Where to look on a video call to make real eye contact

Most advice says “look at the camera.” The research says something more useful: look just below it. Here's how big that target is, why the middle of your screen misses it, and how to put what you need to read inside it.

What the research says

In a 2025 study published in the Journal of Vision, researchers photographed actors looking at 11 vertical positions from 7° above to 7° below a camera, then asked participants which images felt like eye contact. The result ran against the usual advice: perceived eye contact peaked when the actor looked about 2° below the lens, not directly into it (Gao et al., “Don't look at the camera”). The study used viewing distances of 20–24 inches, close to how people sit at a laptop or monitor.

That fits older work. Milton Chen's 2002 CHI paper found people are an order of magnitude less sensitive to gaze that falls below their eyes than to gaze that drifts left, right or above. Looking slightly low is forgiving. Looking sideways or far down is not.

How big is 2° on a laptop?

The distance that corresponds to an angle depends on how far you sit from the screen. The math is simple: offset = distance × tan(angle).

So the eye-contact “sweet spot” is a strip about two centimetres tall, directly under the camera. Everything else on your screen is further away than it feels. Try your own setup with the eye contact calculator.

Why notes in the middle of the screen give you away

On a 14-inch MacBook Pro the display is about 19.6 cm tall, so its centre sits roughly 10 cm below the camera. At 55 cm that's a gaze angle of about 10°, five times the sweet spot and outside the range the 2025 study even tested. A document, a slide's speaker notes or a floating teleprompter window placed there will read on camera as looking down.

The faces on the call are usually there too. That's the core problem with video calls: the thing you naturally want to look at is never where the camera is.

What to do instead

1. Put what you read right under the camera

If you're reading a script or glancing at talking points, move them into the top strip of the screen, centred under the lens. Keep the text short and wide rather than tall: every extra line pushes your eyes further down.

2. Keep the reading area narrow

Horizontal eye movement is what people notice most, per Chen's findings. A narrow column centred on the camera keeps side-to-side scanning small. Long lines that stretch across the screen make your eyes sweep.

3. Look at the faces when you're listening

Eye contact matters most when you're speaking. When someone else talks, looking at their face on screen to read their reaction is normal, and it's what people do in person too.

4. Sit a little further back

The further you sit, the smaller the angle for the same offset on screen. Moving from 45 cm to 65 cm makes everything on your screen look about a third closer to the lens.

How Cuey uses this

We built Cuey around this geometry. Its default placement puts the prompt directly under the camera, and it can also sit at the notch, beside the camera, or float anywhere. In the compact size the current line sits roughly 1.5–3 cm below the lens on a MacBook, which works out to about 2–3° at a normal viewing distance. The exact figure depends on your screen, the text size and how far you sit.

Because the reading area is small, Cuey shows one line at a time and moves on as you finish it. With Voice Follow, it listens and advances when you reach the next line, so you never glance down to scroll.

Summary

• “Look at the camera” is close, but the best target is just below it: about 2°.
• On a laptop that's a strip about 2 cm tall under the lens.
• Anything in the middle of the screen, including faces and notes, puts you about 10° low.
• Put what you read in that strip, keep it narrow, and look at faces while you listen.