How to use a teleprompter for YouTube

A script that reads well on paper often sounds wrong out loud. A long sentence with three clauses is easy to take in silently and hard to deliver without running out of breath. Cut those into shorter ones, use contractions, and say the thing the way you would say it to one person sitting across from you, because that is how it reaches someone watching alone.

Two editor features exist for this. Markers split a script into sections you can jump between, which matters when you record in takes rather than in one pass. Pauses insert a timed break that stops the scroll on its own, so a beat you want for emphasis does not depend on hitting the space bar at exactly the right moment.

Viewers notice reading when the eyes visibly track across or down the frame. Two changes reduce that, and neither needs extra hardware.

First, get the text as close to the lens as you can. On a laptop or a monitor, that means the browser window sits directly below the camera and the camera sits at eye height rather than below it. On a phone or tablet used as a second display, prop it immediately beneath or beside the lens.

Second, make the column narrow and the type large. Wide lines force a visible sweep from left to right. Raise the margin setting until each line is short enough to take in at a glance, then raise the font size until it is comfortable from where you actually sit. Reading distance matters more than screen size.

If you shoot through a beam splitter, the vertical and horizontal flip settings mirror the display for the glass.

Speed is set in lines per minute, from 10 to 160. There is no correct number, because it depends on line length, font size, and how fast you talk. Start slower than feels right and raise it during a rehearsal take.

The left and right arrow keys change speed while you are reading, so a take that starts too fast does not have to be abandoned. How far each tap moves is configurable to 1, 3, or 6 lines per minute: choose 1 for fine correction mid-take, or 6 if you would rather make one decisive change and carry on.

Scrolling manually pauses the automatic scroll, which is how you reposition between takes without resetting to the top.

A steady scroll speed invites a steady delivery, and that flatness is the real giveaway. Actual speech varies. Slow down for the point that matters and move through the connective material, which in practice means treating the arrow keys as a performance control rather than only a correction.

Looking away on purpose helps more than trying to hide that you are reading. Glance off the lens at the end of a thought, the way anyone does while thinking, then come back for the next one. A pause placed at that point holds the text still long enough for you to do it.

Record a rehearsal take and watch it before the real one. Nearly everything that reads as stiff on camera, a pace slightly too quick, type slightly too small, a column slightly too wide, is obvious within thirty seconds of footage and invisible while you are in the middle of reading.

Recording by yourself puts the keyboard out of reach, behind the camera or across the room. A phone takes its place: scan the QR code from the prompter, and the phone controls play, pause, speed, and marker jumps over the network.

Gesture mode turns your phone into a silent, blind controller so you never have to look down at virtual buttons while on camera: tap to play or pause, swipe to adjust speed, and double-tap to jump sections. Phone and hardware remote control covers pedals, presentation clickers, and Stream Deck controllers.

Phone remote control is included from the Creator plan upward.

Once a font size, a speed, and a margin work for your room and your camera distance, you should not have to find them again. Script Defaults saves the current formatting as the starting point for new scripts, and applies it to an existing script in one step.

If you record more than one kind of video, a slower piece to camera and a faster read through the week's news, Speaker Profiles keep a separate configuration for each and switch between them from inside the prompter. Profiles also remember the settings for each connected display, so a second screen comes back the way you left it. Speaker Profiles are available from the Creator plan upward.

A live stream needs the script to reach your broadcast software rather than a second screen. The prompter provides a capture URL that you add to OBS Studio as a Browser Source, or to vMix as a Web Browser Input. The text renders on a transparent background, so it composites over your video without any chroma keying.

The overlay stays under operator control while it runs. Font size, speed, and position are driven from the prompter, and edits you make while live appear on the overlay without reloading it or losing its scroll position. Local and remote displays explains how the same session feeds monitors and broadcast software at once.

The OBS and vMix overlay is part of the Operator plan.

Free prompting shows an EasyPrompter Free Edition watermark on the reading view and on any connected display. When you record with a camera pointed at you, it never reaches your footage, because it lives on the prompter screen rather than in the shot.

If you capture a reading display directly, anything visible on that display can appear in the recording. The pricing page explains current watermark and broadcast-overlay availability, and the creators page covers the rest of the solo production workflow.