Any Bluetooth presenter clicker is a teleprompter remote
A £15 presentation clicker is already a teleprompter remote — it sends the same keys. Which mode to put it in, and the one mode that will catch you out.
A Bluetooth presentation clicker pairs as an ordinary keyboard and sends keystrokes, so any teleprompter that listens for the keyboard is already remote-controlled — no pairing step, no companion app, no purpose-built hardware. Put the clicker in Page Up / Page Down mode, which most send by default: page-down then starts and pauses the scroll, and page-up pauses it. In arrow-key mode the same buttons will change the speed or nudge the script instead, which is the single most common reason a clicker appears not to work.
Teleprompter remotes are sold for £40 to £150. A presentation clicker costs £15 and does the same job, because the two devices are the same device.
A Bluetooth clicker does not speak a special protocol. It pairs as an ordinary keyboard — your operating system lists it as one — and when you press a button it sends a keystroke. Any teleprompter that responds to the keyboard is therefore already remote-controlled, and nobody has to write a line of code for your particular clicker.
Put it in the right mode first
This is the whole article, really. Clickers send different keys depending on their mode, and most can be switched between two or three:
- Page Up / Page Down — the common default, and the one you want. Logitech’s R800 forward and back buttons are documented as repeating Page Down and Page Up.
- Left / Right arrows — some models default to this, including several Norwii units.
- Up / Down arrows, or mouse-scroll emulation, on models with more modes.
Switching is usually a chord: on Norwii’s N20, holding both buttons together cycles through arrow modes and Page Up/Down. Check the manual for yours — it is one line in it.
Use Page Up / Page Down mode. Everything below assumes you have.
What each key does
| Key | What it does | On a clicker |
|---|---|---|
Page Down |
Start, pause, resume | Forward button |
Page Up |
Pause | Back button |
Space |
Start, pause, resume | Some clickers’ third button |
↑ ↓ |
Speed up / slow down a level | Arrow mode |
← → |
Nudge back / forward one line | Arrow mode |
+ − |
Larger / smaller text | — |
M |
Toggle mirroring | — |
Home |
Back to the top | — |
Esc |
Back to editing | — |
Two deliberate choices in there worth explaining, because they are the difference between a remote that helps and one that fights you.
Page-down toggles; page-up only pauses. The forward button is the one your thumb finds without looking, so it carries the action you need mid-take: stop, and start again. The back button is one-directional on purpose — if both toggled, a panicked double-press would restart the scroll instead of stopping it, which is the exact moment you least want a surprise.
The arrows adjust rather than navigate. Up and down change the pace by one level, and the scroll follows immediately — so if you are running ahead of the script you can correct it from the clicker without stopping. Left and right nudge by a line, not a pixel, because a line is the unit in which a reader actually loses their place.
Why arrow mode catches people out
This is the failure everyone hits, and it looks like a broken tool rather than a wrong setting.
A clicker in arrow mode sends ← and → from the same two buttons. In LensCue those nudge the script by a line. So you press forward expecting the scroll to start, the text twitches by one line, and nothing else happens. The obvious conclusion is that the remote does not work.
It works. It is sending a key that means something else. Switch the clicker to Page Up / Page Down mode and the same two buttons become start and pause.
If your clicker cannot be switched out of arrow mode — a few cheap ones cannot — you still get speed and nudge control, and you will need to start the scroll from the screen. Some vendor software can remap the keys, which is the other way out.
Setting it up
- Pair the clicker with your phone, tablet or laptop in the normal Bluetooth settings. It will appear as a keyboard.
- Open the teleprompter and paste your script.
- Click once into the page so it has keyboard focus — worth knowing, because a freshly-loaded tab sometimes does not.
- Press forward. The scroll starts.
One behaviour that is not obvious: while you are editing, the prompter deliberately ignores the keyboard, because a tool that swallowed the space bar while you typed would be unusable. The keys take over once the script is moving — which is also when you are holding the clicker.
Things that are not clickers but send the same keys
Since the mechanism is “anything that pairs as a keyboard”, the category is wider than it looks:
- A Bluetooth keyboard on the desk, out of frame. Gives you every key in the table, not just two.
- A games controller with a key-mapping app.
- Foot pedals sold for transcription and for sheet music — these are usually plain HID keyboards too, and hands-free is a genuine advantage when you are holding something on camera.
- A phone running a remote-keyboard app, paired to the laptop showing the script.
None of these need our support, and that is the point. We do not maintain a list of compatible hardware, because there isn’t one to maintain: if it sends the key, it works.
The LensCue teleprompter is free, needs no account, and listens for all of the keys above. Nothing you paste into it leaves your browser.