How to Use a Teleprompter on Zoom (Without Looking Down)
/ Speech & Presentations / By Maury Rogow
Everyone on the call can tell when you're reading.
Your eyes drop. Your voice goes flat. You lose your place, you say "um, sorry, where was I," and the deal you were about to close just got a little colder.
Here's the fix. A teleprompter on Zoom, set up the right way, so you read every word and it still looks like you're talking straight to the person on the other side of the screen.
No download. No sign-up. Takes about two minutes.
Why Reading on Zoom Usually Looks Bad
It's not the reading. It's where your eyes go.
Most people put their notes in a Word doc in the middle of the screen, or worse, on paper on the desk. The camera is at the top. So every time you check your notes, the camera sees you look away. Down, left, down, back up. People read that as nervous. Or hiding something.
I've produced over 1,000 videos and three feature films. On every single set, the rule was the same. The words go where the lens is. That's it. That's the whole trick.
How to Set Up a Teleprompter for Zoom
You can do this with the free online teleprompter on Script Timer. It runs in your browser, right next to Zoom.
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Open the teleprompter in its own browser window. Not a tab inside your Zoom browser. Its own window, so you can move it.
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Paste your script. Talking points, your pitch, your intro. The page saves your last script on that device, so it's there next time.
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Shrink the window and drag it right under your webcam. Top center of your screen. The closer it sits to the lens, the less your eyes move.
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Make the font big. Bigger than you think. You want to read it without squinting from where you sit. Two or three lines showing at a time is plenty.
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Set your speed in words per minute. Start at 150. That's natural conversation. If it feels like it's chasing you, tap the down arrow and drop 5 at a time.
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Press Start. You get a 3-second countdown. Spacebar pauses when someone asks a question.
That's the setup. Zoom's app marketplace has some prompter add-ons too, but you don't need to install anything for this to work.
What Speed Should You Set?
Most free teleprompters give you a slider from 1 to 10. Nobody knows what a 6 means.
Words per minute is a real number you can plan around. Here's how I set it:
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130 to 140 wpm for a serious update, bad news, or anything with numbers people need to catch.
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150 wpm for most calls, sales meetings, and team updates.
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160 to 170 wpm for a quick, upbeat intro or a webinar open.
And here's a bonus. When you know your speed, you know your run time. A 300-word intro at 150 wpm is two minutes. Before you go live. Want to check yours first? Paste it into the words to minutes calculator.
4 Mistakes That Give You Away
1. Reading every single word. A full script on a live call sounds like a hostage video. Write the open and the close word for word. Everything in the middle, bullet points. You'll sound like you, not like a press release.
2. Window too far from the camera. Even two inches lower and people can see your eyes drifting. Get it tight under the lens.
3. Font too small. When the text is small you lean in. Leaning in looks like squinting. Squinting looks like stress.
4. Not rehearsing once. Run it one time before the call. Out loud. You'll catch the sentence you can't say without tripping, every time.
What About When You Share Your Screen?
This is where people get stuck. When you share your screen, Zoom takes over the view and your prompter window can get buried.
Two simple ways around it:
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Share a single window, not your whole desktop. Then the teleprompter window stays yours and nobody else sees it.
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Put the teleprompter on a second device. A phone or tablet propped right under your webcam works great. Same page, same script, nothing to install.
Write It So It Sounds Like Talking
A teleprompter can't fix a script that was written to be read, not said.
Short sentences. One idea each. Words you'd actually use at dinner. If you wouldn't say "leverage synergies" to your friend, don't say it to a client either.
In Hollywood every script gets a table read before anything gets shot. Actors read it out loud and everybody hears what's broken. You can do the same thing in about ten seconds. Paste your script into Script Timer and listen to your script in a real AI voice before you get on the call. You'll hear the clunky line before your client does.
Quick Recap
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Put the words right under the camera.
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Big font, 150 wpm, two or three lines at a time.
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Script the open and close, bullet the middle.
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Rehearse it once out loud.
Ready? Open the free teleprompter, paste your notes, and go look your next client right in the eye.