The teleprompter we built so you'd never lose your place
Three weeks after Podcastr's beta launch, a podcaster called Sarah sent us a message that stuck with me. 'I've got my outline in one window, Riverside open in another, and I'm trying to remember what comes next while my guest is talking.' She wasn't alone. Every day, we heard versions of the same problem: creators were juggling too many screens, losing their train of thought, and recording multiple takes because they kept blanking on what they meant to say next.
The tab-switching tax
When we first sketched out Podcastr, the vision was clear: bring everything together. One app for recording, transcribing, editing, and publishing. But we missed something obvious until we watched people actually use it. They'd hit record, then immediately minimise the app to peek at their script. Alt-tab to Notion. Alt-tab back. It was killing the rhythm of their episodes. The best podcasts sound effortless because the host knows where they're going; the worst ones sound stilted because the host is mentally drowning. We were making creators do both at once. That's when we realised the teleprompter wasn't a nice-to-have. It was foundational.Building it inside RecordView
The obvious move would have been to say 'use a second monitor' or 'put your script on your phone.' We didn't want obvious. We wanted creators to hit record and have everything they needed right there. So we baked the teleprompter straight into RecordView, the recording interface itself. Now when you're recording, your outline or script sits alongside your video feed and your guest's video feed. You can adjust the text size, scroll at your own pace, even set a specific section to loop if you need to nail one bit. The teleprompter isn't hiding in a menu. It's part of the same view where you're actually recording. No tab switches. No distractions. Just you, your thoughts, and your script in one place.The solo podcaster's real problem
Most of the creators we built Podcastr for aren't running massive operations. They're solo hosts with day jobs, or small teams putting out shows for their brands. They don't have a producer feeding them cues through an earpiece. They don't have a studio with three monitors. They're sitting at a desk with a laptop, trying to sound natural while managing a dozen variables at once. A teleprompter in RecordView solved for that reality. It meant a solo podcaster could prepare a strong outline, keep it visible while recording, and focus on what actually matters: the conversation and the delivery. We've watched episode quality improve just because creators aren't visibly stressed about remembering what comes next.It changes how you prepare
Something unexpected happened once the teleprompter went live. People stopped writing full scripts. Instead, they built outlines. Keywords, section headers, quotes they wanted to hit. The teleprompter gave them permission to prepare less rigidly and perform more naturally. Sarah, the creator from our first message, sent us a follow-up note after using it for a month. 'I'm not reading anymore. I'm glancing.' That's exactly what we wanted. The teleprompter isn't meant to make podcasting feel like a news broadcast. It's meant to let creators hold the shape of their episode while sounding like themselves.Part of a larger system
The teleprompter works because it exists inside an app that handles the rest of your podcast too. You record with it visible. Then you step into the same app for transcription (powered by OpenAI Whisper), which auto-generates your show notes. That transcript becomes the basis for the short clips you extract for social media. Everything builds on what came before. You're not exporting files, signing into another platform, or manually copying timecodes. The workflow is continuous. That's the real reason we integrated the teleprompter into RecordView rather than making it a separate tool. It needed to be part of the whole system, because podcasting is a system, not a collection of separate tasks.When we started building Podcastr, we thought the hard problem was hosting and distribution. Turned out the hard problem was the moment just before you hit record. What do you do differently when everything you need is already in front of you?