Why Is My Teleprompter Not Visible? Overlay, Text and Display Problems on iPhone, and the Fix for Each

You open the teleprompter, tap record, and either the script is not on the screen at all, it is there but unreadable, or it reads backwards. Every one of those has a boring cause and a thirty-second fix. This is the troubleshooting post the series has been promising since the teleprompter mistakes round-up: nine 'teleprompter not visible' situations, in the order they actually happen, written around the free iPhone app Teleprompter: Camera Overlay but mostly true of any overlay-style prompter.

One framing note before the list. A camera-overlay teleprompter puts the script over the live camera preview, next to the front lens, so your eyes stay on the lens while you read. That is a different animal from a mirrored rig in front of a DSLR, and several 'not visible' complaints come from expecting one to behave like the other.

1. There is no camera preview, so there is nothing for the script to float over

Symptom: a black or blank screen with controls but no picture of you, and the script either missing or sitting on a black background. Cause: the app has not been allowed to use the camera. iOS asks once, on first launch; tap 'Don't Allow' by mistake and the preview never appears again until you change it.

• Open Settings on the iPhone, scroll to the app's name, and switch Camera on. Do the same for Microphone if you plan to use voice-driven scrolling.
• If the app is not listed under Settings yet, it has never asked. Delete it and reinstall, then say yes to the prompt.
• Screen Time content restrictions can block camera access for every app at once. Check Settings, then Screen Time, then Content & Privacy Restrictions, then Camera.

2. The script is there, but the text is too small to read at arm's length

Symptom: a grey smear of text over the preview that you can only read by bringing the phone to your face, which defeats the point. Cause: the text size is set for editing, not for reading from a tripod a metre away. The app has an adjustable text size; turn it up until you can read a line comfortably from where you will actually stand, then go one step larger, because you will be looking at the lens, not focusing hard on the words.

The font size and readability post has the full method, including the rule that fewer words per line beats a bigger screen. Short version: if you are squinting, the size is wrong, not your eyesight.

3. The text is 'invisible' against a bright background

Symptom: the script is readable indoors but vanishes when you film by a window, outside, or in front of a white wall. Cause: light text over a bright live preview has no contrast. The overlay is drawn on top of whatever the camera sees, and a sunlit room is a lot of white.

• Turn the phone's screen brightness up before you record; auto-brightness often sits lower than you think indoors.
• Move so that the part of the preview under the script is darker: a plain wall or a bookshelf rather than sky or a lamp.
• Make the text bigger. Large letters survive low contrast far better than small ones.

4. The script reads backwards or upside down

Symptom: perfectly visible text, every letter reversed. Cause: mirror mode is on. Mirror mode exists for beam-splitter rigs, where the phone lies flat under a piece of angled glass and the reflection flips the text back to normal. Used with the phone upright on a tripod, it flips text that was already the right way round. Switch mirror mode off for hand-held and tripod recording and on only when the phone goes into a rig. If you built your own rig, the mirror mode and DIY rigs post covers which way the glass should face.

5. 'The teleprompter is not visible in my recorded video'

This one is not a fault. Symptom: you record, open the clip in Photos, and the script is gone; only you are in the frame. That is by design. The script is an overlay on the screen you look at while recording; the saved video is a clean portrait 4K clip with no text on it, which is exactly what you want for Reels, Shorts and TikTok. There is no setting to burn the script into the footage, and no watermark either.

If you wanted on-screen captions, that is a separate job for your editor or the platform's caption tool; the teleprompter's text is for you, not the viewer. If your deliverable must show exact wording on screen (a legal disclaimer, say), plan the caption step up front.

6. The text is visible but will not scroll when you speak

Symptom: voice-follow mode is selected, you start talking, and the script sits still. The app scrolls by listening to you with Apple's on-device speech recognition and matching the words it hears against the script, so if it hears nothing or hears the wrong language, nothing moves.

• Microphone permission. Same Settings page as the camera. Without it the recogniser is deaf and the scroll never starts.
• Language. The app detects the script's language automatically and uses whichever languages iOS supports for on-device recognition. A script typed in one language and read aloud in another, or a mixed-language script, confuses the match. Keep one language per script.
• Distance and noise. The phone's microphone is three metres away at the far end of a tripod shot, next to a fan. Move closer, or switch to classic auto-scroll with the speed slider for that take.
• Reading too far off-script. Ad-libbing a whole paragraph gives the recogniser nothing to match. It does find your place again when you return to the written words, but it cannot follow text that is not there.

If voice-follow stays unreliable in a particular room, that is a legitimate reason to use auto-scroll for the session rather than fight it. Both modes are there precisely because neither suits every situation.

7. Teleprompter screen warp: the text looks bent or doubled

Symptom: on a rig, the reflected text curves, ghosts or doubles, especially at the edges. This is a glass problem, not a software one. Cheap beam-splitter 'glass' is often acrylic, which bows slightly and reflects a warped image; thin uncoated glass gives a faint second reflection from its back surface, which reads as doubled text. Fixes, in rising order of cost: seat the glass flat in its frame; keep the script in the centre of the screen so the warped edges carry no words; replace the sheet with proper beam-splitter glass. With the phone upright and no glass at all, there is no warp to fix, which is one argument for the overlay approach when you do not need a big camera.

8. 'I cannot see how long the script is' and other timing questions

People searching for a video script timer usually want to know whether the script fits the slot before they press record. A commonly cited range for conversational on-camera delivery is roughly 130 to 160 words a minute, so a 60-second video is about 140 words and a 90-second one about 200. Count the words in your notes app, divide by 140, and you have the running time within ten seconds either way. The ideal script length post does the arithmetic for each platform.

With voice-driven scrolling the question partly disappears, because the script moves at the speed you actually talk. With auto-scroll, set the slider by reading the first paragraph aloud and adjusting until the line you are saying stays in the middle of the box.

9. The whole app is dim, laggy or gone

• Low Power Mode dims the screen and can make the preview feel sluggish. Turn it off for the recording session, then back on.
• Thermal throttling. Recording 4K in direct sun heats the phone; iOS reduces screen brightness first. Shade the phone or record shorter takes.
• An ad closed the view. The free version shows occasional ads; your script is still in the scripts list and the take is in the takes library. The one-time purchase removes ads if that keeps happening mid-session.
• You are on Android. Teleprompter: Camera Overlay is iOS-only, so it is not in the Play Store. That is not a bug.

When the app is not the problem

Some 'cannot see the teleprompter' complaints are really about the setup. A phone mounted too high means the script sits above your natural eyeline and you tilt your head to find it; mount the lens at eye level. A tripod two and a half metres away makes any phone-sized text hard to read, and the honest fix is a shorter distance, not a bigger font. Glasses sometimes reflect the bright script box as a glow the camera sees; angle the key light. And if you can see the words perfectly but still sound like you are reading, that is a delivery issue, which the how to sound natural drills cover. One class of problem you can rule out entirely: the app runs offline, with speech recognition, scripts and takes all on the phone, so there is no account, login or network to troubleshoot.

Where the series goes next

Three of the nine problems above (contrast, brightness, thermal dimming) are really lighting problems in disguise, so the next post covers the best teleprompter settings for different lighting conditions, from a daylight window to a single ring light in a dark room, and why the settings that work at noon fail at night.