Built for PowerPoint. Designed for presenters.
Presenting on camera
How to use a teleprompter without it showing during screen sharing
The problem is simple: the moment you share your whole screen, anything on that screen, including your script, is visible to everyone. The reliable fix is to keep the script out of the screen capture itself, so you can read it while you share your slides and no one else sees it. Here are the approaches people try, where each one falls short, and the method that actually holds up.
The usual ways to hide a script (and where they slip)
Presenter View or a second monitor
Keeps notes off the shared window if you share a single window, but people routinely share the whole screen by mistake, and it pulls your eyes down and to the side, away from the camera.
Printed or sticky notes
Nothing to leak on screen, but your eyes visibly leave the camera, and you lose your place easily.
A phone by the webcam
Keeps your eyes near the lens, but you are managing a second device, and it does nothing for slides you also need to drive.
A physical teleprompter
Purpose-built and effective, but it is extra hardware and setup, and it does not read from your PowerPoint or advance your slides.
Every one of these either risks the script appearing on the shared screen or moves your eyes off camera. A window-only share reduces the leak risk, but it is fragile: the wrong click shares everything.
The reliable method: exclude the script from screen capture
Windows lets an app mark a window to be left out of screen capture. A script window flagged that way stays visible to you on your own display but is omitted from whatever gets shared or recorded, so it never reaches your audience even when you share your entire screen. Because the exclusion happens at the operating-system level, it works the same across meeting apps rather than depending on any one of them.
Two honest boundaries, so you know exactly what this does and does not do: normal screen sharing and recording (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, OBS, the Windows recorder) leave the script out, but a few specialist recorders capture below the Windows level and can still see it, so test a recording first if you are recording rather than presenting live. And it hides the script from the share, not from a person physically standing over your shoulder. On a video call, the share is exactly where it matters.
Where ScriptAssist fits
ScriptAssist is a PowerPoint teleprompter for Windows that uses exactly this capture-exclusion approach. Its On-Camera Script and Overlay views sit beside your webcam and are hidden from screen sharing and recording, so you read every word while looking at the camera and share your whole screen with confidence. The script comes straight from your PowerPoint speaker notes, and with VoiceSync it can scroll itself as you speak.
- Open your deck in ScriptAssist. It reads your speaker notes as your script.
- Choose On-Camera Script so the strip sits beside your webcam, hidden from capture.
- Share your whole screen and present. You read; your audience sees only your slides and your face.
FAQ
Will my script show if I share my whole screen?
No, when the script is excluded from screen capture at the OS level. ScriptAssist keeps its On-Camera and Overlay views out of the capture on Windows, so a whole-screen share stays clean.
Does it work in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex?
Yes, and in any app that captures your whole screen, because the hiding happens at the Windows level. Confirmed in Zoom, Teams, and Webex.
Is the script hidden from recordings too?
Yes for normal recording (Zoom, Teams, Webex, OBS, the Windows recorder). A few specialist recorders capture below the Windows level, so test a recording first if you are recording rather than presenting live.
Does it hide the script from someone sitting next to me?
No. It hides your script from the screen share and the recording, not from a person physically looking at your monitor.
Do I need a second monitor?
No. The script can stay on the same screen you share, right beside your camera.
Keep exploring
On-camera script · PowerPoint teleprompter · Reading a script on Zoom · VoiceSync · vs Presenter View