set up a bluetooth remote for hands-free prompting

the moment the phone leaves your hand, you lose the controls. mounted on a rig, clamped to a stand across the room, propped behind a beam-splitter. there's no screen to tap. a bluetooth remote puts play, pause, and scroll back in your hand, so you never lean into frame to poke at glass.

why a remote at all#

reaching for the phone mid-take wrecks the take. your eyes leave the lens, your body shifts, and the read restarts. the further the phone, the worse it gets.

a remote fixes the reach problem. you stand where the framing wants you, hands at your sides or holding a prop, and the prompter still does what you tell it. start the scroll, pause to breathe, nudge the speed, jump back after a flub. all without breaking eye contact.

this matters most on two setups. a phone mounted high on a rig where you can't comfortably reach the screen. and a beam-splitter, where the phone sits face-up under the glass and tapping it means smudging the surface you're filming through.

it also keeps your delivery honest. when you know you can pause and resume from where you stand, you stop rushing to beat the scroll. the read slows down to a real speaking pace because nothing's forcing you back to the phone.

pair the remote first#

open prompter doesn't ship hardware. it speaks to whatever bluetooth remote or keyboard you already have. so pairing happens in iOS, not in the app.

that's the standard iOS pairing flow. nothing special. once the remote is connected, open prompter can see its button presses.

bind buttons to actions#

now the fun part. open prompter lets you map the remote's buttons to prompter actions. so a button on a cheap clicker becomes "play" or "scroll" or "jump back."

the actions you can bind:

• play / pause. start and stop the scroll. the one you'll use most.
• scroll. move the script up or down by hand when you want manual control.
• speed up / speed down. nudge the scroll pace without diving into a menu mid-read.
• next / previous section. jump between headings in the script.
• mirror toggle. flip the text for a beam-splitter without touching the phone.
• restart. send the script back to the top.
• jump-to-start-of-take. back to where the current take began. more on this next.

pick the buttons that match how you shoot. a two-button clicker can be play and jump-back. a full bluetooth keyboard gives you every action on its own key.

jump-to-start-of-take is the retake button#

most remotes give you play and pause. this one is different, and it's the reason a remote earns its place on a real shoot.

you're three sentences into a take. you flub a line. instead of stopping, walking to the phone, scrolling back, and finding your mark, you press one button. the script jumps back to where this take started. you reset your delivery and go again.

it's the difference between a retake that costs ten seconds and one that costs a minute and your focus. when you're block-shooting a batch of clips, that time adds up fast.

the volume-button option#

you can also use the iphone's own volume buttons as prompter controls. no extra hardware at all. the volume up and down become bindable actions, same as any remote button.

it's off by default, on purpose.

if you'd rather keep volume as volume, leave it off and use a paired remote. both paths get you hands-free.

which remotes actually work#

you don't need anything branded or expensive. two kinds work:

• a generic bluetooth media remote. the cheap camera-shutter clickers and presentation remotes that show up under any search. they send simple button events, which is all open prompter needs.
• any bluetooth keyboard. a folding travel keyboard or a full-size one. more keys means more actions on dedicated buttons, handy if you bind a lot.

if it pairs to the iphone over Bluetooth and sends key or media events, open prompter can bind it. test the buttons once after pairing so you know which press maps where. some clickers have a forward and back rocker plus a separate shutter key, which is enough for play, jump-back, and a speed nudge on the same little device.

clip the remote to your hand or pocket where you can find it by feel. you don't want to look down to find the right button in the middle of a take.

or skip the hardware entirely#

a remote is one way to go hands-free. voice tracking is the other, and it needs nothing extra. on-device speech recognition listens to your delivery and advances the page when you say the words, tuned by two draggable lines. here's how to set them.

between a remote and voice tracking, you can run a whole shoot without leaning in to touch the screen. pick whichever fits the take.

open prompter is free and open source. if it saved you a reshoot or a subscription, that's the whole idea.