A teleprompter for Zoom and Google Meet, with its limits.

If the call is on a Mac

Run Wispim on the same Mac. Start the take in the floating panel and it stays above the call window, full screen included. Switching back to the call leaves the panel where it is and the take running. Put the panel just under the camera, where it snaps into place, and you read with your eyes almost on the lens. With Pro, your scripts are on your iPhone and your Mac, through your own iCloud.

Three shortcuts work while the call is in front: ⌃⌥P pauses and resumes the take, ⌃⌥F hides and shows the panel, and ⌃⌥T lets your clicks go through the panel to the call behind it. The page about the Mac app has the rest: the shapes, the sizes and what the Mac needs.

If the call is on a Windows PC

Run Wispim for Windows on the same PC. Its floating panel stays on top of your other windows, the call included, and you can put it right under the camera. Ctrl+Alt+P pauses and resumes the take, Ctrl+Alt+F shows and hides the panel, and Ctrl+Alt+T lets your clicks through to the call behind it. The page about the Windows app says what the PC needs.

Or stand an iPhone beside the laptop

The second way works whatever the laptop runs. Stand an iPhone under the webcam and run the full-screen prompter on it. The call app is on the laptop, so nothing on the iPhone competes for its microphone, and voice following behaves the way it does anywhere else. A phone on the desk is further from your eyes than one in your hand, so an hour-long script wants the typography the page for teachers goes through.

What is tested, and what this page will not claim

Voice following has been tested on the iPhone while recording in Camera, Instagram and TikTok. Zoom and Google Meet are not on that list, so this page will not tell you they work. It will tell you what the app does, so you can judge the risk before a meeting that matters.

There are two halves, and they are not equally certain. The first is the window: the floating panel on a Mac or a Windows PC and the floating window on an iPhone all stay on top of the call. The second is the microphone. Voice following listens through it, and a call app holds it for the whole call. Whether the two can share it has been tested on none of them.

On an iPhone there is already an answer for that: it is what happens when a camera app starts recording. If another app takes the microphone, 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 the read carries on from that word. Plan for that pause.

Build the read around Constant mode

Constant runs at a fixed speed you set in words per minute, and it needs no microphone to scroll. That is why it is the mode to plan a call around. Read the script aloud once at the speed you actually talk, set the words per minute to match, and the one variable this page cannot promise you is gone.

Every mode also has a start delay: off, or 5, 10 or 20 seconds. On a call that is the gap you need to get back to the call app and unmute. On an iPhone it is drawn inside the floating window as well as full screen, so you can watch it run down while you are already looking at the meeting. There is no 3-2-1 count anywhere: once the delay has run, Voice and Sound wait for you to speak.

That is what makes a teleprompter for online meetings different from a recorded take: there is no second attempt, and nobody is waiting while you reset.

If the call is on your iPhone

On an iPhone, the floating window snaps to a corner the way Picture in Picture does. Put it in a top corner, nearest the front lens, so the gap between the text and the camera is small. Notes on screen during a video call only help if you are still looking at the person you are talking to. Pick Wide, Tall or Strip, whichever shape the call app’s own layout leaves free.

The window keeps its own side margins, separate from the full-screen prompter, while the text size follows the script’s own. The floating window page covers both.

The window does not accept touch. That is an iOS constraint, and the reason the other controls exist. Spoken commands pause, continue, go back a sentence, start over and jump to the end, in ten languages, with editable phrases, but they are heard through the same microphone as voice following, so on a call do not count on them either. The volume buttons move one sentence back or forward; they are marked Experimental in the app, and they do not work inside camera apps, which take the buttons for the shutter.

A checklist for the ten minutes before you join

• Cut the script to the things you must not get wrong. The rest is a conversation.
• Read it aloud once, set Constant to that speed, and leave it there.
• Set a start delay long enough to switch apps and unmute: 10 seconds is calm, 5 is not.
• Make the text big enough to read without leaning in.
• On a Mac or a Windows PC, put the panel under the camera before you join, and press ⌃⌥P or Ctrl+Alt+P once to see the take pause.
• Bring the agenda in as it already exists: import from TXT, Markdown, PDF, DOCX and RTF is part of Pro. The free app gives you 6 prompter takes and unlimited scripts, with every prompter feature in it, including the floating window and voice following.