What is Rylo Sidekick?
Rylo Sidekick is a free desktop app for Mac that adds real-time captions to any video call - Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack Huddles, FaceTime, Discord, Webex, and more. Instead of relying on whatever captions a video call app offers on its own (if any), Sidekick runs quietly on your Mac and listens to both sides of the conversation — your microphone and the other participants' audio — so you get one consistent, accurate transcript no matter which app the call happens to be in.
What Sidekick does
Detects your calls automatically and offers to start captioning the moment one begins.
Live captions for every voice on the call, shown in a floating window you can move, resize, or shrink into a small bar.
Type-to-speak - type a message and Sidekick speaks it into the call for you, for anyone who'd rather not (or can't) use their voice.
Saves your transcripts so you can search, revisit, or export them after the call.
Summarizes the call automatically once it ends - topics, decisions, and action items.
How is this different from Rylo Phone?
Rylo Phone is the app you use to make and receive phone calls with captions. Rylo Sidekick is its desktop companion — it doesn't make calls itself, it captions calls you're already having in other apps on your computer. They share the same Rylo account and phone number. See What's the difference between Rylo Phone and Rylo Sidekick? for more.
Who is it for?
Rylo Sidekick is built for anyone who is deaf, hard of hearing, or simply wants a reliable running transcript of their video calls — with no extra hardware and no changes to how you already take calls.