Here's a thing that should not be as hard as it is.
You're a solo creator. You make YouTube videos, or TikToks, or Instagram Reels. You film yourself with your phone or a camera pointing at you. You write scripts because winging it leads to forty-minute rambles you then have to edit down to three minutes.
You need a teleprompter. But you're not filming on a broadcast news set. You have no crew. Nobody to scroll for you. And you're probably not looking to spend money on hardware or expensive software before you even know if it'll actually help.
What you need is a voice-activated teleprompter that works on your phone, is free, doesn't require you to set up an account, and actually works. And finding that has been, for a very long time, genuinely annoying.
What Voice-Activated Actually Means (And Why It Matters)
A lot of apps advertise "automatic scrolling." What they mean is: you set a speed, and the text scrolls at that speed constantly. That's not voice-activated. That's just auto-scroll.
Real voice activation means: you speak, the text follows what you're saying. When you pause, the scroll pauses. When you resume, it resumes. The scroll position is matched to your actual speech, not to a timer.
This matters enormously in practice. With auto-scroll, if you speed up slightly or slow down slightly, you fall out of sync with the text. If you pause to take a breath, the text keeps scrolling and you've lost your place. If you take a sip of water, the text has moved two paragraphs while you weren't talking.
With real voice scrolling, the text is always on the right line because it's tracking your actual words. You can pace yourself naturally. You can pause for emphasis. You can improvise a line and then come back to the script.
VoicePrompter Web App: What It Is and Why It's Free
VoicePrompter is a free, open-source web app I built because I couldn't find anything like it that actually worked.
The reason it's free and open source is straightforward: I built it to solve my own problem, and it seemed wrong to charge for it when the solution is a web app that costs basically nothing to host. The code is on GitHub if you want to look at it.
Here's what it does:
Voice-activated scrolling using your device's built-in speech recognition. It works via your browser's native speech API, which means the recognition happens on your device — no audio ever leaves your phone or laptop. It supports 20+ languages and doesn't require you to select a language manually (though you can).
Works completely offline. Once you've opened the app, you can turn off your WiFi and it keeps working. This is useful if you're filming somewhere with spotty internet, or if you just don't want to depend on a connection.
Installable as a PWA. On iPhone or Android, you can add VoicePrompter to your home screen and it works like a native app. On a Mac or Windows, you can install it as a progressive web app through Chrome. No App Store, no Play Store, no download required.
Mirror mode. If you use an actual teleprompter glass (the half-mirror hardware that goes in front of your camera lens), the mirror mode flips the text horizontally so it reads correctly in the reflected display.
Landscape lock on iOS. iOS doesn't normally let web apps force landscape orientation. VoicePrompter handles this, which matters a lot if you're filming in landscape and want your teleprompter in landscape too.
Visual stop signs and active word highlighting. You can add pause indicators to your script and see the currently-read word highlighted as you go.
Touch to jump. Tap any word in the script and the prompter instantly snaps to that position. Useful when you want to re-record a section without scrolling back manually.
"Prompter restart" voice command. Say "prompter restart" and the script resets to the beginning, hands-free. Especially useful when filming alone.
What It Doesn't Do (And Why That's Fine)
The web app doesn't support quite as many languages as the Mac version (20+ vs 60+), and the voice recognition algorithm isn't as advanced as what I built into the native Mac app. For recording professional demos, webinars, or presentations on a Mac, the Mac version is significantly better.
But for solo creators filming on a phone? The web app is plenty. The recognition is solid. The interface is built for speed — paste a script, go.
How to Get Started in Under Two Minutes
- Open voiceprompter.app on your phone or browser.
- Paste your script using the "Paste to Replace" button.
- Adjust font size and spacing until the text is comfortable to read at your filming distance.
- Turn on speech recognition (the microphone button).
- Start talking.
That's it. No account. No sign-up. No tutorial you have to sit through.
If you want to use mirror mode for a teleprompter glass, there's a toggle for that. If you want to lock landscape orientation, toggle that too. The interface is minimal by design — the whole point is to get out of the way and let you record.
Customizing It for Your Setup
A few settings that make a real difference:
Font size: Bigger than you think you need. If you're filming from three feet away, you want to be able to read comfortably without squinting. On a phone screen, I use a font size of at least 40.
Line spacing: Generous spacing between lines makes it easier to scan quickly without losing your place. I use 1.5–2x.
Scroll position: There's a "look-ahead" setting that controls how far above center the active line appears. Adjusting this lets you tune how much upcoming text you can see before you get there.
Dark mode: If you're filming against a light background and you don't want the phone screen to create a visible light source, dark mode significantly reduces the glow.
For Mac Users: The Native Version
If you're a creator who uses a Mac for recording — whether you're recording screencasts, demos, podcasts, or video content — you'll want the native Mac app instead.
It has more advanced voice recognition, 60+ language support, the invisible overlay mode for screen sharing, and the always-on-top functionality. I cover all of that in the best teleprompter app for Mac article.
For everything else — phone recordings, desktop web use, PWA installs — the web app at voiceprompter.app is what you want.
Related articles: