A prompter built into one app’s record screen works right up until you film somewhere else — and creators film somewhere else constantly. The native camera for a better-looking take, an editor for the version with b-roll, a live stream, a second platform that gets the same script tomorrow. The words should follow you across all of it.
That is the whole argument for a floating teleprompter. CueCard Teleprompter is a window that sits on top of whatever app is in front of it, so the same script reads over TikTok, over your camera, over a stream, without being rewritten or pasted anywhere new.
Where an in-app prompter runs out
- You are filming in the camera app. Shooting outside TikTok for the footage you want, then uploading, means the in-app prompter is not there at all.
- You are going live. A live stream is not the record screen, and lives are precisely where forgetting your third point costs the most.
- You are posting the same script twice. A cut for TikTok and a version for Reels means retyping the script into a second app’s prompter, and the two drift apart on the first edit.
- You need direction, not just words. “Say this” is half the job. “Smile here, pause here, slow down for the price” is the half that makes it watchable.
One script, saved once
Write the script in CueCard, name it, and it stays in your library. Open it tomorrow for the second cut, next week for the follow-up, or right now for the take you are about to reshoot for the fourth time. Nothing is retyped, and there is only ever one copy to edit.
Inside the script, cues carry the delivery. [cue hook], [cue pause], [cue point at the product] — each drawn in its own colour, each unmistakably a direction rather than a line. Type [ and the tag writes itself. You choose the colour, so cues stand as far from the script as you want.
Making 30 seconds actually fit into 30 seconds
Short-form runs on length discipline, and the two settings that enforce it are both in the app:
- A start delay counts you in, so the recording does not open on you reaching for the button.
- A timer counts down while you talk. You find out you ran eleven seconds long while you are still standing there, not in the edit.
Set the scroll speed in lines per minute and match it to how you actually talk. You can pause it and start it again at any time, so a line that needs another beat does not cost you the take.
The setup that keeps it off camera
The floating window can be wide, square or tall, with its own text size, and you park it where it does not cover the part of the frame you are composing. It is a window on your screen, not something in front of the lens, so it is not in the footage. If you are screen recording rather than filming, hide it first.
Push it as close to the front camera as it will go and keep it small. Short glance, short tell.
Get it
CueCard Teleprompter is free on iPhone and iPad — iOS 17 or later, no subscription, MIT licensed and open source on GitHub — with Android coming soon. The iPad version reads like a proper studio prompter at arm’s length. The same window floats over Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and everything else.
Try it on your phone, or see how TikTokers use it.