Read your script into the lens.
MiniPrompter puts your words directly under the webcam and lights your face while you read them. It floats on top of Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and QuickTime, so nothing about how you already record has to change.
An illustration of the layout, not a screenshot. Real ones land with the first release.
Simple, and free
Paste your script and read it. The window slides right up under your camera or your notch, where your eyes already want to be. Nothing to set up, nothing to sign up for, nothing to unlock, and not one permission to approve. It is donations only, and it stays that way.
A light for when you have no lights
Most of us do not have a lighting rig behind the desk. A soft band of warm light runs around the edge of your screen and fills in the shadows on your face, anywhere from 2700 K to 10000 K. It is optional, it adjusts while you read, and one key turns it off.
Your Stream Deck already works
Every command has a plain address like miniprompter://toggle. Point a
Stream Deck key, a Loupedeck button, a Shortcut or an Automator action at one and it
works while Zoom is in front. No plugin to install, and the same verbs are there
in AppleScript.
A prompter and a light, in one window
Everything is built around one idea: your eyes should be at the lens, and your face should be lit while they are there.
Two heights, both at the lens
The reading window opens under the menu bar, where nothing can ever cover a word. Or push it up to the very top row of pixels, which moves the reading line noticeably closer to the camera and is worth the notch clipping a line you have already read. Drag it, resize it, and it remembers.
Width beats brightness
A display only gets so bright, so the light works by covering area rather than by blazing. The band leaves your menu bar and Dock alone, opens a soft hole around your pointer so you can still aim at things underneath, and runs with no camera session at all — useful for rehearsing, or for lighting a camera that is not your Mac's.
Scrolling you can actually steer
Ten speed steps on the arrow keys. Tap space to pause, or hold it to coast gently to a stop and carry on when you let go. A thin red reading line marks where your eyes belong, and blinks when the words are not moving.
Your words, however they arrive
Paste from anywhere, drop a file on it, or open one. Plain text, Markdown, RTF and Word documents all work — flattened to headings and body text, which is all a prompter needs. Fix a typo in place with ⌘E without leaving.
Keys that reach it from Zoom
Normally your keys go to whichever app is in front, which is correct and is how every app like this behaves. Switch on the shortcuts that work everywhere and ⌃⌥Space pauses the script from inside a call. They still ask for no permission, which is the whole reason they are built the way they are.
It stays out of the way
It floats over full-screen apps, and clicks pass straight through the light to whatever is underneath. On a two-display Mac the light stays at the camera and the words go wherever you can comfortably read them, which is exactly the setup for a webcam clipped to one monitor and a script on the other.
What it is not
Two things get claimed a lot in this corner of the Mac world. Neither of them is true, of any app, and MiniPrompter will not tell you otherwise.
It is not a ring light
A computer display tops out around 500 nits. A real ring light is many times brighter. MiniPrompter softens the shadows and lifts your face out of the gloom in a dim room. It will not light you like a studio, and it does not replace the lamp on your desk.
It is not invisible to recordings
Apps used to be able to ask macOS to leave a window out of screen captures. From macOS 15.4 that request is ignored, and every modern recorder ignores it. No Mac teleprompter can hide itself. Capture a window rather than the whole screen — that part works, reliably.
It does not replace Apple's Edge Light
On an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26.2 or later, Apple lights the screen edges during video calls too. MiniPrompter steps aside rather than lighting you twice. Ours works everywhere else — Intel Macs, older macOS, and with no camera running at all.
What you need
- macOS 13 Ventura or later — Apple silicon or Intel
- No permissions — nothing to approve, ever
- No account — nothing to sign up for
- A webcam is optional — it never touches your camera
- English — Canadian French is next
- Free — donations only, no paid tier
If it helps, buy me a coffee
MiniPrompter is free and stays free. There is one link, it is optional, and it is the same page that covers BackupTempo and DiskMapper. No paywalls, no email list, no reminders.
Buy me a coffee ☕