Cueside sits beside your calls on your Mac and floats short, glanceable cues — courtside seats for your interviews, debates, meetings, and sales calls.
macOS 15 or later · one-time purchase · your conversations never leave your Mac
Companions
Pick a companion from the menu bar and the cues change with it — same panel, different job. Duplicate any of them and write your own coaching prompt.
Tracks decisions, action items, and open questions so nothing slips while you talk.
Spots the weak point in their argument and hands you the sharpest counter.
Names each objection as it lands and gives you the reframe that keeps the deal moving.
Turns each question into short talking points you can speak from — drawn from your own background.
Suggests probing follow-ups and flags vague answers while you're the one asking the questions.
Setup
No account, no cloud of ours. Install it, allow one permission, choose where the AI runs.
Open the app and press Start. macOS asks once for permission to record system audio — that's how the conversation reaches the transcriber. Screen contents are never captured.
On macOS 26, transcription runs on-device — free, offline, no key. Otherwise add your own API key in Settings → Providers, or point it at a local Ollama server.
Choose a mode from the menu bar and talk. ⌘⇧A fresh cues · ⌘⇧E big-type teleprompter · ⌘⇧L start/stop. All remappable.
| Engine | Transcription | Cues & summaries | Needs a key |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-device (macOS 26+) | Yes — free, offline | — | No |
| OpenAI | Yes | Yes | Your key |
| Anthropic | — | Yes | Your key |
| Google Gemini | — | Yes | Your key |
| OpenRouter (200+ models) | — | Yes | Your key |
| Ollama (local) | — | Yes — fully local | No |
Privacy
No account, no analytics, no telemetry. Audio is transcribed on your Mac or sent directly to the provider you configured — never to us.
Transcripts, cues, and summaries are stored only on your Mac. Review them in the Sessions window, export to Markdown, PDF, or text, delete any time.
Like presenter notes: the panels are excluded from screen sharing, so what you see stays yours even mid-presentation.
Pricing
Cueside is a one-time purchase — AI usage runs on your own keys or on-device, so there's nothing to rent. If you'd rather skip keys entirely, a managed plan is on the way.
Bring your own API key, or use it entirely on-device with no key at all.
An assisted hour is time Cueside spends actively listening — a meter in the app shows what's left.
Why hours, not tokens? You can plan around "ten hours of meetings"; nobody can plan around 2.3 million tokens. Under the hood, hours map to a token budget that keeps the plan honest for both of us.
Questions
Not on macOS 26 — transcription runs on-device for free, and you only need a key (or the upcoming Managed plan) for cue generation. On macOS 15, bring a key from any supported provider, or run a local Ollama server for a fully key-free, fully local setup.
Yes — Cueside listens to your Mac's system audio, so it works with any call or video app that plays sound on your Mac. Nothing to install into the call itself.
No. The app is a one-time $39.99 purchase, and AI runs on your own keys or on-device. The optional Managed plan only exists for people who'd rather not manage keys — and you can ignore it entirely.
Cueside adds nothing to the call — it's a private panel on your screen, excluded from screen sharing when private mode is on. Be aware that transcribing a conversation may require participants' consent where you live.
macOS 15 or later. On-device transcription needs macOS 26. It's sandboxed, notarized, and asks for exactly one permission: recording system audio.
Feedback
Cueside gets better in direct proportion to how blunt you are. A cue that missed the moment, a mode that should exist, a setting you couldn't find — we read every message, and we answer.