Best Mac Notch Teleprompter Apps in 2026: An Honest Comparison
The MacBook notch turned out to be the perfect home for a teleprompter. It sits right under the camera, so you can read a script while looking almost straight into the lens, and a good app keeps that script invisible to whoever you are recording or sharing with.
Updated September 2026.
I build one of these apps, Tellie. My goal here is not to crown my own app. It is to give you an honest map of the category so you pick the one that actually fits your work. I tried to keep this comparison fair, and where a competitor is the better call, I say so.
A quick note on why this list changed since I first wrote it: the category moved fast in 2026. Every notch app on it now scrolls to your voice, two of them changed price, and a couple of new ones showed up. So the old "does it follow your voice" question no longer separates anything. There are two better questions now, and I will get to them.
What a notch teleprompter actually is
On a MacBook, the notch is the black strip around the camera. A notch teleprompter puts your reading line right there, next to the lens, so you keep eye contact instead of glancing down at a script below the camera. On a Mac with no notch, these apps float a thin strip in the same spot. The good ones add two things on top: they scroll as you speak instead of at a fixed crawl, and they stay invisible when you share your screen or record, so your audience never sees the script.
How I compared them
I looked at five things, and this year I added a sixth that turned out to matter most:
- Does it follow your voice, and how well?
- Is it invisible on screen shares and recordings?
- Does the speech processing stay on your Mac, or go to the cloud?
- What does it cost, and is there a real free tier?
- What can it import (Word, PDF, and so on)?
- Does it know what you said, not just that you were talking?
That last one is the new dividing line, so let me explain it before the table.
The two questions that separate these apps now
Every notch app here now moves with your voice. But there is a difference between an app that scrolls because it hears sound, and one that follows the actual words you are saying. The first keeps pace with you. The second knows the exact line you are on, waits when you pause to think, holds when you ad-lib, and catches you when you pick the thread back up.
The second question is newer still: does the app know what you have not said yet? Most of these are teleprompters, they show your text and move it. One of them tracks whether you actually covered the points you meant to hit, warns you if you are running out of time before you get to one, and gives you a debrief afterward. That is a different kind of tool, and it is worth understanding before you choose.
The comparison
| App | Price | Free tier | Follows your voice | Hidden on screen share | On-device | Knows what you skipped |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tellie | $29 once (Pro) | Yes, full | Yes, word by word | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CueNotch | $29.99 once | Limited | Yes, adaptive pace | Ghost Mode | Yes | No |
| Moody | $39 once | No | Yes, adaptive pace | Not documented | Yes | No |
| Notchie | $29.99 once, or Setapp | Trial | Yes, adaptive pace | Yes | Yes | No |
| NotchPrompter | Free, open-source | Yes | Yes, on speech | Hidden mode | Yes | No |
| Textream | Free, open-source | Yes | Yes, word by word | Overlay (macOS 15) | Yes | No |
| Eyes Forward | $1.99 once | No | No, fixed pace | No | Yes | No |
Prices and details checked against each maker in September 2026. This category changes quickly, so verify before you buy.
The apps, one by one
CueNotch ($29.99 one-time, limited free tier). The feature-forward pick. CueNotch leans into AI extras: Magic Polish to rewrite a script, an AI Rehearsal Coach, AutoCaption for live meeting captions, and a Memorize Mode. It has a Ghost Mode to hide on a shared screen and does speech on-device. Its scrolling keeps pace with your voice rather than following the exact words. If the AI writing and coaching tools are what you want, this is the one to look at.
Moody ($39 one-time, down from the $59 I first listed). The most established and mature option, and it feels it. Moody plays nicely with full-screen apps and does speech on-device. Its behavior on recordings and screen shares is not clearly documented, so if invisibility on a live call is a must-have, test it yourself first. No word-level following. You are paying for finish and maturity.
Notchie ($29.99 one-time, or included in Setapp). Clean and minimalist, and it lives right in the notch. Speech is on-device and it scrolls to your voice at an adaptive pace. If you already pay for Setapp, it is a tidy option that comes with the bundle.
NotchPrompter (free, open-source). The free-and-open choice. It costs nothing, ships its source, supports multiple monitors, and includes the OpenDyslexic font, which is a genuinely thoughtful touch. It hides on screen share and scrolls when it hears you talking. If your budget is zero and you are comfortable with an open-source tool, start here.
Textream (free, open-source). Another free option, this one running as a Dynamic Island style overlay on macOS 15. It follows your actual words, which is rare in the free tier. There is a Terminal step on first launch, so it suits people who are comfortable with that.
Eyes Forward ($1.99 one-time). A fixed-pace scroller for people who just want a script to move at a set speed near the camera. No voice following, but honest about what it is, and cheap.
Tellie (free tier, $29 one-time Pro). This is mine, so read the rest with that in mind. Tellie follows the actual words you say, in the notch, in more than 40 languages, all on-device. It is invisible on screen shares and recordings, needs no account and no subscription, and the download is tiny. It imports Word, PDF, RTF, and Pages and keeps your headings as sections. The part that makes it a different kind of tool is what I called the sixth question: you can mark the points you have to hit, and they check off as you actually say them, in whatever words you use. If one will not fit in the time you have left, Tellie tells you and offers to jump you there, and every take ends with a debrief of what you covered and where you drifted. The free tier is a complete teleprompter, not a trial, and every install gets 10 days of the Pro features to start.
Pick by what you actually do
- You want AI help writing and rehearsing: CueNotch.
- You want the most polished, mature app and price is no object: Moody.
- You want free and open-source: NotchPrompter, or Textream if you want word-level following and do not mind the Terminal step.
- You are on Setapp already: Notchie.
- You just want a cheap fixed scroller: Eyes Forward.
- You cannot afford to forget a point, or you ad-lib and still have marks to hit, or you present in another language: Tellie. It is the one built around what you said, not just that you spoke.
The honest bottom line
If all you need is a script that scrolls near the camera and hides on a call, several of these do it well, and two of them are free. Pick on price and polish and you will be happy. If your problem is bigger than reading, if you improvise, jump around, present from a deck, or simply cannot leave without making three specific points, that is where following the words and tracking what you covered starts to matter, and that is the case I built Tellie for.
Whatever you choose, test it on your own setup before a live call, especially the invisibility. Setups vary, and it is a bad thing to discover on camera.
Links to Tellie in this post use ?via=stevechazin so I can see what my write-up sends. Try Tellie free at tellieapp.com, or see why I think it is the best teleprompter for Mac.