magnram/notchprompter

Free, open-source Mac teleprompter that hangs under your camera and follows your voice

Summary

NotchPrompter is an MIT-licensed macOS teleprompter that places a script near the screen camera and advances it by matching speech. It also supports steady autoscrolling, camera and screen recording, SRT subtitle generation, and Markdown-based scripts that can be edited by tools such as Claude Code or Codex.

What it is useful for

Engineers can use NotchPrompter for product launch videos, weekly team updates, YouTube introductions, demonstrations, and presentations where looking away from notes would be distracting. In voice-follow mode, spoken words advance the script and fade out. The matcher can recover after skipped sentences, while pauses and repeated sections do not move the script backward.

For predictable delivery, play mode provides a 3-2-1 countdown, adjustable speed, and scrolling controls. The built-in editor can import Word, Markdown, RTF, HTML, and plain-text files. Parenthesized or bracketed notes remain visible for prompting but are not spoken.

The file workflow is useful for maintaining scripts alongside a project. Enabling Keep scripts as files in a folder stores each script as Markdown; edits made in NotchPrompter or another editor are reflected immediately. For example, a Product launch.md file could be revised by a coding assistant before recording.

NotchPrompter can record the camera, screen, or both, with a preview and optional screen light. Recordings are stored in Movies › NotchPrompter, and enabling Save a transcript with each take creates an .srt subtitle file beside the movie. Its prompt window is also excluded from screen sharing, screenshots, and screen recordings by default.

For code reuse, the repository contains NotchPrompterKit, a Swift package with the voice engine, stage-direction handling, script storage, and settings. The separate iPhone app uses this package but is not open source and is described as coming soon.

How engineers can use it

For normal use, install NotchPrompter from the Mac App Store. If the store is unavailable, download the signed, notarized DMG from GitHub Releases. Use only one copy; the DMG version does not update itself. Open the app, allow microphone and speech-recognition access, then select Try It Now and read the practice script.

To build from source, use Xcode 16 or later and open NotchPrompter.xcodeproj, or run:

./build.sh && open NotchPrompter.app

Without an Apple Developer account, ./build.sh --local builds for the current Mac, but iCloud sync is unavailable. Voice following requires Dictation and the relevant macOS privacy permissions; Apple’s servers may process languages the Mac cannot recognize locally. The app requires macOS 15 or later. Matcher tests can be run with:

./Tools/test-matcher.sh