We turned the MacBook notch into a teleprompter

You've seen it on calls. Someone pitches, and every few seconds their eyes slide down to the notes in another window. They know the words, but it reads as reading. The fix has always been a teleprompter: glass in front of the lens, the words on it, eyes on the camera.

A MacBook already has the right spot for one. The camera sits in the notch, at the top middle of the screen, and the notch is where Koi lives now. So in Koi 2.0, the notch itself grows into a teleprompter. Your script rolls right under the lens, a few lines at a time, and your eyes barely move.

1. Hover the notch, open the Tools and pick Teleprompter.
2. Paste or type your script. The last one is kept.
3. Pick how it's paced: your voice, or a steady speed.
4. Press Start. The notch grows down into a black panel under the camera.

The script rolls up through the panel with soft fades at its top and bottom, and the line you're on is the brightest. The pace shows in the notch's left wing. On a Mac without a notch, Koi draws a small one of its own at the top of the screen, and the teleprompter grows down from that.

A fixed scroll speed is the thing everyone hates about teleprompters. You pause to breathe and it runs away; you speed up and you're waiting on it. So the default is your voice. Koi hears you on your Mac with the same speech model it uses for dictation, and keeps the line you're on at the reading spot.

• Speed up, slow down, stop to think: it waits.
• Skip a sentence, or get a word misheard: it doesn't lose you.
• Say a word again: it doesn't pull you back.

If you'd rather set the pace, pick a steady speed from 60 to 260 words a minute. And if Koi can't use the microphone, it scrolls at a steady speed on its own, and tells you so.

A teleprompter on a call is only useful if the call can't see it. While Koi's is on, the notch is hidden from screen capture, so apps like Zoom, Meet and Teams leave it out of what they share or record, whatever else is going on. Share your whole screen in Zoom, Meet or Teams and your script isn't in it. Record a demo with QuickTime and the video shows only what you're demoing.

Your face is still on camera, of course. Keeping the words this close to the lens is what makes the difference there. Our guide to using a teleprompter on Zoom walks through a call from start to end.

Move the pointer over it, or pause, and a small strip shows play or pause, the speed, the text's size, mirror and close. Mirror flips the text for a teleprompter glass. The keys are only taken while it reads and is in front: a click on another app hands them back, so you can still type in the chat.

• Your last script, and how it was paced, its speed, text size and mirror, stay in Koi's settings on your Mac.
• Your voice is heard on the Mac, a few seconds at a time, only to find your place. Nothing heard is kept.
• Neither the sound nor the script is sent anywhere.
• Anonymous usage counts that it opened, started, paused and finished, never the script, and it's a switch in Settings, Privacy & data.

• It keeps one script, the last one, not a library.
• There's no phone remote. You control it from the Mac.
• It's Mac only.
• It isn't sold on its own. It comes with Koi.

If you want a free one, or a phone remote, other apps do that, and we list them in the best teleprompter apps for Mac.

The teleprompter comes with Koi, along with dictation in any app, call recording and an assistant in your notch. Pro is $20 a month, or $7 for a first week. Lifetime is paid once. There's no free trial. More on the teleprompter, or how to use it step by step.