Stage teleprompter

What it does

It shows your text large, on black, and scrolls it at the speed you set. Before you start it tells you how long it runs.

On the speed

It is in words per minute, not pixels per second.

A pixel per second means nothing to someone about to speak, and it changes meaning with the text size and with the screen: the same number, on a phone turned sideways, scrolls three times as much text. Words per minute is the speed you know about yourself, and it is the only unit in which “how long does it run” has an answer.

It starts at 130, the speed of reading aloud without rushing. Above 180 you are no longer reading a speech: you are looking for a place in it.

You can change it while it scrolls, with the arrows or the two buttons, and the point you are at does not move: only how fast you go from there changes.

On the mirror

A real teleprompter is a half-silvered glass angled in front of the speaker. The text reaches it reflected, and therefore flipped: the “horizontal mirror” checkbox flips it in advance, so it reads the right way round on the glass.

It is only for use with the glass. On a bare screen, leave it off.

On the black background

Reading is black with light text, and that is not an oversight.

A teleprompter is a physical object. A light screen behind that glass reflects onto the audience and onto the speaker, and washes the reflected text out until it cannot be read. It is the same reason the piano keys here stay black and white in both skins: some things were what they were before the website existed.

On the timer

There is a stopwatch and a countdown, in a corner. The timer follows the reading: pause and it pauses too.

That is a choice, not a consequence. A real stage timer measures your slot and so should not stop when you stop — but this tool has one verb, the space bar, and two clocks answering two different commands on a stage is one command too many.

The countdown stops at zero and does not go negative: a large negative number in a corner, in huge digits, does not read as “you are two minutes over”, it reads as a fault. That you have run over is said by the colour.

On the space bar at the end

When the text ends, space rewinds instead of restarting.

Someone who has just finished speaking still has the clicker in hand and the audience in front of them: a brushed space bar that restarts the prompter from the top, full screen, is the kind of thing that happens on a stage and not at a desk. Restarting takes two presses, on purpose.

If you have “reduce motion” on

The scrolling stays, because it is what this tool does: removing it would not give a quieter version, it would give a blank page.

What changes is that it never starts on its own — it never starts on its own for anyone, in fact — and that the speed begins at its lowest. There is no other animation in the reading view to switch off.

On your data

The text is not stored anywhere. It does not go into the address, it does not go into sessionStorage, it is not sent: it stays in this tab and goes when you close the page.

This is not a polite formula. A prompter carries a speech that has not been given yet — meeting notes, tonight’s talk, an announcement under embargo — and “convenient” is not a good reason to leave it on the disk of whoever uses this computer after you.

The cost is stated: reload the page and you have to paste the text again.