Comparison

The 2026 Field Guide to Mac Notch Teleprompters

Eight apps put your script under the camera. Some scroll at a set pace, some follow your voice, and as of this month 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, which only became a real question this month: 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 mid-2026. Check the source before you buy; makers change plans. Tellie is the only Yes across all four: voice-follow, notch-native, knowing what you skipped, 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.

A few apps now do voice-follow well: Tellie, Telepront, Textream, and VoicePrompter all track your actual words. But there is a second axis, and it splits the field again: does the app live in the notch? The voice-follow apps mostly float a window over your screen or drop an overlay near the camera. The notch-native apps (CueNotch, Moody, Notchie, NotchPrompter) sit in the black band by the lens but scroll at a set pace. Tellie is the only one that does both: word-level voice-follow, right in the notch.

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 August 2026, one of them does. Tellie 1.5 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: an honest debrief. Your real words per minute, your longest pause, which marked sections you never reached, and the runs you ad-libbed past, quoted back so you know which ones they were. Not a score. A record of the take you actually gave.

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. Since 1.5 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 a debrief afterward. The free tier is a genuine teleprompter (load a script, play, mirror, resize, invisible to Zoom); Pro adds voice-follow, all of the above, multi-take rewind, Presenter Magic for Keynote, and imports from Word, PDF, and RTF that keep your chapters. Every install gets 10 days of Pro with no card. 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 a Dynamic Island overlay. Two catches for non-technical users: it requires macOS 15, so Sonoma users are out, and it is not notarized, so the first launch means a Terminal command and a right-click-to-open. Tellie runs on macOS 14 and up, is fully notarized (one click), and auto-updates. If you are comfortable with open-source tools and on the latest macOS, it is worth a look.

VoicePrompter About $3/month

Word tracking plus a sound mode, on-device, with lots of languages. Two differences from Tellie: it is a subscription (about $3/month on the native app), and it is not notch-native. Tellie is a one-time purchase and lives in the notch. If a monthly plan and a floating window suit you, it is capable.

CueNotch $29.99 one-time

The feature-forward option. CueNotch leans into AI extras: a polish pass on your text, rehearsal coaching, and live meeting captions. It has a Ghost Mode to hide the notch on a shared screen, on-device speech, and a limited free tier so you can try it. It does not follow your voice line by line, so the scrolling is still something you set rather than something that tracks you. If the AI writing and coaching features are what you came for, CueNotch is the one to look at.

Moody $59 one-time

The most established and polished of the bunch, and the most expensive. Moody's pitch is a mature, refined app that plays nicely with full-screen apps. It uses on-device speech. Its behavior on recordings and screen shares is not clearly documented, so if invisibility on a live call is a must-have, test it yourself first. No voice-follow. You are paying for finish and maturity here, not for the app tracking your words.

Notchie Setapp, $9.99/month

Minimalist, and distributed through Setapp, so it makes sense if you already pay for that bundle and want a clean, simple prompter with nothing extra. It is marketed as hidden on screen and uses on-device speech. Some users have reported inconsistency in its voice activation. No word-level voice-follow. Best framed as the tidy pick for existing Setapp subscribers.

NotchPrompter Free, open-source

The free-and-open choice. NotchPrompter costs nothing, ships its source, supports multiple monitors, and includes the OpenDyslexic font, which is a genuinely thoughtful touch. It hides on screen share. It does not follow your voice. If your budget is zero and you are comfortable with an open-source tool, start here.

Where Tellie is different

Two of the differences are category-level, and the rest is workflow. The category-level ones: it is the only app here that is voice-follow and notch-native at once, and the only one that knows what you did not say. 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:

• A debrief after every take: words per minute, longest pause, what you covered, and where you went off script
• 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.
• Voice-follow in the notchTellie. It is the only one that puts word-level tracking under your camera, with a full free tier.
• Free voice-followTellie's free tier, or Telepront if a floating window is fine by you.
• Open-source and on macOS 15Textream, if you are comfortable with the Terminal first-launch step.
• 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.
• Already pay for SetappNotchie, for a clean minimalist prompter in the bundle.
• Want maximum polishMoody, if the price and the unconfirmed recording behavior are fine for you.

Questions people ask

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