What a notch teleprompter is
Recent MacBooks have a notch at the top of the screen where the camera sits, and a few Mac apps use the space around it to show a script. Because the text is right next to the lens, you can read while looking almost straight at the camera. It is a simple idea, and it works well on video calls and recordings.
Windows laptops don't have a notch, and the notch prompters you may have seen, such as Moody, Notchie and CueNotch, are Mac-only. Lenslines draws its own notch instead: a black, Apple-style shape at the top center of the screen, directly below your webcam, that holds your script. Moody, Notchie and CueNotch are trademarks of their respective owners. Lenslines is not affiliated with them.
Why the notch position matters for eye contact
On video, people judge eye contact by where your eyes point relative to the lens. Read from the middle of the screen and your eyes drop noticeably, and you look like you're reading. The closer the text is to the camera, the smaller that drop, and the more it looks like you're talking to the person on the other end.
The top center of the screen, right under the webcam, is about as close as text can get on a laptop or monitor. That is where Lenslines puts the notch. Keep the notch fairly narrow so lines stay short, and your eyes move very little as you read. Our guide on how to keep eye contact on video calls goes into more detail.
How the Lenslines notch behaves
- It springs open from a small pill, tucks back into the pill, and slides away when you close it.
- It picks the screen your webcam is on by itself: the built-in laptop screen for an integrated webcam, or the main display for an external webcam.
- A reading-line marker and a soft fade at the top and bottom keep your eyes on the current line. You can adjust where the reading line sits.
- While voice scrolling is on, a glowing voice beam in the notch shows it's hearing you.
- Point at it to pause and move away to continue. Clicking it doesn't take focus from the app you're presenting in.
- Lines that start with # become cues, and you can pick one from the cue list right in the notch.
Move it, resize it, or let it float
A notch that couldn't move would be limiting, because webcams and desks vary. The Lenslines notch is flexible:
- Drag it along the top. Slide the notch left or right along the top of any screen, with a snap back to the center, which is usually where the camera is.
- Move it to another monitor. Drag it to a different screen if your webcam is mounted there. Move under camera, in settings or the tray menu, puts it back under the webcam.
- Resize it. Pull its edges and corners to make it wider, narrower, taller or shorter.
- Pull it down to float. Drag the notch down and it becomes a floating window you can put anywhere, at any size, with adjustable background opacity.
- Dock it again. Push a floating window into the top edge and it turns back into a notch.
Floating mode is useful when you're not on camera at all, such as podcasting or voice-over work. It can also mirror the text horizontally or vertically for teleprompter glass and beam-splitter rigs. Press Ctrl+Alt+M to switch between notch and floating.
More than a notch
The notch is the headline, but the rest of Lenslines is a full teleprompter. Voice scrolling moves the text while you speak and pauses when you pause. Speed runs from 0.2× to 4×, with about 180 words per minute at 1×. You can set a countdown, loop at the end, and resume where you left off. The script library has projects, search, a built-in editor and imports for .txt, .md and .rtf files.
It is also hidden from screen sharing and recording in apps that use Windows' standard capture, which is nearly all of them. So the notch stays private even when you share your whole screen in Zoom, Teams or Google Meet.
Lenslines runs on Windows 11 and Windows 10 (version 2004 or later), uses about 2 to 8 MB of memory while it waits in the tray, and costs $9.99 once. See pricing, or compare it with the Mac app on the Moody alternative page.