Eye-Contact & Teleprompter
How to fix looking down at your screen during video calls
Quick answer: Looking down is geometry, not a bad habit. Your camera sits at the top of the screen while the person you are watching appears lower down, so looking at them means looking away from the lens. Move the call window up and raise the camera to eye level.
Looking down during calls is usually a geometry problem — the person you are looking at on screen and the camera capturing you are in two different physical locations — not a habit you need to try harder to break.
That reframing matters, because the fixes are physical and take a minute. Trying to remember to look at the lens while listening to someone is effort you should not have to spend.
Try It Yourself
Check your camera height and eye line
Analyses your live feed for camera height, angle and framing, and tells you how far your natural eye line sits from the lens.
Run the Lighting & Angle CoachUnderstand the geometry problem
On most setups your camera sits at the top of the screen while the person you are talking to appears somewhere in the middle or lower part of it. Looking at them means, by definition, looking slightly away from the lens.
The larger that gap, the more obvious it looks at the other end. On a large monitor the angle can be wide enough to read as avoiding eye contact entirely.
Move the call window as close to the camera as possible
Dragging the active speaker, or the person you are focused on, to the very top of your screen directly below the camera minimises this angle more than almost any other single change.
Check your camera height, angle and framing with the Lighting & Angle Coach.
- Un-maximise the call window and drag it to the top edge of the screen.
- Shrink it so the speaker's face sits immediately below the lens rather than centred.
- On a multi-monitor setup, keep the call on the screen the camera is mounted to.
Raise your laptop or monitor toward your natural eye line
If your camera sits well below where you are naturally looking, no amount of window repositioning fully fixes it. A laptop stand or monitor riser addresses the root geometry.
Raising a laptop also improves the angle itself. A camera below your face looks up at you, which is a less flattering framing than one level with your eyes.
For reading text, do not put notes below the camera
Notes, a second monitor, or a phone positioned below your main screen pull your eyes down further than a video tile does.
Keep any reference material as close to the lens as the call window — beside the camera, or immediately below it, rather than flat on the desk.
To see how much of your gaze reads as camera-facing, try the Eye Contact & Gaze Coach.
Practise glancing rather than staring at the lens
You do not need to stare at the lens for the whole call. Natural conversation includes brief glances away, and constant unbroken lens contact reads as unsettling rather than engaged.
What reads badly is prolonged, obvious downward gaze, not occasional natural eye movement.
Accept that some gap is normal
Even professional broadcasters reading a teleprompter directly over a lens have imperfect eye contact by a strict definition.
The goal is looking generally engaged and present, not achieving unnatural, unbroken contact with the lens. Over-correcting produces its own kind of awkwardness.
For rehearsing a specific delivery, the Teleprompter & Eye Contact Trainer scrolls your script over the live preview.
Self-view and layout controls that help in each app
Some apps let you pin or reposition the speaker, which is the fastest way to close the eye-line gap.
Zoom
Right-click a participant → Pin, then resize the window
Hiding your own self-view also helps, since watching yourself is a common reason people look away from the lens.
Microsoft Teams
Right-click a participant → Pin, or use Together mode
Teams offers less window flexibility than Zoom, so raising the camera matters more here.
Google Meet
Pin a participant, then resize the browser window
Because Meet runs in a browser, you can size and position the window freely, which makes the top-of-screen trick easy.
Apple Continuity Camera
Video effects → Centre Stage
Centre Stage keeps you framed as you move, but it does not change where the lens sits relative to your eye line.
The table below shows how much control each app gives you over pinning and repositioning the speaker window:
| App | Practical ceiling | Manual control |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom | Pinned speaker in a resizable window | Pin, hide self-view, window size |
| Microsoft Teams | Pinned speaker, fixed gallery layouts | Pin and spotlight |
| Google Meet | Pinned speaker in a browser window | Pin and browser window size |
| Apple Continuity Camera | Automatic framing that tracks you | Centre Stage on or off |
Troubleshooting checklist: looking down on video calls
Physical geometry first. Each step closes part of the angle between your eyes and the lens.
- Un-maximise the call window and drag it to the very top of the screen.
- Shrink it so the speaker's face sits immediately below the camera lens.
- Keep the call on whichever monitor the camera is attached to.
- Raise your laptop on a stand, or your monitor on a riser, until the camera is near eye level.
- Move notes and reference material up beside the lens rather than flat on the desk.
- Hide your own self-view so you are not drawn to watch yourself.
- Pin the active speaker so the tile does not move around mid-call.
- Practise glancing away naturally rather than forcing unbroken contact with the lens.