Read and it moves. Pause and it waits. Lose your place and it finds you again. Speech recognition runs entirely on your phone, so there is nothing to subscribe to and nothing to connect to.
The part everyone gets wrong
Timer based prompters make you chase the text. Reeb listens to what you actually said and moves the highlight to match. The hard part is not hearing you, it is knowing where you are when you go off script.
The highlight follows your actual speech. Stop mid sentence and it holds until you start again.
Record inside the app with the script sitting right under the lens. Video saves straight to Photos.
Both speech engines run on the device. Airplane mode changes nothing. No account, no API key, no server.
Pop the script into a window that stays on top while you use other apps. Drag it, pinch it, park it by the lens.
Write, edit, duplicate and delete as many scripts as you want. All stored on the phone.
MIT licensed. Read every line, change what you want, ship your own version.
Under the hood
There is no language model in here. Two speech recognizers turn sound into words, and a matching algorithm decides where those words land in your script. That is why it responds in milliseconds instead of seconds.
Streams words the instant you say them and drives the scroll. Restarts itself whenever iOS ends a phrase, with a watchdog that revives it if the mic dies.
Open source Whisper re-listens to the last few seconds every three seconds and nudges the position if the fast ear missed something. Needs three words in a row to agree, so noise cannot move the script.
A rolling eight seconds of audio at 16 kHz mono, written from the audio thread and read from the main thread.
Why open source matters here
Teleprompter apps have a habit of changing the deal after you have built a workflow on them. People pay once, then get moved onto a subscription. Features move behind a higher tier. Scripts sync to a server by default. None of that is possible here, and not because of a promise.
Reeb is MIT licensed. Even if a future version went paid, the free version stays free and anyone can keep building it. There is no switch to flip.
Nothing sits behind a tier, because there are no tiers. The whole app is in the repository, so a feature cannot be moved somewhere you have to pay for.
Not a setting you switch off. There is no server, no account and no network code. Your script and your voice physically cannot leave the phone.
If I stop working on it tomorrow, the code is still public and still yours. Apps that shut down take your workflow with them. This one cannot.
Questions
Most apps advertised as free are not, once you use them. They cap script length, stamp a watermark on your video, demand an account before you can scroll a line, or put voice tracking behind a subscription. Reeb is free in the plain sense: no subscription, no account, no watermark, no limits, no paid tier holding anything back. The code is public under the MIT licence, so you can read every line, change it, or ship your own version.
Most teleprompters scroll on a timer and you chase the text. Reeb listens and moves the highlight to match what you actually said. Apps like PromptSmart and VoiceScroll do voice tracking too, but they are closed and paid. VoicePrompter is open source but runs in a browser. Reeb is the one that is native to iPhone and open source at the same time.
Completely. Both speech engines run on the phone itself, so airplane mode changes nothing. No audio, no script and no data ever leaves your device, because there is no server to send it to.
Yes. Reeb has its own camera, so the script sits right under the lens while it films and the finished video saves to Photos. There is also a floating window that stays on top while you use other apps.
TikTok, Instagram and CapCut do not have a built-in teleprompter, which is why people go looking for one. Reeb solves it from the outside: start the prompter, tap Float, then open whichever app you are recording in. The script sits in a small window on top, and it keeps following your voice while you record there. Drag it just under the lens so your eyes stay in the right place, and pinch it to resize.
Yes. The iPhone has no built-in teleprompter, so you need an app. Reeb turns the phone into one on its own, with the script scrolling in time with your voice while the front camera records. Nothing extra is required, though a phone mount helps if you are shooting for long stretches.
A traditional teleprompter puts a screen below a sheet of angled glass. The glass reflects the text up toward the presenter while the camera shoots straight through it from behind, so the speaker reads and looks down the lens at the same time. Software teleprompters like Reeb skip the glass and simply scroll the script on the phone screen next to the lens. Reeb adds mirror mode, which flips the text for anyone who does use a proper beam splitter rig.
Not yet. A free App Store release is planned. For now you need a Mac to build and install it yourself, or you can join the waitlist and get the link the day it opens up.
Right now, yes. Apple only allows apps to be installed from the App Store, from TestFlight, or by building them yourself in Xcode on a Mac. Once Reeb reaches TestFlight or the App Store, anyone will be able to install it with a tap.
It holds its place rather than running ahead. If you talk about something else for a while, it keeps waiting, and the moment you start reading from the script again it searches for where you are and catches up within a few words.
Two engines at once. Apple's on-device recogniser streams words instantly and drives the scrolling, while open source Whisper re-checks the last few seconds in the background and corrects anything the fast engine missed.
Every line is on GitHub, along with the setup steps and the full architecture write-up. MIT licensed, so change whatever you want and ship it.
17 people have already chipped in. Support covers the Apple developer account and the App Store release, so it stays free for everyone.
Reeb is nearly ready. Leave your details and you will get the link the day it opens up, before anyone else.
Count me inReeb is free and open source. 17 people have chipped in to keep it that way.