If you present from slides, you’ve probably leaned on PowerPoint’s Presenter View. And if you’ve ever watched a polished on-camera speaker, you’ve seen a teleprompter at work. They sound similar — both put your words in front of you — but they’re built for different situations. Here’s how to tell which one you actually need.
What Presenter View is
Presenter View is PowerPoint’s built-in “behind the scenes” display. On your screen you see the current slide, what’s coming next, a timer, and your speaker notes; the audience sees only the slides. It’s free, it’s already installed, and for in-person presenting from a podium it’s excellent.
Its limitation is where it puts your notes: off to the side, on a second display. That’s fine when your audience is in the room looking at a projector. It’s a problem when your audience is a webcam.
What a teleprompter is
A teleprompter puts your script directly in your line of sight to the camera, so reading and looking at your audience are the same motion. It scrolls (by pace, pedal, or — in modern software — your voice), and it’s designed around one job: letting you read every word while appearing to look straight ahead.
The trade-off historically was hardware: glass, a mount, a rig. Software teleprompters remove that, which is what makes them practical for everyday video calls.
The real difference: where are your eyes?
That’s the whole decision, really.
- Presenting in a room? Your audience is in front of you, not behind a lens. Presenter View’s off-to-the-side notes are invisible to them, so it’s perfect.
- Presenting on camera? Anything off to the side pulls your eyes away from the lens — the classic “they’re reading” look. A teleprompter beside the camera fixes that.
There’s also a second on-camera gotcha Presenter View doesn’t address: if you share your whole screen on Zoom or Teams, you have to be careful not to share your notes along with it. A teleprompter built for screen sharing stays off the shared screen entirely.
Can you use both?
Often, yes. Plenty of presenters use Presenter View for in-room talks and switch to a teleprompter setup for recorded or virtual ones. The point isn’t that one is “better” — it’s matching the tool to the geometry of the room (or the lack of one).
Where ScriptAssist fits
ScriptAssist is a teleprompter built specifically for presenting from PowerPoint on camera. It uses the same speaker notes Presenter View shows, but puts them beside your webcam and hides them from your screen share. If you want the head-to-head details — eye contact, single-monitor, voice scrolling, and more — we put them side by side in PowerPoint Presenter View vs. ScriptAssist.
The bottom line
Presenter View is the right tool for the podium; a teleprompter is the right tool for the camera. If most of your presenting now happens on a video call, a teleprompter that reads your PowerPoint notes — and stays invisible to your audience — is the upgrade that makes reading look like connecting.
See how ScriptAssist’s PowerPoint teleprompter works, or start a free trial.