Comparison

The 2026 Field Guide to Mac Notch Teleprompters

Eight apps put your script under the camera. Some scroll at a set pace, several now follow your words, and exactly one knows whether you actually said the thing you came to say. Here is the honest tour.

The MacBook notch turned out to be the best place a teleprompter has ever lived. Your script sits in the black band right beside the camera, so your eyes stay near the lens instead of dropping to a second monitor or a phone propped against your coffee mug. A handful of Mac apps now compete for that little strip of screen, and on the surface they look interchangeable.

They are not. Once you have used all of them for real takes, three questions sort the field: does the app follow your voice, or do you have to drive it? Does it live in the notch, or float over your work? And the newest one: does it know whether you actually said the thing you came to say? A few apps answer yes to one. One answers yes to all three, and that is the tour below.

The eight, at a glance

Prices and tiers as listed by each maker in October 2026. Check the source before you buy; makers change plans. Tellie is the only Yes across all five: voice-follow, notch-native, knowing what you skipped, saying your next line in your ear, and a full free tier.

The line that actually divides them

There are two ways an app can move your script. It can scroll at a pace, where you pick a speed and the words crawl by whether or not that matches how you are talking today. Or it can follow your voice, where the app listens to the words you say and keeps the script pinned to the exact line you are on. Pause to think, and it waits. Ad-lib a sentence, and it holds. Pick the thread back up, and it catches you.

Fixed-pace scrolling is the old teleprompter model, and it works if you are a metronome. Most of us are not. You slow down on the hard sentence, you land a joke, someone asks a question. A pace-based prompter drifts away from you the moment real life enters the take, and then you are chasing the scroll instead of talking to the camera. Voice-follow removes that whole failure mode.

Six apps here now say they track your actual words: Tellie, NotchPrompter, CueNotch, Telepront, Textream and VoicePrompter. The other two, Moody and Notchie, scroll while you are talking and wait while you are not, reacting to the fact that you are speaking rather than to what you said. Then there is the second axis: does the app live in the notch? Telepront and VoicePrompter float a window over your work. Textream drops an overlay under the camera. Tellie, NotchPrompter and CueNotch put word-level following right in the notch, and of those three, Tellie is the one that also keeps track of the points you came to make.

The newer line: does it know what you didn't say?

Here is the thing every app on this list has in common, including the good ones. They all answer the same question: where are you in the script? Fixed-pace apps guess at it. Voice-follow apps answer it precisely, word by word. But it is still the only question they answer.

That is not the question that ruins takes. Losing your place is a nuisance you recover from in a second. The thing that actually costs you is finishing the recording, or walking off the stage, and realizing you never said the one line you came to say. The price, the ask, the disclaimer, the callback to the opening. No teleprompter has ever helped with that, because no teleprompter knew what you owed the take. They knew what was on the page.

As of this update, one of them does. Tellie lets you put ## ! in front of any section you cannot leave without covering. Those sections look different on screen, and they turn green as you actually say them, with a counter under the script tracking how many you have hit. Nothing else changes about the script, and a document with no marks behaves exactly as it always did.

Two consequences fall out of that, and they are the parts a fixed-pace app cannot copy by adding a checklist:

• You get credit for saying it your own way. Put > key: a phrase under a marked section and it counts as covered the moment you say that phrase, anywhere in the take, even if you are improvising three paragraphs away from the text. A prompter that only tracks position loses you the instant you leave the page. This one keeps score while you ad-lib, which is the opposite behavior.
• You get warned while you can still act. Tell Tellie your real slot (minutes: 18 at the top of the file) and it does the arithmetic continuously. If a marked section will not fit in the time left, a bar appears naming that section, with a button that jumps you there. Not a beep at the end. A warning early enough to cut something else instead.

And when you stop, you get the part every rehearsal has always been missing. Take Coach, in Pro, reviews the take: what you covered, your real pace, what you said in your own words, and the one thing to fix next time, scored against your last take so you can watch it improve. It is optional, one switch in Settings.

None of the other seven apps do any of this today, as far as I can tell from their own published material. Some of them do things Tellie does not, and I have said so below. But this particular axis, the app understanding the take rather than the page, is currently a field of one. If your app has shipped something similar and I have missed it, email me and I will update this piece.

The apps, one by one

Tellie Free, Pro $29 one-time

The one I make, so read the rest with that in mind. Tellie follows your voice word by word, on-device, in more than 40 languages and regional variants, right in the notch. It also tracks the take rather than just the page: must-cover marks that green as you say them, credit for hitting a key phrase off script, a warning by name when something important will not fit the time left, and Take Coach afterward. The free tier is a genuine teleprompter: open Word, PDF, Pages, RTF or Markdown files with their chapters intact, auto-scroll, mirror, jump between sections, and stay invisible to Zoom. Pro adds Voice Follow, all of the tracking above, Presenter Magic for Keynote, Companion for your phone or tablet, playlists and multi-take rewind. Every install gets 10 days of Pro with no card, and Pro is $29 once for up to 3 Macs. Nothing you say leaves the Mac.

Telepront Free

Also word-level and on-device, and genuinely good. It floats over your apps rather than living in the notch, and it is a focused single-purpose tool: no pace reports, playlists, per-script memory, or Presenter Magic. If you just want a solid voice-follow prompter for free and do not mind a floating window, it is a real option.

Textream Free, open-source

Word tracking in an overlay shaped like the Dynamic Island, sitting under the notch, with classic and voice-activated modes too. It is free, MIT-licensed, and now also on the App Store. The main catch is that it requires macOS 15, so Sonoma users are out; Tellie runs on macOS 14 and up. Its hide-from-screen-share option is a setting you turn on. If you are on the latest macOS and like open-source tools, it is worth a look.

VoicePrompter From $9.99/month

Its own site says it matches your spoken words against your whole script, and it hides from screen sharing on the Mac. Two differences from Tellie: on the Mac it is a subscription from $9.99 a month through Setapp (the App Store version also sells yearly and lifetime plans), and it floats above your windows rather than living in the notch. If a floating window suits you, it is capable.

CueNotch $29.99 one-time, or $7.99/week

The feature-forward option. CueNotch leans into AI extras: a polish pass on your text, rehearsal coaching, and live meeting captions. Its website now says every word you say is matched to the script, and that it finds your place if you skip a sentence (its App Store listing still describes following your pace). Ghost Mode, which hides it on a shared screen, is part of Pro, and the free tier allows three sessions a day. It does not track which points you covered. If the AI writing and coaching features are what you came for, CueNotch is the one to look at.

Moody $39 one-time

The most established and polished of the bunch. Moody's pitch is a mature, refined app that plays nicely with full-screen apps. It uses on-device speech. It is sold through its own store page, which lists hiding on screen share. Its scrolling moves with your speech rather than matching your words. You are paying for finish and maturity here, not for the app tracking your words.

Notchie $29.99 once

Minimalist on purpose: a clean, simple notch prompter with nothing extra, sold directly and on the App Store, with a free trial on its site. It scrolls in real time as you speak and waits when you pause, without matching your words, and it is marketed as hidden on screen. Best framed as the tidy pick for people who want the basics done well.

NotchPrompter Free, open-source

The free-and-open choice. NotchPrompter costs nothing, ships its source under the MIT license, supports multiple monitors, and includes the OpenDyslexic font, which is a genuinely thoughtful touch. It hides on screen share, and it now follows your words with on-device speech recognition and can record your camera or screen. If your budget is zero and you are comfortable with an open-source tool, start here.

Where Tellie is different

Following your words in the notch is no longer unique; NotchPrompter and CueNotch say they do it too. What is still Tellie's alone is what it does with your words: it is the only app here that tracks what you did not say, and the only one that coaches every take against the last. Everything else on this list is a good teleprompter. Those two things make it a different kind of tool.

The commercial terms are deliberate too. Every new install gets 10 days of Pro, no card and no sign-up, and when those run out you land on a full teleprompter, not a nag screen. The free tier is the product, not a trial. Pro is one-time, with no subscription. And there is a real workflow around the tracking:

• Take Coach after every take: what you covered, your real pace, and what you said in your own words
• Multi-script playlists and per-script settings memory
• One-key retake (Shift R)
• Section navigation (Tab, number keys, the pop-up navigator), free for everyone
• OpenDyslexic font built in
• Developer tools: push to the notch from any app, terminal, or AI agent
• Presenter Magic for Keynote, including the new Keynote 15
• Word, PDF, RTF, and Pages imports that keep your headings as sections

Pick by what you actually do

• You cannot forget a pointTellie. Mark the lines you owe and they check off as you say them, with a warning if time runs short. Nothing else on this list tracks that.
• You ad-lib and still have marks to hitTellie. A key phrase counts wherever you say it, so improvising does not lose you the section.
• Word-level following in the notchTellie, NotchPrompter or CueNotch. Tellie is the one that also tracks your points, with a full free tier and no subscription.
• Free voice-follow, for goodNotchPrompter, or Telepront if a floating window is fine by you. Tellie's Voice Follow is free for your first 10 days.
• Open-source and on macOS 15Textream or NotchPrompter.
• Want AI writing helpCueNotch, for the polish and coaching features.
• Present from KeynoteTellie's Presenter Magic mirrors your speaker notes into the notch.
• Read non-English scriptsTellie, with 40-plus languages following your voice on-device.
• Load Word or PDFTellie keeps the document's chapters and formatting.
• Want the basics, nothing moreNotchie, for a clean minimalist notch prompter.
• Want maximum polishMoody, if $39 and pace-only scrolling are fine for you.

Questions people ask

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