Check your framing without leaving the script.

The screen under the lens is busy

When you record alone, the best place for your script is right under the camera. That is the whole argument of stop losing eye contact: the closer the words are to the lens, the less your eyes travel.

The trouble is that this spot is also the only place you could check yourself without turning your head. So you end up with a choice. Use it for the script and record blind. Or open a camera preview somewhere else, a window off to the side or a second app, and glance at it between takes, which drags your eyes away from the lens and your hands back to the keyboard.

The camera, behind the text

Mirrento can show your Mac's camera on the prompter screen itself. You choose it under Behind the text, in Settings, Display, or with one click in the app's control bar:

• Nothing. Just the script. The camera is off every time you open the app.
• Camera. Your camera image fills the prompter, darkened, with the script on top.
• Camera, with Hide the script. Tick Hide the script (camera only) and you get just your camera image, full screen, with the eye line still showing so you can frame yourself against it.

The camera options appear once Camera is chosen. Pick which camera it shows in the Camera list: Default camera, or any camera your Mac sees, by name. Mirrento remembers the choice, and if that camera is not connected it falls back to the default one. Use the camera you film with when your Mac can see it, so the check matches the real frame.

Two more settings go with it. Mirror camera flips the image like a selfie view, which is how most people expect to see themselves; it is on by default. Dim behind text sets how dark the image is under the script, so the words stay readable over a bright room.

Switch it with one key

You do not need to open Settings to change modes. Click the prompter screen once so it has the keyboard, then press C and it steps through three states in this order: the script alone, the camera behind the script, and the camera with the script hidden, then back to the script alone. If you use your phone as a remote, the remote has a Camera button that does the same thing, so you can check yourself from the chair you are going to record in.

The camera also stays off until you ask for it. Mirrento does not remember the camera between launches, so it never turns your camera on by itself the next time you open the app.

"But watching yourself is a trap"

It is. In why a three-minute video takes all evening, the fifth reason is exactly this: you cannot speak naturally and monitor your own face at the same time, so the advice is to check your framing once, then hide the preview.

That advice still holds. The camera behind the text makes it cheap to follow:

• Before the first take, press C until the script is hidden and only the camera shows. Sit where you will record, fix the light, the height and the frame. Your eyes are already where they will be during the take, so what you see is what the lens sees.
• Before you roll, press C until the camera is gone. Now it is just your script, in the same place.
• Between takes, if you moved, press C to bring the picture back, check, and keep pressing until it is gone again.

If you want something in between, the camera behind the script with the dimming turned up gives you a faint outline of yourself under the words. Enough to notice that you have drifted out of frame, not enough to start judging your face. Whether that helps or distracts you is personal. Try one take each way.

It stays a preview

The camera behind the text is for your eyes only. The image goes to the prompter screen and nowhere else: it is not recorded, not saved and not sent anywhere. Mirrento is still not your recording app. You film with whatever you already use, and this is only there to show you what the camera sees.

By default, the prompter window, camera image included, also stays out of screen recordings, screenshots and screen shares. I checked it in a real Google Meet screen share, and the prompter did not show. If you want it to show, for a demo, turn on Visible in screen share in Settings, Display; it turns itself off the next time Mirrento starts. The camera is not shown when the screen is behind the text, and other devices viewing the prompter over your network never open a camera.

The first time you use it, macOS asks for camera permission. If you said no, turn Mirrento on in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Camera.

If a cut-off head has cost you a good take before, the 7-day trial is enough to frame one session from the prompter screen and see whether the check still feels like a chore.