open prompter passed 1,000 downloads on the app store. it is still free, still MIT, still has no account, no watermark, and no pro tier waiting to appear.
that last part is the only part worth writing about.
the number that usually comes with a catch#
1,000 is a small number. plenty of apps do that in a day. but most apps that do it are running a clock.
the pattern in this category is well worn. install free. record a take. find the watermark. or the account wall. or the mirror mode that turned out to be a paid feature, discovered after you already set the rig up.
the cost was always there. you met it after the take instead of before the install.
open prompter has none of that, and it has none of it on purpose. no trial that expires. no free tier that gets worse when a paid tier ships. there is no paid tier to ship.
what the license buys you#
MIT is not a badge. it is a guarantee with teeth.
the source is on github. if the app went away tomorrow, or got bought, or turned into a subscription, the version that works today keeps working. you can build it. someone else can ship it. the thing you rely on does not depend on my continued interest.
that is a real answer to a real fear. everyone has lost a tool they liked to a pricing change.
why it stays free#
a teleprompter is text that scrolls, flipped left to right so a beam splitter reads it correctly. that is the product.
there is no server. the app makes no network requests of its own. your files never leave your device, so there is nothing for me to run and nothing to bill you for. charging rent for scrolling text would mean inventing a cost that isn't there.
if you want the longer version of this argument, it is in why a teleprompter should be open source.
what 1,000 people are pointing it at#
the app reads markdown files straight out of a folder you pick once. icloud drive, an obsidian vault, dropbox, anything the ios document picker can reach.
you write the script on your mac. you save it. the phone catches up. there is no paste step and no import step, which means there is no version of your script that lives only inside an app.
that turns out to matter more than any feature. people draft in chatgpt or claude, in markdown, and drop the file in the folder. the app reads it. it does not generate scripts and it is not going to.
what's next#
more of the same, which is the point. bugs get fixed. the license does not change.
if it stops working for you, open an issue. that is the whole support process, and it is public.
thanks for the first thousand.