The cheapest teleprompter rig you will ever own is already on your desk: a webcam or laptop camera, and a browser window with your script in it, placed directly under the lens. For recording videos at a desk — pieces to camera, course lessons, product walkthroughs you will publish — it is a genuinely good setup, and this guide is about arranging it so the reading does not show.
A note on scope before anything else: this is a setup for recorded video, where you can do a second take and choose the best one. That is the job it is good at, and everything below assumes it.
Why the desk rig works better than it should
The webcam's usual weakness — it lives at the top of a screen, close to your face — is precisely what makes it a decent prompter rig. The script can sit closer to the lens than on almost any other setup, because the screen and the camera are already the same object. No glass, no mount, nothing to build: the whole discipline is in where you put the window and how you size the text.
The limits are real too. At desk distance your eyes are close to the lens, so the angle between "reading" and "looking at the viewer" is larger than it would be at two metres — the same words that read as eye contact across a room read as a slightly lowered gaze at arm's length. You cannot remove that entirely on a desk rig; you can shrink it until it stops mattering, which is what the next section is for. The eye contact guide has the full geometry.
Placement: the script goes under the lens, not beside it
Make the browser window narrow and park it at the top of the screen, centred under the camera. Under, not beside — vertical eye movement reads as thought; horizontal eye movement reads as reading. It is one of those asymmetries of the human face that costs nothing to exploit.
Then close the gap between the words and the lens. Shrink the window's height so the text sits in a shallow band right below the camera, and set the active line position high, so the line you are actually reading is the one nearest the lens — TellyPrompter lets you put the reading line where you want it, which on a desk rig means as close to the top of the window as it will go. Between a narrow band of text and a high active line, your eyes end up moving within a few degrees of the lens, which is the whole game.
Push your chair back as far as the desk allows and let the framing be looser, or crop in afterwards. Every centimetre of distance shrinks the eye-line angle further, and desk rigs are usually too close rather than too far.
Text and light at arm's length
Font size still wants to be larger than feels necessary — not for distance this time, but so the words land in glances and your eyes travel less. And remember the screen is a light source pointed at your face: a bright white page at arm's length glows onto you and reflects in glasses. A dark theme with light text fixes both, and photographs better.
The other desk-specific habit: raise the laptop. A laptop on the desk puts the camera below eye level, looking up at you — the least flattering angle available. A stand or a stack of books until the lens is at your eye line, and an external keyboard if you need to type, and the whole shot improves before you touch anything else.
Recording: in the browser or alongside it
You have two clean options and both are fine. TellyPrompter records in the app — MP4 or WebM, depending on the browser, with a split-screen or overlay layout if you want to see yourself — and a take is one press: the mic button starts recording and sets the script following you in the same act. Or run your usual recording software with the prompter simply being the top window; the prompter does not mind, and export of your scripts is free either way.
The reading itself is where the desk rig most needs the scroll to behave, because your hands are on show and the phone-as-remote trick does not exist here. Voice-following means there is nothing to operate once you start: the highlight tracks the word you are saying, waits through pauses and asides, and picks you up when you return. Voice-following uses your browser's speech recognition; TellyPrompter does not run its own speech-recognition service. The browser may process audio on the device or through its vendor's service. This is separate from account storage: scripts can sync when you sign in, and a recording is uploaded only when you sign in and choose Save to account. See how audio and recordings are handled. The honest limit, as ever: voice mode depends on the browser's speech recognition, which Firefox does not provide — constant and sound-level scrolling work there instead.
The setup, in six steps
- Raise the camera to your eye level — a stand or a stack of books under the laptop, and an external keyboard if you still need to type. The below-eye-level webcam angle is the least flattering shot available and it is the first thing to fix.
- Make the script window narrow and park it top-centre, directly under the lens. Under, not beside: vertical eye movement reads as thought, horizontal reads as reading.
- Shrink the window's height and set the reading line high, so the line you are saying sits as close to the camera as the prompter allows.
- Push your chair back as far as the desk lets you and frame looser, or crop in afterwards — every centimetre of distance shrinks the eye-line angle.
- Switch to a dark theme and oversize the text, so the screen stops glowing onto your face and the words land in glances.
- Do one read-aloud pass, then record two takes and pick one. Notifications off first; the second take is nearly always the keeper.
A last check
Before the first real take: camera at eye level, script window narrow and high with the active line near the lens, dark theme, notifications off, chair pushed back, one read-aloud pass done. Then record twice and choose. A desk rig will never be a beam-splitter — but for the videos most people actually record at a desk, it does not need to be, and it is difficult to beat a rig that costs nothing and is always already set up. When you outgrow it, the full setup guide and the iPad rig are the next rungs; the craft of filming yourself carries over whole.