DisplayLink is making Elgato Prompter Unusable

I’ve always been bad at using teleprompters — they are big, clunky, and the consumer versions usually require a separate device and app.

Until Elgato released the Prompter in late 2023. It seems like an answer to my prayers — and it was for a while. It worked seamlessly with my Stream Deck, and while the “voice advance” feature was a miss, it still makes eye contact on calls and recording much easier.

But over the last 6 months, it’s gotten nearly unusable, and unrecommendable. That’s all thanks to the DisplayLink software the prompter requires.

The Annoying Popup

If you’re an Elgato Prompter user, you’ve no doubt seen this popup from DisplayLink today — perhaps multiple times:

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when it pops up, and even worse, it hijacks the cursor, completely interrupting what you’re doing.

I posted on the DisplayLink forums back in September about it, and no one has responded to that.

When I emailed Elgato, they more or less blamed DisplayLink.

When I emailed DisplayLink in December, I got the basic troubleshooting steps, which I already performed.

This week I finally emailed them again asking if anyone cares and got the first positive response in 5 months:

Hello,

We are working with Elgato to rectify this problem.
We would like to apologies for the long waiting time

When asked for a timeline, they couldn’t provide one, so as far as I’m concerned, this is lip service.

It’s Gotten so bad I Unplug the Prompter

I noticed it in September, and since then, it’s gotten much worse. The popup happens more frequently now, and there’s still no pattern to why, or a solution.

I’ve resorted to keeping the prompter unplugged unless I’m using it, which is very bad.

A Public Plea to DisplayLink and Elgato

So now I’m asking — begging — publicly to Elgato and DisplayLink: please fix this problem. It’s not some edge case, and I’m starting to feel like I’ve wasted my money.

I can’t recommend the Prompter to anyone else while this problem persists.