Turn a lyric sheet into a slow, readable scroll you can sing or read from — at a speed you set, with nothing to install and nothing to upload.
The awkward moment is not the performance, it is the ten minutes before it: the lyrics are on a phone in a notes app at the wrong size, or on a laptop you have to reach over and scroll by hand while your hands are doing something else. This takes a pasted lyric, spaces it out, and scrolls it at a fixed rate you choose. You set how many lines go past per minute, how large the type is, and how long the pause is before the first line starts moving. Then you press start and read.
A verse of four lines at fourteen lines per minute runs for about seventeen seconds. Slow the rate down if you are reading rather than singing.
Paste a lyric and the prompter builds here.
Why a fixed scroll beats a manual one
Scrolling by hand while you are reading is two tasks competing for the same attention. Every time you reach for the mouse or swipe the screen you lose your place, and losing your place is the thing that makes a reading feel unsteady. A fixed rate removes the decision entirely: the text moves at one speed and you only have to read.
The rate is the part worth thinking about. Fourteen lines a minute sounds slow on paper and is roughly right for singing a verse; reading aloud is usually slower than people expect, and a rate that looks comfortable in the settings panel is often too fast by the second verse. The tool estimates a total run time so you can check the number against how long the piece actually takes before you rely on it.
How to use the result
- Use blank lines as musical rests. They take up space in the scroll exactly like a line does, so a blank line between sections buys you a beat of nothing.
- Put the window on a second screen if you have one. The prompter is a single column, so it reads well from a distance and does not need to be full width.
- If the estimate is much shorter than the song really runs, lower the lines-per-minute figure rather than padding the lyric with extra blank lines.
- Pause rather than restart. The pause button holds position, so you can stop for a count-in and pick up mid-verse.
- Large type is not a luxury here. At thirty pixels the text is readable from a couple of metres, which is the whole point if you are standing up.
Questions people ask
- Does it scroll or jump line by line?
It moves continuously at the rate you set and highlights the line currently in the reading position. Continuous movement feels calmer to read against than a jump, which is why it is the default rather than a setting.
- Can I use this offline on a laptop at a venue?
Yes. Load the page once while you have a connection, then it keeps working with the network switched off. Nothing is streamed and nothing is uploaded.
- What is the lead-in for?
It is the pause before the first line moves, so you can press start, put your hands back where they need to be, and begin reading when the text does rather than when you clicked.
- Why does my very long line get cut off?
Lines wrap rather than shrink, so an unusually long line takes two rows and shifts the rhythm of the scroll slightly. Break long lines manually if you want the timing to stay even.
What this tool does not do. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and it works with the internet switched off. This is a metronome for text, not a music player: it does not know your tempo, it does not sync to audio, and the run time it reports is arithmetic on your line count rather than a measurement of your performance. Timing in a browser tab can also drift if the tab is backgrounded for a long time. See the site disclaimer. Written by Nico, who builds these tools and writes about writing at WrittenTone.