The teleprompter for TikTok that follows what you say.

On TikTok, the eyes give it away

TikTok is watched close up, vertical, usually on a face. There is nowhere for a glance to hide: a viewer sees your pupils travel down and come back before they have taken in a word you wrote. That is the whole problem Wispim is built around: the script scrolls itself as you speak, so you can look at the lens instead of down at your notes.

Most prompter apps scroll at a fixed speed and you chase them. That is fine on a 30-second take right up to the moment you ad-lib a clause, and then you are either racing the text or waiting for it. Voice mode follows the words you actually said instead, so the clause you did not plan costs you nothing. How voice following works takes the mechanism apart.

How to read a script while recording a TikTok

• Paste or type the script into Wispim. Scripts are unlimited; the free tier gives you 6 prompter takes, and Pro removes that limit and adds import from TXT, Markdown, PDF, DOCX and RTF.
• Choose Voice mode and start the take. There is no 3-2-1 countdown. The prompter waits until you speak.
• Move the script into the floating window. It stays on top of other apps and snaps to a corner, the way Picture in Picture does.
• Open TikTok, frame yourself, hit record.

The corner matters. The one you want is the corner nearest the front lens, which is the top of the screen when the phone is upright, so the trip your eyes make between the lens and the first word is as short as it can be. The window comes in three shapes, and its text turns a quarter turn at a time. Which shape earns its place in a 9:16 frame is worked through on the Reels page, and the answer holds here too.

What happens when TikTok takes the microphone

TikTok is one of the three apps the microphone hand-off was tested against, along with the Camera app and Instagram. In those tests voice following kept going while the recording ran, and the script carried on moving with the take.

The microphone is still a single resource, and the app that is recording can claim it. When that happens the take waits for it. The text holds on the word you reached and a note says “Mic busy”. Wispim keeps asking for the microphone back, and when sound comes in again it says “Listening again” and reading carries on from the same word. A hand-off that lasts a second or two shows nothing at all. That is the failure mode every voice-following prompter has, and Wispim shows it on screen.

Fluff a line, go again

TikTok takes are short and shot four or five times, so what matters is how fast you get back to the line you dropped. Between takes, switch back to Wispim full screen and tap the word you want to restart from. Reading carries on from there, in every mode, and it never pauses. Dragging the script does the same job: following pauses while you read ahead or check a line you passed, a note at the top says “Browsing”, and in Voice you start reading where you landed.

Both of those are full-screen gestures, because the floating window does not accept touch. That is an iOS constraint that Wispim cannot code around, and it is why the other controls exist. Spoken commands pause, continue, go back a sentence, start over and jump to the end, in ten languages, with phrases you can edit. Once a recording screen is open, plan on your voice being the control you have. The shapes, the rotation, the corner snap and what is left to press are covered on the floating window page.

Whatever language you post in

Voice following works in every language your iPhone can recognise: 60+ locales on current iOS. The app’s own interface is in 16 languages, and spoken commands exist in 10 of them. If you post in a language your iPhone cannot transcribe, Sound mode advances while it hears you speak, which is enough to keep a short script moving.

Recognition runs on your iPhone where your language supports it, and where it does not, iOS sends the audio to Apple to turn into text. The language picker marks those languages before you start.

A screen recording from an iPhone. The Wispim floating window sits at the top of the screen, on top of the Camera app, which is recording the person speaking. The line they are reading is blue, and it moves down the script as they talk.