One Screen, No Second Monitor: Reading Notes on Zoom and Google Meet

Presenter view solves the notes problem only if you have somewhere to put it. On a single laptop screen there is nowhere: share the whole screen and your notes go out with the deck, share one window and your notes end up behind the thing you are sharing. Most people end up reading off a phone propped against a mug, which is its own kind of visible.

CueCard for Mac and Windows takes the other route. It is a floating notes window that is excluded from screen capture, so it can sit in the middle of the screen you are sharing and still not be in what Zoom or Google Meet sends out.

Why the usual workarounds are worse than they look

• Share a window, not the screen. It works until you need to switch to a demo, a browser tab or a second app — and then you are stopping the share mid-sentence to start another one.
• Share a tab in Google Meet. Clean, but your notes window is now behind a full-screen slideshow on the only display you have.
• Second monitor. Fine when you have one. It also drags your eye-line off the webcam by a wide margin, which reads as distraction to everyone on the call.
• Notes on your phone. Every glance down is a glance down, and phones are unmistakable on camera.

How the invisible window works

CueCard is hidden at the operating-system level rather than per app. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, Discord, and screen recordings too — the notes are excluded from capture, so it is not a list you have to be on. There is a Ghost Mode switch in Settings; leave it on and run one practice call to confirm it behaves as you expect on your machine.

Because it is invisible rather than merely out of the way, you can put it where you actually want it: high on the screen, right under your webcam, so your eyes stay near the lens the whole call.

Timing and cues, written into the notes

• [time 05:00] counts down on screen. A thirty-minute slot stays thirty minutes, and you find out you are over while you can still cut something.
• [cue slow down], [cue ask for questions], [cue share the doc] are highlighted in the cue colour and never read aloud — direction, in the middle of the line where you need it.
• Transparency fades the window back over your deck or brings it forward, and it follows your system light or dark theme.

Setting it up before your next call

1. Download CueCard for macOS or Windows — macOS 13 or later, Windows 10 or later, free and open source.
2. Paste your notes in. Presenting from PowerPoint, Keynote, a PDF or nothing at all is fine; if you use Google Slides, the extension syncs the notes for the slide you are on as you advance.
3. Drop [time] markers on the sections that always run long, and [cue] tags on the moments you always forget.
4. Park the window under your webcam and start the call. Share your entire screen if you want to — that is the point.

Then present on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams with the deck going out and nothing else.

Filming rather than presenting? The phone app is the same idea pointed at a camera: a prompter that floats over Instagram, TikTok or whatever else you record in, free on iPhone and iPad.