monitor low and in front of you, use short cues rather than a full script, and set a slower pace of around 120 words a minute so you can pause for the room. Look at the audience most of the time and glance down for the next cue. A voice-following prompter avoids the text running ahead while you answer a question.

Does PowerPoint have a teleprompter?

For recordings, yes. Microsoft’s help page describes a Teleprompter view in PowerPoint’s Recording Studio that shows the current slide’s notes above the slide preview while you record. For live presenting, Presenter View shows your notes on your own screen while the audience sees only the slide, but the notes do not scroll by themselves. Checked 2 November 2026.

Should I write a full script or bullet points for a presentation?

For a live talk, bullet cues: one line per idea, with the opening and closing sentences and any exact figures written in full. For a recorded presentation, a full script written for the ear, in short sentences with a blank line wherever you breathe. Full scripts read at a lectern tend to sound read; cues in front of a camera tend to produce ums.

How do I record a presentation with slides and my face?

Either record your face on a phone in short sections and your slides separately, then join them in an editor, or use a desktop tool such as PowerPoint’s Recording Studio that records the webcam over the slides in one go. The phone gives the better picture; the desktop tool is one take in one app. A phone teleprompter app does not capture slides.

Where should a teleprompter go for a presentation?

For a live talk, low and directly in front of you, on the lectern or the floor at the front of the stage, so your face stays towards the room. For a recording, as close to the camera lens as possible: a band just under a phone’s front camera, a window under a webcam, or beam-splitter glass in front of the lens.