Tellie: the Mac notch teleprompter that highlights your actual words as you speak, so you can keep your eyes on what matters, even while you ad-lib, go back or jump ahead.

Problem You're recording a video or presenting on Zoom and your eyes keep darting to notes off-screen. Existing teleprompters scroll at a fixed speed, require internet, show up when you share your screen, or cost $15-59/month. Tellie listens. It tracks the actual words you say, not just the sound of your voice, highlights exactly where you are, and stays with you if you skip ahead, go back, or improvise. Tellie lives in the MacBook notch or detach and float anywhere. Invisible to Zoom, screen recorders, and screenshots. ~50 languages, all on-device. No account, no telemetry. Working actors are using it, including Sprague Theobald (Law & Order, Only Murders in the Building, FBI, Poker Face), who uses Tellie for audition prep. NEW: Presenter Mode (Pro). It listens while you pitch, too. Just present in Keynote, and your speakers notes automagically appear in the notch, invisible to your audience and your recording. With voice-follow, as you finish your thought, your next slide is already there. No clicker, no keyboard, no second monitor required. The bigger idea, and the reason I keep building: Tellie is your second screen that listens. It holds what you need to glance at while your attention is committed elsewhere (the camera, the room, your slides), and it reacts to what it hears. A teleprompter is just its first shape. It listens to your voice to know when to scroll; to know when to change your slides, and it can even listen to the apps, agents and automations on your Mac and surface a heads-up when something needs you. Same idea, more shapes to come: interview notes, teaching cues, sales pitches, maybe even a nudge about that point you forgot to make. Comparison First, the distinction that sorts this whole category, because it's the thing most comparisons miss. Most "voice" teleprompters (CueNotch, Moody, Notchie, NotchPrompter) do voice PACING: they speed up and slow down the scroll when they hear you talk. They don't know which word you're on, so skip a line, ad-lib, or jump back and they lose you. That's the older approach. It's fine if you read straight through, and CueNotch in particular is well-made and popular. It's just not the same technology. Tellie does word-level TRACKING: on-device speech recognition matches the actual words you say to your script and highlights exactly where you are, so you can wander off and it stays with you. A few other apps do this too. Here's the honest rundown of the word-follow ones, since those are the real comparison: Telepront (free): also word-level and on-device, genuinely good. It floats over your apps rather than living in the notch, and it's a focused single-purpose tool, no pace reports, playlists, per-script memory, or Presenter Mode. If you just want a prompter for free, it's a real option. Textream (free, open-source): word tracking in a Dynamic Island overlay. Two catches for non-technical users: it requires macOS 15 (Sonoma users are out), and it isn't notarized, so first launch means a Terminal command and a right-click-to-open. Tellie runs on macOS 14+, is fully notarized (one click), and auto-updates. VoicePrompter: word tracking plus a sound mode, on-device, lots of languages. It's subscription (about $3/mo on the native app) and isn't notch-native. Tellie is a one-time purchase and lives in the notch. Where Tellie is different across all of them: it's notch-native, the free tier is a full teleprompter (not a trial), Pro is one-time (no subscription), and there's a real workflow around the tracking, live pace reports after every take (WPM, longest pause, where you stumbled), multi-script playlists, one-key retake (⇧R), per-script settings memory, markdown section navigation, OpenDyslexic font, Developer tools, Presenter Mode for Keynote, and a lot more to come. Pricing Tellie Free: $0 forever. Full teleprompter with auto-scroll, mirror, opacity 10-100%, invisible to Zoom, PDF/RTF/Markdown, auto-updates. Tellie Pro: $19 right now (goes to $29 on Friday) One-time purchase, no subscription. Voice-follow in ~50 languages, pace report, playlists, per-script memory, one-key retake, section nav, thin-strip mode, global hotkeys, float anywhere. Up to 3 Macs. 14-day refund. Download: https://tellieapp.com Pro: https://tellieapp.com/pro Disclosure (per the sub's transparency rules, so you know who's behind this): I'm Steve Chazin, a real person, with 30 years in tech, including Apple, Cisco, and Salesforce LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chazin I run a blog about "AI for the Rest of Us" at stevechazin.com Tellie is made by my company, Skytech, and I can be reached at steve@skytech.io My site has a Privacy Policy and Terms No account, no tracking, everything runs on-device. I ship updates most weeks, so if something's missing or feels off, tell me and I'll try to build it. Feedback wanted, especially on voice-follow with non-American accents and non-English languages. Thanks! -- Steve