DEV Community

DNYANTRA
DNYANTRA

Posted on

I built a macOS Teleprompter with Electron (Don't kill me 😅)

Hi Devs! 👋

I'm Mayur. It's 2:15 AM here in Pune, India. 🇮🇳
I have to log into my "real" software engineering job in about 6 hours.

But I just shipped my side project, and I wanted to share the technical journey before I pass out.

The App: CamPrompter 🎥

It's a transparent teleprompter overlay for macOS. It lets you read scripts/notes while looking directly at the webcam lens during Zoom/Meet calls.

The Tech Stack: Electron ⚡️

I know, I know. "Electron is heavy." "Why not Swift?"

Honest answer: I wanted to ship fast, and I know JS better than I know Swift.

The Technical Challenge 🛠

The hardest part wasn't the text scrolling. It was Hardware Control.

I wanted to let users lock their Webcam Auto-Focus and Exposure directly from the app.

I had to bridge Electron with native UVC (USB Video Class) drivers to send hex commands directly to the webcam hardware.

The "Click-Through" Problem

Another pain point with Electron was making the window transparent and "click-through" so users can still interact with the Zoom window behind the text.

I managed to solve it, but I'm still optimizing the performance.

The Ask 🙏

I'm currently sitting at $0 revenue and running on caffeine.

If you are a Mac user (and not an Electron hater), I'd love for you to try it out and roast my performance.

The Link: https://camprompter.dnyantra.com/

Now, I am going to sleep. 😴
Happy coding!

Top comments (0)