Hands-Free Teleprompter Control with a Stream Deck or Foot Pedal (No Plugin Required)

You are on camera, mid-read, and the prompter is running a beat too fast. Your hands are holding script pages, or a coffee, or the desk. Reaching for a mouse is not an option.

The fix is not a plugin. The OnAirFlow teleprompter is fully keyboard-driven, which means anything that can press a key can drive it: an Elgato Stream Deck, the Stream Deck Pedal, or any USB foot switch that sends keystrokes. Setup takes about two minutes.

The whole shortcut map

Open the teleprompter (Host view, then the Teleprompter button) and every control has a key:

• Space — play / pause the scroll
• Home — jump back to the top and pause (your between-takes reset)
• Left / Right arrows — scroll speed down / up
• Up / Down arrows — nudge the scroll position
• + / - — text size
• M — mirror mode for prompter glass
• F — fullscreen

Those shortcuts are the entire integration surface. No API keys, no pairing, nothing to install on our side.

Stream Deck setup

In the Stream Deck app, drag the stock System, then Hotkey action onto a key, click into it, and record the shortcut you want. A tidy prompter row looks like this:

• Key 1: Hotkey = Space, labeled PLAY/PAUSE
• Key 2: Hotkey = Left arrow, labeled SLOWER
• Key 3: Hotkey = Right arrow, labeled FASTER
• Key 4: Hotkey = Home, labeled TOP
• Key 5: Hotkey = F, labeled FULLSCREEN

That is it. No plugin from the marketplace, no account linking — the deck is just typing.

Stream Deck Pedal setup

The pedal is the real hands-free move: three switches under the desk, invisible on camera. In the Stream Deck app, assign a Hotkey action to each pedal switch:

• Left pedal — Left arrow (slower)
• Middle pedal — Space (play/pause)
• Right pedal — Right arrow (faster)

Tap the middle pedal to roll, feather the sides to match your pace, and if a take goes sideways, a Home key on your deck (or a long reach to the keyboard) resets the script to the top.

Generic USB foot pedals work too

Any programmable USB pedal that sends keystrokes — the kind sold for transcription — works the same way. Program it to Space and the arrows with the vendor tool, and the prompter cannot tell the difference.

The one rule: keep the prompter window focused

Keyboard shortcuts go to the window you are focused on. Since the teleprompter is the thing you are reading, that is almost always already true — but if you click into another window mid-show, your pedal is talking to that window instead. The habit that makes this bulletproof: open the teleprompter, press F for fullscreen, and leave it alone. On a second monitor or a dedicated prompter machine, that is the natural setup anyway.

If a producer needs to change what you are reading, they do not need your window — when they advance the rundown, the prompter switches stories and resets on its own.

Why we did it this way

We looked hard at shipping a native Stream Deck plugin, and we may still. But keyboard control has a property no plugin matches: it works with hardware you already own, from any vendor, with zero setup on our side and zero new ways to fail during a live show. The best integration for a broadcast tool is often the boring one.

Full teleprompter documentation lives in the product guide.