The best Zoom teleprompter setup on Mac

A Zoom teleprompter on Mac only works if three things line up: the faces on the call, your notes, and the camera. By default Zoom puts faces in the middle of the screen and your notes end up in another window below that. Both pull your eyes down and away from the lens.

Why notes on Zoom make you look down

On a 14-inch MacBook Pro, the centre of the screen is about 10 cm below the camera. At a normal 55 cm viewing distance that's a gaze angle of about 10°. A 2025 study in the Journal of Vision found viewers perceive the strongest eye contact when you look about 2° below the lens (Gao et al.). At laptop distance, that's a strip only about 2 cm tall.

The usual workarounds miss that strip:

• A document beside Zoom sits low and to the side. Sideways glances are the ones people notice most.
• Full-screen gallery view spreads faces across the whole display, so the person you're answering can be far from the lens.
• Sticky notes around the bezel are outside the screen entirely, so every glance is a big eye movement.

The fix is placement, not willpower. For the eye-contact side of this in depth, see how to make eye contact on Zoom. The rest of this page is the full setup.

How Cuey fits into a Zoom call

Cuey is a Mac teleprompter that lives in the menu bar and shows your script in a small window. Its default placement is Under Camera, so the line you're reading sits in the eye-contact strip, with the Zoom window just below it. It's a window on your screen, not a camera effect, so it isn't part of your video feed.

CueyFileEdit

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Here's what we shipped this week.

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···

Pick the mode by the kind of call:

• Notes for live meetings. You step forward and back through talking points yourself, so it never runs ahead when someone interrupts.
• Follow for scripted parts, such as a pitch opening or a demo walkthrough. It listens and advances as you read. The voice-controlled teleprompter guide covers it.

Set up your Zoom teleprompter in 3 steps

1. 1

   Move Zoom under the camera

   Leave full screen, resize the meeting window to about a quarter of the screen width, and drag it to the top centre. Click the view button at the top right and pick Speaker view. Then hover over your own video, click the ellipses and choose Hide Self View. Zoom applies that per meeting, so repeat it each call (Zoom Support).
2. 2

   Load your notes into Cuey

   Copy your talking points and press ⇧⌘V to quick-paste them. Keep the Under Camera placement and the Compact size, and choose Notes mode. One short line per point.
3. 3

   Start before you join

   Press ⇧⌘P to start the teleprompter. Use the ‹ › arrows to move between points, and ⌥⌘T (or the Cuey menu bar icon) to hide Cuey when you just want to listen.

Prefer a smaller Zoom footprint? Zoom's floating thumbnail window keeps video on top of other apps while the main window is minimised (Adjusting your video layout). Park it just below Cuey.

Zoom teleprompter checklist before you join

• Zoom window out of full screen, small, top centre.
• Speaker view on. Hide Self View once the meeting starts.
• Talking points pasted into Cuey, one short line each, Notes mode, Under Camera.
• Slides open in their own window, ready to share on their own.
• A 20-second test: look at the Cuey line, then the middle of the screen, in Zoom's video preview. The difference is easy to see.

Presenting on Zoom: share a window, not your screen

When you present, click Share, and in the Screens tab pick the single app window with your slides rather than the whole desktop (Zoom Support). If you share your entire screen, anything on it can be visible, including a teleprompter. The guide to keeping a teleprompter out of a screen share covers second-display setups and the other options. For Zoom-specific features, see Cuey for Zoom.