#Read your script into the lens
MiniPrompter puts your words directly under the webcam and lights your face while you read them. It floats over Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and QuickTime, so nothing about how you already record has to change.
Version 1.0.1 · macOS 13 Ventura or later · Signed & notarized · Free
and that is really the whole idea.
Why I built it
I kept losing my place halfway through a take,
looking down at a second screen, and then
wondering why my eyes were never in the shot.
So the words go where the camera already is.
The part nobody expects
A screen is not bright enough to be a ring light.
But it is wide enough to be a fill light, and a
wide soft band beats a small bright one, every time.
Try it once in a dim room and you will see it.
One more thing
It never asks you for a single permission.
Not the camera, not the microphone, not one.
MiniPrompter — the screen is live. Try the controls.
01
##Simple, and free
Paste your script and read it. The window slides right up under your camera or your notch, where your eyes already want to be. Nothing to set up, nothing to sign up for, nothing to unlock, and not one permission to approve.
No camera, no microphone, no accessibility access, no screen recording. Even the shortcuts that work while another app is in front were built on an older part of macOS that asks for nothing, rather than the keyboard-watching approach most apps reach for. It is donations only, and it stays that way.
02
##A light for when you have no lights
Most of us do not have a lighting rig behind the desk. A soft band of warm light runs around the edge of your screen and fills in the shadows on your face, anywhere from 2700 K to 10000 K. It is optional, it adjusts while you read, and one key turns it off.
A display only gets so bright, so the light works by covering area rather than by blazing. The band leaves your menu bar and Dock alone, opens a soft hole around your pointer so you can still aim at what is underneath, and runs with no camera session at all — useful for rehearsing, or for lighting a camera that is not your Mac's.
03
##Your Stream Deck already works
Every command has a plain address like miniprompter://toggle. Point a Stream
Deck key, a Loupedeck button, a Shortcut or an Automator action at one and it works
while Zoom is in front. No plugin to install, and the same verbs are there in
AppleScript.
Keys normally reach whichever app is in front, which is correct and is how every app like this behaves. Switch on the shortcuts that work everywhere and ⌃⌥Space pauses the script from inside a call. They still ask for no permission, which is the whole reason they are built the way they are.
04
##Your words, however they arrive
Paste from anywhere, drop a file on it, or open one. Plain text, Markdown, RTF and Word documents all work, flattened to headings and body text, which is all a prompter needs. Fix a typo in place with ⌘E without leaving. Ten speed steps on the arrow keys; tap space to pause, or hold it to coast gently to a stop.
##And two things it is not
Not a ring light
A display tops out around 500 nits. This softens the shadows and lifts your face out of the gloom in a dim room. It will not light you like a studio, and it does not replace the lamp on your desk.
Not invisible to recordings
No Mac teleprompter has been able to hide itself since macOS 15.4, whatever any of them claim. Capture a window rather than the whole display and the problem goes away — that part works, reliably.
On an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26.2 or later, Apple lights the screen edges during video calls too. MiniPrompter steps aside rather than lighting you twice. Ours works everywhere else: Intel Macs, older macOS, and with no camera running at all.
##What you need
- system
- macOS 13 Ventura or later
- hardware
- Apple silicon or Intel
- permissions
- none, ever
- account
- none
- languages
- English, Canadian French
- price
- free — donations only
##If it helps, buy me a coffee
MiniPrompter is free and stays free. There is one link, it is optional, and it is the same page that covers BackupTempo and DiskMapper. No paywalls, no email list, no reminders.
And if this one is useful to you, the others might be too — they are all at brad.pro.