Review: BetterDisplay – More Display Controls and Better Teleprompter

Last week I reviewed my purchase of an Neewer X12 II Remote Teleprompter. Basically, I like it. (Link)

But the prompter hardware is only part of the solution, you also need a monitor and software to drive it. This sounds easy, but it’s a rabbit hole – because each of us needs something different from a prompter.

For example:

• Do you just need to see text, or do you need to mirror your computer screen?
• Are you only indoors, or do you need a bright monitor to go outdoors?
• Do you need formatting control over the text?
• Do you need a remote control for scrolling the text?
• Do you need to share the script with a team, or have them collaborate in writing it?
• Does the prompter software work with iCloud, or do you need to use their Cloud?
• Do you need to log into the Internet to access your scripts?
• Do you need control over the left and right margins to more closely position the text over the lens?
• Are you using a traditional video monitor or an iPad; because they handle video signals differently.

What I learned is that I have a very specific need for a prompter that may, or may not, apply to you. Here’s what I chose and how I got it to work.

NOTE: Key to getting this system to work is Sidebar. Here’s a tutorial that describes what Sidebar is and how to set it up on your system.

MY CHALLENGES

I need a small prompter that fits on a desk that will principally display my computer screen. That way, I can look directly at the camera and see my slides in a webinar, the On24 interface in an O’Reilly presentation, faces in a Zoom meeting, or talk directly to someone on FaceTime.

Secondarily, every so often I need to scroll a script to record it; for example, my recent thoughts on going to the 2025 NAB Show.

To keep costs down, my Neewer prompter uses an iPad for a monitor. The problem is that while there is a wide variety of prompter software, flipping an iPad screen into “mirror-image” mode is really tricky.

The prompter software that is bundled with the Neewer uses a proprietary iPad app. It is undocumented on the Neewer website, scrolls the text too fast, does not support adjusting left/right margins and is, in general, useless.

After 30 minutes of playing with it, I gave up.

I did not do an exhaustive search, but I did check into four different teleprompter software. None supported displaying a Mac screen on the iPad. None supported the remote control that came with the Neewer prompter. Only one supported adjusting left/right margins and the one that allows margin adjustment requires a subscription, plus uploading all scripts onto their cloud server. I can’t always guarantee that I’ll be attached to the web during production.

For something I thought would be easy – finding prompter software – I was getting a headache.

WHAT I CHOSE

After chasing my tail for a couple of days, I realized that my needs are very simple. All I need was to mirror my main computer display combined with some Mac-based prompter software. Regardless of what I was presenting, it would always be displayed on my Mac screen.

To scroll scripts, I’m using the free version of Teleprompter Pro, from Teleprompter Apps Ltd. (Link) It’s in the MacApp store. I chose this because it allows adjusting left/right margins, scrolls slow enough for me to read and has features I can grow into if I need them. In other words, the bare minimum of its features.

Since all my scripts are created locally and displayed on my Mac screen, the free version works perfectly for this. If I start to create more scripts, I’ll purchase it just to thank the developers for creating it.

NOTE: I don’t run this app on my iPad, I run it on my Mac, then mirror the Mac to the iPad. I then control the prompter – or anything else on my screen – with my mouse. This solves the problem of how to transfer scripts to the iPad.

However, because I’m running this on my computer, I need a way to display the script – along with any other images – onto my iPad. THAT was far harder than I first thought.

CONFIGURING THE IPAD

The iPad does not have a switch that instantly mirror-images the screen. This is necessary because all prompters reflect the monitor/screen/iPad into a mirror so you can read the text and look directly into the lens at the same time.

To flip the Mac screen, I purchased BetterDisplay, from Waydabber (link).

NOTE: They offer a 14-day free trial, which I took advantage of to see if this would work. I’ve now purchased the Pro version, not that I need all the features, but to continue to use the features that I need. Cost: $19.99 (US).

According to their website, BetterDisplay:

• Converts your displays to fully scalable screens
• Manages display configuration overrides
• Allows brightness and color control
• Provides XDR/HDR brightness upscaling (extra brightness beyond 100% for compatible XDR or HDR displays on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs – multiple methods available)
• Full dimming to black
• Helps create and manage virtual screens for your Mac
• Create Picture in Picture windows of your displays and gives you a host of other features to manage your display’s settings like display and color mode easily from the menu bar
• It can even disconnect/reconnect displays on-the-fly!

Notice, in this list, they never mention flipping a monitor image, but it does that, too. Both horizontally and vertically.

All these features are far more than I need – all I want is to feed a flipped image to an iPad. While the configuration is tricky, once it’s set up, I just click one button and, Poof!, instant prompter.

BETTERDISPLAY SETUP

To flip the screen, the app creates a virtual screen, flips that, then uses Sidebar to display the flipped image to the iPad. No, I have no idea how that is done, but it works great.

Download the app from the developer’s website  – or MacUpdate – and install it. It’s compatible with macOS Ventura, Sonoma or Sequoia.

Start the app. Click Open if you downloaded this from the developer’s site.  Installation is straight-forward.

There are about a bajillion options – maybe two bajillion – with this tool. Don’t panic, we only need to configure a few settings. (However, this does amazing things with monitors. If you are curious, here’s a link for more information.)

Once BetterDisplay is running, its icon appears in the menubar (top red arrow). Click Displays and Virtual Screens.

Then click Create New Virtual Screen (lower red arrow).

NOTE: BetterDisplay will ask permission to allow it to control your computer. Click the button to go to Settings, then enable Accessibility for BetterDisplay. It will also ask for one other permission later during setup.

Because we want to mirror the main display of our Mac, choose the second option: “Match aspect ratio of and associate to a display.” Then, from the menu, choose the display you want to mirror (middle red arrow).

Finally, enable the setting indicated by the lower red arrow.

Finally, click the blue Create Virtual Screen button to create the screen.

After a few seconds, this window appears, showing the new Virtual screen. This lives only in memory, there’s nothing for you to see.

NOTE: Enabling this virtual screen on a MacBook Pro took an additional 300 MB of system RAM. So, while some additional memory is required, it doesn’t use a lot. In comparison, Photoshop is currently using 22 GB on my system!

While there is still one setting we need to adjust, we can already see the results on an iPad.

Go to the Focus menu in the top right corner of the menu bar (top red arrow) and click Screen Mirroring (lower red arrow).

Click the icon for the iPad or other device you want to mirror the image; “Larry’s iPad” in my case.

NOTE: A gray icon indicates streaming is not enabled for that device. A blue icon indicates that it is enabled.

The blue button indicates the iPad is actively mirroring your main monitor. In fact, you should now see the desktop mirrored on your iPad.

Next, make sure this is streaming the Virtual display not the main monitor. Click “Mirror Virtual – Built-in Display” – or however you named it earlier in this installation (red arrow).

Then, without closing this Focus window:

• Click Hide Sidebar (lower red arrow)
• Click Hide Touchbar (lowest red arrow). These expand the iPad display to fill the window.

Finally, we need to flip the image.

Click the title: Built In Display (or the name of your source monitor NOT the virtual display!)

Click Stream Display (lower red arrow)

Click the left Flip icon (left red arrow) to reverse the image side to side, or the right icon (right red arrow) to reverse the image top to bottom. For my prompter, I needed to flip this top to bottom.

Whew… that’s a lot of settings.

DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS

The good news is that once you have this set up, all you need to do to toggle the prompter monitor on or off is click the Screen Mirror button in the Focus panel.

Then, click the iPad icon and choose Mirror Virtual – Built-in Display.

To turn mirroring off, go back to Screen Mirror and click the blue button next to the iPad.

SUMMARY

BetterDisplay does FAR more than I need – and most of what it does, I don’t understand. And, I will admit, that the first time I went through this configuration I got totally lost. But, now that I’ve put these instructions together, I can configure an iPad as a teleprompter in less than ten minutes.

The good news is that I can reliably use this setup any time I need a prompter – for text, screen images, or video calls. It wakes up the iPad and turns it into an instant prompter. Cool.

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