A free macOS teleprompter that highlights your script in real-time as you speak.

Built for streamers, interviewers, presenters, and podcasters.

Download · Features · How It Works · Build

Textream is a free, open-source macOS app that listens to your voice and highlights your script in real-time. It displays your text in a sleek Dynamic Island-style overlay at the top of your screen, a draggable floating window, or fullscreen on a Sidecar iPad — visible only to you, invisible to your audience.

Paste your script, hit play, and start speaking. Words light up as you say them. When you're done, the overlay closes automatically.

Download the latest .dmg from Releases

Or install with Homebrew:

brew install f/textream/textream

Requires macOS 15 Sequoia or later. Works on Apple Silicon and Intel.

Since Textream is distributed outside the Mac App Store, macOS may block it on first open. Run this once in Terminal:

xattr -cr /Applications/Textream.app

Then right-click the app → Open. After the first launch, macOS remembers your choice.

• Real-time voice tracking — On-device speech recognition highlights words as you say them. No cloud, no latency, works offline.
• Dynamic Island overlay — A notch-shaped floating overlay at the top of your screen, inspired by the MacBook Dynamic Island. Sits above all apps.
• Floating window mode — Switch from the pinned notch to a draggable floating window you can place anywhere on screen.
• Glass effect — Enable a translucent frosted glass background for the floating window with adjustable opacity.
• External display / Sidecar — Show a fullscreen teleprompter on an external display or Sidecar iPad. Includes a mirror mode for use with prompter mirror rigs.
• Font customization — Choose from font size presets (S, M, L, XL) and color presets (white, yellow, blue, green, pink).
• Live waveform — Visual voice activity indicator so you always know the mic is picking you up.
• Tap to jump — Tap any word in the overlay to jump the tracker to that position.
• Pause & resume — Go off-script, take a break, come back. The tracker picks up where you left off.
• Adjustable size — Resize the overlay width and text height from Settings (⌘,) to fit your screen.
• Language selection — Choose your preferred speech recognition language. The current language is shown in the title bar.
• Completely private — All processing happens on-device. No accounts, no tracking, no data leaves your Mac.
• Open source — MIT licensed. Contributions welcome.

1. Paste your script — Drop your talking points, interview questions, or full script into the text editor.
2. Hit play — The Dynamic Island overlay slides down from the top of your screen.
3. Start speaking — Words highlight in real-time as you read. When you finish, the overlay closes automatically.

• macOS 15+
• Xcode 16+
• Swift 5.0+

git clone https://github.com/f/textream.git
cd textream/Textream
open Textream.xcodeproj

Build and run with ⌘R in Xcode.

Textream/
├── Textream.xcodeproj
├── Info.plist
└── Textream/
    ├── TextreamApp.swift              # App entry point, deep link handling
    ├── ContentView.swift              # Main text editor UI + About view
    ├── TextreamService.swift          # Service layer, URL scheme handling
    ├── SpeechRecognizer.swift         # On-device speech recognition engine
    ├── NotchOverlayController.swift   # Dynamic Island + floating overlay
    ├── ExternalDisplayController.swift # Sidecar / external display output
    ├── NotchSettings.swift            # User preferences and presets
    ├── SettingsView.swift             # Tabbed settings UI
    ├── MarqueeTextView.swift          # Word flow layout and highlighting
    └── Assets.xcassets/               # App icon and colors

Textream supports the textream:// URL scheme for launching directly into the overlay:

textream://read?text=Hello%20world

It also registers as a macOS Service, so you can select text in any app and send it to Textream via the Services menu.

MIT

Original idea by Semih Kışlar — thanks to him!
Made by Fatih Kadir Akin