How Tellie's voice-follow teleprompter differs from a scrolling teleprompter

A scrolling teleprompter sets a fixed speed and makes you keep up with it. Tellie instead follows the words you actually say, one at a time, and waits while you pause. That single difference changes who controls the pace: with a scrolling prompter the script leads and you chase it; with Tellie you lead and the script waits. Tellie is a Mac app that runs on Apple silicon (M1 or later) with macOS 14 or later, and it stays invisible to screen recording, Zoom, Meet, and FaceTime.

The core mechanism

Scrolling teleprompter: fixed speed

You pick a scroll rate before you start. The text moves at that rate regardless of what you do. If you slow down, you fall behind. If you speed up or ad-lib, the text keeps moving and you have to find your place again. The prompter is the metronome; you are the performer trying to stay on beat.

Tellie: voice follow

You click the mic and Tellie tracks the words as you say them, advancing one at a time. The behaviors that follow from this:

• You pause, it waits. Silence doesn't cost you your place.
• You go off script, it keeps your place. A tangent doesn't scroll your script away.
• You skip a line, it finds you. Tellie locates where you actually are rather than where a timer says you should be.

The practical result is that pacing becomes a byproduct of how you naturally talk, not a constraint you have to satisfy.

Side-by-side

What this means in practice

The difference matters most in situations where natural delivery is the point. If you're recording a video, hosting a live call, or presenting where you want to sound like you're talking rather than reading, a fixed-speed scroll forces a trade-off: either you match the machine or you sound like you're matching the machine. Voice follow removes that trade-off.

It matters less if your content is rigidly timed to the second and you've rehearsed to a fixed cadence — in that case a scroll speed you've internalized works fine, and the prompter's predictability is the feature.

Two things beyond pacing

Invisibility. Tellie sits under your camera in the MacBook notch area and is invisible to screen recording, Zoom, Meet, and FaceTime. A scrolling teleprompter displayed on screen is typically visible to whatever is capturing your screen unless you take separate steps to hide it. Tellie's positioning also keeps your eyes near the camera rather than off to the side.

Stagehand (Pro). You can flag sections as must-cover; they turn green as you cover them, even if you say them in your own words. If time gets tight, Tellie nudges you while there's still time to cover everything. This is a layer on top of voice follow — it tracks coverage, not just position.

Getting started and what to check

1. Confirm your Mac is Apple silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or later.
2. Download Tellie free — each download unlocks all of Tellie for 10 days, with no account and no card required.
3. Open a document and hit play. Tellie hangs from the notch near your camera and hides when done.
4. Click the mic to switch from scrolling to voice follow, then just talk.

Tellie Pro is listed at $29 once, with checkout handled through Lemon Squeezy. The free download gives you the full app for 10 days, so you can test whether voice follow suits your delivery before deciding on Pro.

How to choose

• Choose voice follow (Tellie) if you want to speak naturally, pause to think, ad-lib, or deliver in your own words while keeping your place — and if you need the prompter hidden from a screen recording or video call.
• Choose a scrolling teleprompter if your delivery is tightly timed, you've rehearsed to a fixed cadence, and you want the prompter's motion to be fully predictable and independent of your voice.

The deciding question is simple: do you want to keep up with the script, or do you want the script to keep up with you?