Tellie/ HelpTellie/ HelpQuick start, common questions, and the fix for the handful of things that occasionally trip people up. If you don't find your answer here, the in-app welcome screen will walk you through the first run, and Steve answers email at steve@skytech.io.
New to Tellie? Watch the tour below, then jump to your topic:
Prefer to watch?
Everything below, demonstrated rather than described. Steve reads the entire video from Tellie while it demos itself, so the script on screen is the product working.
Use the file picker to open a document. Plain text, Markdown, Rich Text, Word, PDF, and Apple Pages all work.
Hit the orange play button. The text scrolls on its own. Set the pace with the speed control in the bar, its own bubble, or the up and down arrow keys.
Look at your camera and read. Tellie keeps the text moving so your eyes stay on the lens, not down on a second screen.
Pro Going further: turn on Voice Follow (the microphone button) and Tellie follows the words you actually say, scrolling to match you word by word, so you can pause, ad-lib, or skip a line.
Getting started
Anyone who has to talk while looking at something other than their words: a camera, a room, or a face on a call. In practice that means video creators and YouTubers, actors recording self-tapes, speakers and presenters, teachers, salespeople, anyone on a video call, and developers running AI agents, who use the same notch as a status surface.
The first time, macOS may ask "Are you sure you want to open it?" because Tellie came from the internet. Click Open. (Tellie is notarized by Apple, so this is a one-time prompt.) Want to see it first? Watch the install, step by step.
The welcome window ends on Try Tellie Now. Click it and macOS asks for two permissions, one after the other: Speech Recognition, then Microphone. Allow both so Tellie can follow your voice. Both run entirely on your Mac. Clicked Don't Allow by mistake? Turn Tellie on in System Settings → Privacy & Security, under Speech Recognition and under Microphone.
Tellie needs an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or later) with macOS 14 or later.
That window is the installer. Seeing it again means the installer file, or a shortcut to it, was copied to Applications instead of the app itself. It's an easy mix-up, and a two-minute fix:
Still stuck? Email Steve at steve@skytech.io with a screenshot of your Applications folder. He answers every message himself.
Yes. Tellie requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or later. It does not run on Intel Macs.
At the top-center of your main screen: tucked around the notch on MacBooks that have one, in the same spot just below the menu bar on a Mac without one. Open a document and the prompter expands below it; drag the edges to resize. On a MacBook with a notch, Settings → Appearance → Minimize into notch shrinks the resting strip to exactly the notch, so Tellie disappears into it until a Pulse arrives or you click.
Yes. Tellie works on any Mac running macOS 14 or later, notch or no notch: MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or an external display. Without a notch it sits at the top-center of your screen, exactly where a notch would be. Same features, same experience.
Click the Tellie icon in the top-left corner of the prompter for the full menu, click Tellie’s menu bar icon, or right-click anywhere on the prompter: the same menu pops up at your cursor, even if something is covering the icon.
Simply click the menu bar icon → Check for Updates…
Using Tellie
Plain text, Markdown, Rich Text, Word, PDF, and Apple Pages. Your bold, italics, and headings come through, and the headings become sections you can jump to. Scanned PDFs are the one exception: if a PDF is photographs of pages rather than text, there are no words for Tellie to read.
Yes. Choose Open Document… (⌘⇧O) from the menu bar icon and pick a folder: every document in it becomes a playlist. The → and ← keys step between them, and a small counter in the notch shows where you are.
Select text in any app and press ⌃⌥⌘T. It lands in Tellie’s notch with a note about where it came from; click the notch when you are ready to read. The first use asks for Accessibility permission so Tellie can copy the selection for you.
Turn on Presenter Magic in Settings → Advanced, then present your deck as usual. Each slide’s notes appear in the notch as you advance, and your audience and recording never see them. The first time, macOS asks to let Tellie read Keynote; allow it once.
Yes. Settings has an opacity slider, from 100% down to a faint 10% wisp, useful when you want your words as a hint while keeping eye contact on a call.
Yes. Settings includes a font size control. You can also resize the prompter window itself by dragging the edges, and the text reflows (window resize is part of Tellie Pro).
About 50 languages, and accents are handled well: recognition adapts to how you actually speak. One thing to check before buying Pro: Voice Follow runs entirely on your Mac, so it works in the languages Apple ships an on-device model for. Apple’s list is here: on-device dictation languages. Your 10 free days of Pro are exactly for this: test your language and your accent on one of your own documents before paying anything.
No. Tellie’s window is excluded from screen capture, so your prompter is invisible to Zoom, Meet, FaceTime, recordings, and screenshots. This is the privacy promise. Want it visible for a demo? One toggle in Settings → Privacy, for this session only.
Yes. Settings → Privacy → Make Tellie visible in recordings (this session). While it is on, an orange eye sits in the corner of the prompter so you cannot forget; click the eye to go invisible again. It resets to off every time you quit, so a forgotten toggle can never leak a document. With Tellie Pro, Hide Tellie logo (just below it) records without the Tellie mark in the corner.
Yes. Click the detach icon in the upper-right of the prompter and Tellie floats anywhere, on any screen: drag it by its grab bar, resize from any edge, and it remembers the spot next launch. Collapse the prompter, or click the pin, and it snaps home to the notch.
Any document with headings gets a navigator along the bottom of the prompter: click it for the whole document as a list, and jump anywhere. From the keyboard, Tab steps between sections and 1–9 jump straight to one. Voice Follow re-anchors wherever you land: start reading and it picks you up.
Yes. Turn Companion on once in Settings (a short intro explains it the first time). From then on Settings shows a QR code: point your phone or iPad camera at it and Companion opens (or copy its link to any laptop). It can also pop out a Companion window right on your Mac as a private second view. Open the link in the device's browser, on the same Wi-Fi as your Mac, and it becomes a console for your take. There is nothing to install on the device: your Mac does the listening and the work, and the device only shows the page.
Companion has three views you can switch between: a glance-able status readout, your key points as a checklist that ticks off as you cover them, and the full prompter scrolling in step with your Mac. It is also a remote: play and pause, restart the take, jump to any section, and turn Voice Follow on or off, all without touching the Mac. Stand a phone or iPad on a beam-splitter rig or beside your lens and read while looking straight into the camera, or hand the link to someone helping and let them drive.
Everything runs over your own local Wi-Fi and never leaves your devices, and Companion's window (popped out on the Mac or open on the device) stays invisible to screen sharing and recording, the same as the notch. If you are on a locked-down network with no shared Wi-Fi, share your Mac's hotspot to the device. Every view's gear menu also shows the QR code, so you can bring in another device, and on a wide screen (an iPad turned sideways, an unfolded phone) the side-by-side view puts the prompter next to the status or checklist. Companion is a Pro feature; the Companion page has the full walkthrough.
Stagehand
Paste any document with Stagehand marks and it renders inline. Not saved when you reload.
Stagehand, in one take. A must-cover section tints amber to green as it is covered, a key point counts the moment you say its phrase, a warning fires before a must-cover runs out of time, and the take ends on the debrief.
Three tiny marks. ## starts a section, ## ! marks one you must cover, and > key: a phrase is a point that checks itself off when you say it, in your own words, anywhere in the take. The whole convention fits on one screen in the scripting guide, with live examples.
Stagehand shows a quiet coaching strip below your controls where Tellie tells you what it noticed about your take: how many of your must-cover sections you have hit, and a warning if an important one is about to run out of time. It appears only when there is something worth saying, then shrinks back. Only you can see it; like the rest of the notch, it is invisible to your audience, Zoom, and recordings. It shows up only for documents that use the ## ! or > key: marks.
When you mark a section as must-cover (## !, see the scripting guide), its text warms from amber to green as you cover it, so you can see what you have hit without looking away from the words. A pip in that strip fills in as well. Plain sections do not change color.
When you finish a take (turn the mic off), a coaching drawer opens under the prompter: your pace and real words per minute, which must-cover sections you hit, and exactly where you went off script, with the words you skipped, each a link back to that spot. No score theater, just the notes. Turn it on or off with Take Coach in Settings.
When you finish a take, the Take Coach reviews it for you: a score, what landed, and the one change that makes the next take better. From a take's page you can rehearse a rough line, and Tellie plays just that line to the end of its section, counts the words down, and tells you how it went. It keeps each briefing on your Mac for 90 days, never uploaded, so you can reread how a talk went before you give it again. Turn it on with Take Coach in Settings.
Troubleshooting
First, confirm both permissions are granted. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, then check Speech Recognition and Microphone: Tellie should be in each list and switched on. Then quit and reopen Tellie.
If both are on but Tellie still isn't tracking, check whether the document you loaded actually matches what you're reading. The matcher needs at least a couple of words in common to find your place.
Still nothing? Check which mic Tellie hears: Settings → General → Voice Follow → Microphone names the one in use. With your MacBook closed on an external display, Automatic listens through the display's mic; pick a different mic there if it isn't the one you're speaking into.
Check that Presenter Magic is on in Settings → Advanced, and that macOS gave Tellie permission to read Keynote (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation → Tellie → Keynote). Notes flow while the deck is presenting. Still stuck? Email steve@skytech.io.
Sorry! Email steve@skytech.io with a description of what you were doing when it happened. Tellie doesn't send crash reports automatically (see the privacy page), so the only way Steve knows is if you tell him.
Every new install gets Tellie Pro switched on for 10 days. There is no card, no sign-up and nothing to cancel: it is simply on, so you can try Voice Follow, Stagehand, Presenter Magic and the rest on your own documents before deciding anything. Tellie will quietly remind you as the days run down, and never in the middle of a take.
Tellie becomes Tellie Free, which is a complete teleprompter: open your document, scroll it, resize it, stay invisible to recordings. The Pro features switch off, nothing is deleted, and you can buy at any time to turn them back on. Tellie will never end your trial in the middle of a take, so if you are mid-read when the clock runs out, you finish the take first. More about what stays and what stops.
Open Settings and find the Tellie Pro card at the top, then paste the license key from your purchase email and click Activate. Activation is checked once and then remembered, so it keeps working offline. If the key will not take, check you copied the whole thing, including any dashes.
Yes. One purchase covers 3 Macs, so your desktop and your laptop are both included. Activate each one with the same key from your purchase email.
Tellie Pro is $29 once, no subscription. Recognition runs on your Mac and there are no servers costing us money per user, so we charge once, the way Mac apps used to work. Every Tellie 1.x update is free forever via auto-update. And if Pro does not work out, email steve@skytech.io within 14 days for a full refund, no questions asked.
The strip that drops down under the notch to show you something: text you sent with Send to Tellie, your Keynote notes, or a line pushed by your tools and AI agents. Each source gets its own named line. It never steals focus; click to expand and read, hover to peek, and with several sources active the strip shows the latest with a +N badge.
Hover the strip and click the small × in the corner to dismiss it. Sent lines also clear on their own after a while, so a stale message never lingers. To collapse an expanded prompter back to the bare notch, click its close button.
Your history. The Pulse shows what is happening now; the Pulse Log keeps a private record of what arrived at your notch, so you can scroll back through your day and reread the thing that flashed by. Open it from the menu bar icon. It never records your voice or your take, only what was sent in, and it never leaves your Mac.
Email steve@skytech.io. Steve reads and answers every message himself, usually within a day. Have an idea instead? Choose Suggest a Feature… in the Tellie menu.
Email Steve| ⌃⌥⌘T | Send selected text to Tellie |
| ⌘⇧E | Expand / collapse window |
| ⌘⇧P | Play / pause |
| ⌘⇧R | Rewind to top of document |
| ⌘⇧M | Voice Follow on / off |
| ⌘⇧O | Open a document or a folder (playlist), from any app |
The ⌘⇧ shortcuts reach Tellie from inside any other app with Tellie Pro. On Free they still work while Tellie itself is in front.
⌃⌥⌘T works on Free and Pro, from any app. Select text and press the chord: Tellie copies it for you, loads it as a fresh document, and shows where it came from. First use asks for Accessibility permission so the auto-copy can work. Without it the chord still works the two-step way, ⌘C first, then the chord.
| ⌘O | Open document |
| ⌘V | Import from Clipboard (also works with the prompter in front) |
| ⌘ (held) | In Recent Documents: reveal the document in Finder instead of opening it |
| ⌘, | Settings |
| ⌘Q | Quit Tellie |
These are ordinary menu shortcuts: click the Tellie icon in the menu bar first, or bring Tellie to the front, then press the key. Pressed from another app they belong to that app, which is why ⌘O in Pages opens a Pages dialog rather than Tellie.
| Space | Play / pause |
| ↑ ↓ | Speed up / down (Shift for a bigger jump) |
| + − | Larger / smaller font |
| 0 | Reset font size to the 22pt default |
| R | Rewind to top of document |
| Esc | Collapse the prompter |
| Tab / ⇧Tab | Next / previous section heading |
| 1 – 9 | Jump directly to section 1 through 9 |
| ` | Peek the next section name (backtick) |
| ⇧R | Rewind to start of last sentence Pro |
| → ← | Next / previous document in playlist Pro |
| ⏯ F8 | Your next words (or squeeze an AirPods stem once) Pro |
| ⏭ F9 | The next key phrase you have not said (squeeze twice) Pro |
| ⏮ F7 | Hear the last nudge again (squeeze three times) Pro |
| Your key | One sentence back (choose a key in Settings, Advanced) Pro |
| Drag edge | Resize the prompter Pro |
| Detach icon | Detach from the notch Pro |
.md, .txt, .markdown, .rtf, .docx, .pdf, or .pages file.# Heading, ## Sub, ### Sub-sub) become navigable anchors. So do your normal heading styles in a Word, Pages, or PDF document, with no re-editing.When you first enable Voice Follow, macOS shows a system permission box that mentions speech data being sent to Apple. That is the system's default wording for any app that uses speech recognition and it cannot be customized. Tellie hard-locks the recognizer to on-device mode, so nothing actually goes to Apple.
! after the hashes on any heading, and that section's text is colored differently and turns green as you cover it. An amber circle at the bottom of the prompter fills to solid green when it is complete.> key: your phrase under any heading with no !. It checks off the moment you say the phrase, anywhere in the take: a grey circle at the bottom of the prompter becomes a green checkmark.> key: under a must-cover heading when you plan to read it, but saying it in your own words should count too. It uses the must-cover circle.minutes: 18 at the top of your document and Tellie prompts you while there is still time to act.The full convention, with examples you can send straight to Tellie, is in the scripting guide.
[pause], [breathe] or [Actor 2], and never right after you jump with Tab, a number key, the navigator or scrolling, until you speak again. A timed [pause 3s] holds that long first. Choose Only when I ask to turn the automatic nudges off.[Actor 2] in your document where someone else speaks, or [Actor 2: their line] to see their words as a note. Tellie holds your place there, so their voice in your mic can't move you on, until you say your next line or press a Nudge key. [Actor 3] and up work the same.PowerPoint and Google Slides cannot do this: Tellie has no way to read their notes. Paste your talk into Tellie and advance your own slides. Everything else, including Stagehand, works the same.
open "tellie://update?text=Build%20passed&source=CI". Scripts, CI, and AI agents use it to tap you on the shoulder without a dashboard.Everything on this page describes a free Mac app. No account, no subscription, nothing to cancel.
Download TellieFree Mac app. Every new install gets 10 days of Tellie Pro.