Teleprompter Software for Hardware Rigs

Physical teleprompter rigs — the kind you see in professional broadcast studios, used by journalists, executives, and filmmakers — work by reflecting text off a half-silvered beam-splitter glass mounted in front of the camera lens. The glass is angled so the camera looks through it while the operator reads the reflection. Because the text is reflected, it must be horizontally mirrored in software before reaching the glass — otherwise every word reads backwards.

Most Mac teleprompter apps don't support this at all. Workarounds involve editing CSS in a browser, flipping an external display, or using a third-party mirror utility that introduces lag and compatibility issues. Avocado handles it natively: a single Mirror Text toggle in Settings → Prompter flips the prompter content horizontally so your rig reads it correctly. The stats pill mirrors independently, so word count and speed remain legible from the operator position outside the rig.

Voice-activated scrolling works the same in mirrored mode. Your Mac's on-device speech recognition drives the scroll speed while the text is flipped — there's no degradation in responsiveness or accuracy. If you use a remote operator on set, Director Mode lets them control play, pause, scroll speed, and position from any phone or laptop on the same Wi-Fi. For compact single-operator rigs, you can also use the Teleprompter Viewer to display the mirrored feed directly on a phone or tablet mounted in the rig — no second Mac required.

Avocado works with any beam-splitter rig that connects to a Mac display output: dedicated prompter monitors, iPad mounts, budget glass kits, and studio-grade broadcast hardware alike. The only requirement is that your Mac's display (or an external monitor connected to it) is the source the glass reads from.