How to use a teleprompter on Zoom without anyone seeing it (Mac)
You want your script in front of you on a call, and you want the people on the other end to see your slides or your face, never your notes. Here is what actually works on macOS, and the one Zoom setting that makes or breaks all of it.
Why your notes normally show up in a screen share
When you share your full screen in Zoom, Zoom captures everything on that display, including any notes app, sticky note, or teleprompter window floating on top. Sharing a single window instead hides your notes, but then you are locked to that one window, and your eyes still drift away from the camera to wherever the notes live.
The fix is not a smaller font or a second monitor. It is a macOS capability that lets an app mark its own window as excluded from screen capture. A window flagged this way simply does not exist as far as screen recording and screen sharing are concerned: you see it, the capture does not.
The Zoom setting that matters
Zoom on macOS has to cooperate with that capability, and it does, through one setting:
- Open Zoom's settings (the gear icon).
- Go to Share Screen, then Advanced.
- Set Screen capture mode to "Capture with window filtering."
Your options, honestly compared
- Paper notes or a phone: free, but your eye line visibly drops every time you glance down. On a pitch or demo, people notice.
- A second monitor: keeps notes off the shared screen, but your gaze points sideways, away from the camera, and you still scroll by hand.
- Notch-based prompters: apps that tuck a thin strip of text into the menu bar or notch area. Genuinely invisible, but the reading surface is tiny and you scroll manually or at a fixed speed.
- Capture-excluded overlay prompters: a full teleprompter window anywhere on screen, excluded from capture at the OS level. You get a real reading surface near your camera, and the share never shows it. This is the category Promptly is in.
Within that last category the remaining difference is how the text scrolls. Most prompters scroll at a fixed speed and expect you to keep up. Promptly listens to your voice and scrolls to match you: it waits when you pause or take a question, catches up when you jump ahead, and re-anchors when you go off script. See the full comparison of Mac options.
Step-by-step setup with Promptly
- Download Promptly and drag it into Applications. The 3-day trial needs no credit card.
- Grant microphone access on first launch so the prompter can follow your voice.
- Set Zoom's capture mode to "Capture with window filtering" as above. Promptly's setup flow walks you through it.
- Paste your script, position the overlay just under your camera, and click Go Live.
- Share your screen in Zoom and just talk. Participants and the recording see your slides. You see your script scrolling with your voice.
Sharing slides? Click into your presentation app before you start the Zoom share so keyboard-driven action cues land in the right window. The full guide covers cues, outline mode, and recovery.
Common questions
Does it stay out of recordings? Yes. Local and cloud recordings capture the same filtered feed participants see.
Does it show in screenshots? No. macOS screenshot tools respect the same exclusion.
What about Google Meet and Teams? Browser-based sharing behaves differently. Promptly's Meet and Teams support is in testing; Zoom works today.