For teachers and course creators
Look at the class, not down at your notes.
A lesson you have taught twenty times still has three numbers, one definition, and a worked example you cannot afford to get wrong. Keep those under the camera and give the rest of your attention to the room.
Prompts, not scripts
Can you teach from prompts instead of a full script?
Yes, and for teaching it is usually the better way to load the panel. A cue keeps your delivery live. A word for word script flattens it, and students hear the difference immediately.
Load the sequence rather than the sentences: the order the ideas have to arrive in, the definition that must be stated precisely, the number you always get wrong on the board, the question you want to ask before you hand over the answer.
Recap: what we proved last week
Define it, then the counter-example
Ask the room before showing the answer
Worked example, step three is the tricky one
Close: what to read before Thursday
Word for word
“Today I want to talk about the three properties that make this work, and the first of those is the one we saw at the end of last week, which is ...”
As a prompt
3 properties. Counter-example first. Ask before telling.
One thing worth knowing before you write a whole term this way. Voice sync matches the words you say against the words on the panel, so very terse bullets give it less to match on. If you want the panel to advance by itself, leave one phrase in each line that you know you will say out loud. Otherwise use timed scroll or the line hotkeys and treat the panel as a static outline that never leaves your eyeline.
Interruptions
What happens when a student asks a question halfway through?
Nothing moves. Voice sync holds the line you were on rather than scrolling on a timer, so a three minute detour does not cost you your place. You answer the question, you follow the tangent the class actually cares about, and when you come back to your own phrasing the script picks up from where you left it.
If the answer takes you somewhere long, press Option+Command+P to pause outright, or rest the pointer on the panel, which pauses it while you hover. Neither one pulls keyboard focus away from the thing you were showing, because the panel is a non-activating window. It never becomes the front app, so your slides never stop being the front app.
What the class sees
Can students see the panel when you share your slides?
No. The window is excluded from screen capture at the window server level, so a shared screen, a shared single window, and a class recording all arrive without it. That holds whether you are sharing a slide deck, a browser tab with a whiteboard in it, a PDF of the problem set, or the entire display. Students see the material and they see you looking at them. There is no second window to remember to close before you press share.
One honest caveat, because it comes up in real classrooms. The exclusion is about capture, not about display output. If you mirror your Mac to a projector, the projector is showing your screen, and your screen has the panel on it. Use extended display mode instead and keep the prompter on the laptop where the camera is.
How the capture exclusion worksPrivacy
Does anything about your class leave the Mac?
No, and this one is checkable rather than promised. Eyeline is sandboxed with two entitlements, app sandbox and audio input. There is no network entitlement, so macOS will not permit it to open a connection even if it tried.
Speech recognition for voice sync runs on device through the Apple speech framework, so nothing said in your classroom is uploaded anywhere for transcription. Lesson scripts are stored as ordinary JSON files on the machine. The microphone is only requested if you switch voice sync on, so if you would rather not grant it at all, timed scroll and the hotkeys work without it.
That tends to be the shape of answer a school or university IT review is looking for, and you can verify all of it yourself with one command.
Recorded lessons
What changes when you are recording lessons instead of teaching live?
The cost of a fumble goes up. In a live class you recover in four seconds and nobody remembers. On a recording, losing the thread halfway through a module means shooting the module again, and getting a definition slightly wrong means shipping it to every student who ever takes the course.
A prompt under the lens removes both of those without turning the take into a reading. Timed scroll at a fixed words per minute also keeps module lengths consistent across a course, which matters when you are cutting eight of them in a day. And there is nothing to edit out afterwards, because the panel was never in the file.
The same setup for webinars and launch videoQuestions
Before your next class.
macOS 14 or later, 2.4 MB, universal. $19 once, andno per seat license to renew each term.
All questionsCan I use bullet points instead of a word for word script?
Yes. Load the sequence and the parts that have to be exact: the definition, the numbers, the question you want to ask before you answer it. The one trade-off to know is that voice sync matches what you say against the text on the panel, so very short bullets give it less to work with. Leaving one phrase per line that you know you will say out loud keeps it tracking, and timed scroll or the line hotkeys work either way.
What happens if a student interrupts me mid sentence?
The script stays on the line you were on. Voice sync follows speech rather than a clock, so a detour to answer a question does not scroll past your place, and it picks the thread back up when you return to your own phrasing. For a longer digression, Option+Command+P pauses it outright, and resting the pointer on the panel pauses it while you hover.
Does it work while I share slides or a whiteboard?
Yes, and the panel is not in what you share. macOS enforces the capture exclusion in the window server, so sharing a full-screen Keynote, a browser tab with a whiteboard in it, or your entire display all send frames without the prompter. It also floats above full-screen apps, so presenter mode does not hide it from you while it stays hidden from them.
Is the teleprompter distracting for students?
They never see it. On a video class the panel is not in the shared screen and not in the recording, so the only thing that changes on their side is that you are looking at the camera instead of down at a page. For your own attention it sits a few centimeters under the lens rather than off to one side, and hovering pauses it, so you are not chasing text while a student is talking to you.
What about a projector in a physical classroom?
Mirroring is the one case to plan around. The exclusion covers screen sharing, screen recording, and screenshots, not a second display that is duplicating your screen, so a mirrored projector shows whatever your laptop shows. Run the projector as an extended display instead and keep the prompter on the built-in screen under the camera.
Teach it again. Look up this time.
One payment of $19. Every Mac you own, no subscription, no account, no network calls.
macOS 14 or later. 2.4 MB. Works on Apple silicon and Intel.