Features
Everything that happens in your meeting, captured and understood.
From real-time transcription to post-meeting review, Shoulder Surf turns every meeting into searchable, actionable intelligence.
On a desktop? Point your iPhone camera here to download.In the meeting
Ask while it's still happening.
A live transcript with who said what, and a running summary that keeps up with the room.
Tap a Quick Prompt or type your own question, and the answer arrives while the meeting is still on. Read it on screen, or hear it privately through your AirPods or Bluetooth headphones.
It listens through the iPhone mic, Shoulder Surf Companion on your Mac or PC, a USB-C cable from your headset, or the rear camera reading the captions.
How it listensDana Okay, vendor review. Cobalt came in at $48,000 for the year, Alder at $41,000.
Luis Alder's cheaper, but their onboarding takes six weeks. Cobalt can start in two.
Sarah Chen Launch is the 14th, so six weeks doesn't work for us.
Dana Then Cobalt, unless legal finds a problem with the contract.
Priya Nair I'll get the contract to legal today and ask for an answer by Wednesday.
Luis And Cobalt was the $41,000 one, right? So we save money too.
Sarah Chen Before we lock it in, how does support feel about switching vendors during launch week?
Catch Me Up
- Sarah just asked how support feels about switching vendors during launch week.
- The group is leaning toward Cobalt ($48,000 a year) over Alder ($41,000), because Alder needs six weeks to onboard and launch is the 14th.
- It isn't final: legal has to clear the Cobalt contract first.
- Priya is sending the contract to legal today and wants an answer by Wednesday.
Glance, coming soon
Answers you can say out loud.
Some answers you need to read. Others you need to say, right now, with people looking at you. Glance is for those.
Turn on Answer as cue cards for any Quick Prompt, and the answer arrives as a short deck: one point per card, a line to say and a few keywords. Each card is colored by its job, like the point, a reason, an example, a pitfall to avoid and the close, so you know where you are at a glance.
Swipe or tap to the next card. A cue card answer flips between the cards and the full text, a follow-up comes back as fresh cards, and the prompt keeps your choice until you quit the app.
Help Me Respond
Show the full answer
After the meeting
The report's written before you're back at your desk.
Decisions, action items with owners, open questions and how the room felt, ready shortly after the meeting ends.
Check off action items, send them to iOS Reminders, or share the report to Slack, Notion or Mail.
On every plan, Free included.
Translation
Held in one language, read in yours.
A meeting recorded in another language turns up in your phone's language on its own, the whole meeting at once: the title, summary, report, transcript, and the questions you asked with their answers.
The original is still the meeting. A pill in the corner of the transcript flips between the two.
Sharing a link? Send it in your language, the room's, or a third one.
Translation needs a Shoulder Surf AI sign-in.
Vendor switch, Madrid office
- LucíaAlder needs six weeks just to onboard.
- DanielThen we stay with Cobalt.
Already recorded?
Bring the meeting in afterwards.
Import a recording any time, whether the meeting ended five minutes ago or last month. Audio or video: a voice memo, a recording from your meeting app, a file someone sent you. MP4, M4A, MOV, MP3 and WAV all work.
Shoulder Surf transcribes it on your iPhone and sorts out who's speaking. Then it's a meeting like any other: file it in a project, ask Meeting Chat or Project Chat about it, and generate a report.
Importing is free on every plan, no account needed.
Import from Files, the share sheet, AirDrop or Mail.
Vendor switch
- Vendor sync
- Launch planning
- Legal review
Dana Okay, vendor review. Cobalt came in at $48,000 for the year, Alder at $41,000.
Luis Alder's cheaper, but their onboarding takes six weeks. Cobalt can start in two.
Meeting Memory, powered by Context Quilt
It remembers what was agreed, and who owes what.
Context Quilt is the memory behind Shoulder Surf. After each meeting it picks out what's worth keeping: decisions, commitments and who owes them, what's holding things up, and the people and projects involved.
Ask a question live, in Meeting Chat or in Project Chat, and it brings back only the pieces that matter, so the answer already knows the backstory. No pasting in old notes, no digging through transcripts. On Plus and Pro it's on by default, and you can turn it off in Settings or per chat.
Open items stay open until you close them. Each project keeps a list of who owes what, and late ones are flagged. When a meeting sounds like something got done, it asks you instead of deciding for you.
It's yours. Memories from a meeting point back to it, and you can see, edit or delete your memories in the Memory tab.
Memory in your answers comes with Shoulder Surf AI: your last 30 days on Plus, and everything on Pro.
Learn about Context QuiltVendor switch
Action items
- Send support the switch plan
- Countersign the Cobalt contract
- Update the launch checklist
Did this happen?
Get legal sign-off
“Legal signed off on the Cobalt contract this morning.”
Files from chat
Ask for a file, get a real one.
Ask in plain words and get a real Excel, Word, PowerPoint or PDF file, built from what was said.
It saves to your library, ready to send by email or AirDrop.
On every plan, with a monthly allowance on Free.
Can you turn the vendor switch into a Gantt chart with owners?
I can build that as an Excel file, with each task, its owner and its due date. Want me to go ahead?
Yes please.
On your computer
Let your computer do the listening.
Shoulder Surf Companion, free for Mac and Windows, hands the call playing on your computer, and your voice from its microphone, to your iPhone.
On a Mac, the camera button can watch the display instead of the room, with a live thumbnail and one tap to capture the full-resolution screen. Control and Option with 1 to 9 fire your Quick Prompts.
The answer window on your Mac or PC keeps this meeting's answers, with back and forward. It stays out of screenshots and asks screen shares to leave it out, so share a window rather than your whole screen to be sure. On a Mac, Present puts the part you want people to see in a plain Notes window they can.
Get the desktop app
AI models
Which AI should I pick?
| Shoulder Surf AI | Apple Cloud (Private Cloud Compute) | Apple IntelligenceOn-device | Your own key | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the meeting | ||||
| Live questions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Quick Prompts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answers appear as they're written | Yes | No | No | No |
| Follow-up questions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ask about a photo | Yes | No | No | If your model supports images |
| Add your notes and references to a question | Yes | Yes | Short ones | Yes |
| Rolling summary during the meeting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Read answers aloud | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ask from your Apple Watch, Mac or PC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answers without internet | No | No | Yes | No |
| Web search | Yes | No | No | No |
| After the meeting | ||||
| Summary when you want one | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mood, urgency and tags | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Meeting Chat | Yes | Yes | YesWorks from summaries | Yes |
| Project Chat | Yes | Through Shoulder Surf AI | Yes | Yes |
| Generate files (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Read whole documents you attach | Plus and Pro | No | No | No |
| Meeting Memory in your answers | Plus and Pro | No | No | No |
Meeting Memory is powered by Context Quilt. It remembers decisions, commitments and blockers from your past meetings and brings the ones that matter into your answers. The lookup happens as your question passes through Shoulder Surf AI, so your memories are never added to questions sent to Apple's models or your own key. What Meeting Memory does | ||||
| Meeting Report* | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Saved to Memory after the meeting* | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Shoulder Surf AI
In the meeting
- Live questions
- Yes
- Quick Prompts
- Yes
- Answers appear as they're written
- Yes
- Follow-up questions
- Yes
- Ask about a photo
- Yes
- Add your notes and references to a question
- Yes
- Rolling summary during the meeting
- Yes
- Read answers aloud
- Yes
- Ask from your Apple Watch, Mac or PC
- Yes
- Answers without internet
- No
- Web search
- Yes
After the meeting
- Summary when you want one
- Yes
- Mood, urgency and tags
- Yes
- Meeting Chat
- Yes
- Project Chat
- Yes
- Generate files (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF)
- Yes
- Read whole documents you attach
- Plus and Pro
- Meeting Memory in your answers
- Plus and Pro
Meeting Memory is powered by Context Quilt. It remembers decisions, commitments and blockers from your past meetings and brings the ones that matter into your answers. The lookup happens as your question passes through Shoulder Surf AI, so your memories are never added to questions sent to Apple's models or your own key.
What Meeting Memory does- Meeting Report*
- Yes
- Saved to Memory after the meeting*
- Yes
* With a Shoulder Surf account. On Free, reports use the monthly cloud-AI budget.
We're still adding features to each model, so this table will grow.
Everything else
Real-time transcription
- Speech-to-text as it happens
- Speaker identification, know who said what with neural diarization
- Enroll your voice once and you're labeled by name in every meeting
Captions mode
- Point the rear camera at your screen and read the meeting's own on-screen captions, no mic needed
- Works with the live captions Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet already show
- Built for online meetings where everyone comes through one speaker and similar voices are hard to tell apart
- Pick how it listens for each meeting, right from the recording screen
Rolling summaries
- First summary a few minutes in, once there's enough to work with, then on a schedule
- Delta mode captures only what changed, fast and cost-efficient
- Full mode re-summarizes everything for complete context
- View all summary snapshots from any point in the meeting
The iPhone's microphone
- The default, and nothing to buy
- Best when the call is on your computer speakers, or everyone is in the room with you
- In a room together it hears everyone, which is the part a bot in the call cannot do
Your computer, through Shoulder Surf Companion
- A free app for your Mac or Windows computer, from shouldersurf.com/desktop. Mac needs macOS 15 or later; Windows needs Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11
- It hears the other people through the computer’s system audio and you through its microphone, then passes both to your iPhone
- A Mac on the same Apple Account pairs on its own; a Windows PC, or any other Mac, shows a six-digit code you type once
- On a Mac, the camera button can watch the display instead of the room, with a live thumbnail and one tap to capture the full-resolution screen
- On a Mac, Control and Option with 1 to 9 fire your Quick Prompts from the keyboard, and the keys can be changed
A cable, with nothing installed
- A JK Audio CellTap 4C sits between your headset and the computer, and a USB-C to 3.5 mm 4-pin cable runs into the iPhone
- Both sides of the call come through and the iPhone microphone stays off, so the desk beside you never reaches the transcript
- It works the same on a Mac or a PC, because nothing goes on the computer and nothing joins the meeting
- An ordinary audio cable cannot do this: the CellTap is the piece you cannot substitute
Reading the screen, microphone off
- The rear camera reads the meeting’s own on-screen captions and no audio is captured at all
- Works with the captions Teams, Zoom, Meet and others already show
- The one for rooms where recording is not on the table
Query modes
- Quick Prompts for the moments that come up most: Catch Me Up, Help Me Respond, What Do I Need to Do?, Is That Right? and What Are We Missing?
- Freeform Ask bar for custom natural-language questions
- Create, edit, and reorder your own custom prompt modes
- Context picker: choose last 2 min, 5 min, full transcript, or since last query
Quick Prompt options
- Take a picture when asked: the prompt grabs a picture the moment it runs, a photo or the Mac screen you're watching, and sends it with the question
- Search the web: the prompt searches every time it runs, when Shoulder Surf AI is your model
- With a keyboard on an iPad or iPhone, Control, Option and 1 to 9 run your Quick Prompts
References that follow a project
- A reference can belong to all your projects, or just the ones you choose
- References assigned to a project come along on every question in its meetings and in Project Chat
- Add a reference as text anywhere, or keep the original file when your plan and model support it, and Markdown files preview formatted
Pause and playback
- Tap the orb to pause or end, and a bold bar makes it obvious when you are paused
- Pause holds in every listening mode, Read the screen included
- Playback skips long silences by default, and you pick how long a pause has to be
- Long turns from one speaker break into paragraphs
Saves for the moments that go sideways
- If iOS Voice Isolation is on, it warns you before you start, since that would cut out the room, and opens the Mic Mode picker
- If the phone gets hot, the camera pauses to cool down and recording keeps going
- If Shoulder Surf AI can't answer on our side, a live question gets answered on your device instead, on devices that support Apple Intelligence
- When people talk over each other, those lines are labeled Multiple, and you can turn that off in Settings, Audio
Visual context
- Full-bleed rear camera preview, place your phone facing the screen or whiteboard
- Silent shutter capture for slides, whiteboards, and documents
- Attach photos to a question
- Pinch to zoom for detail shots
Audio delivery
- Responses appear on screen first, tap play to hear them through your AirPods or Bluetooth headphones
- Karaoke-style word highlighting synced to speech
- Speed control: 1x, 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x
Dynamic Island & Lock Screen
- Your timer and whether you're recording or paused in the Dynamic Island, with the latest summary lines on the Lock Screen, without opening the app.
Spreadsheets and Gantt charts
- Ask for a project timeline and get a real Excel file, color-coded, with owners and due dates
- Task lists, trackers, and summaries as native spreadsheets, not text you have to reformat
- Opens straight in Excel or Numbers
Word documents
- Turn a meeting into a native Word document, formatted and ready to edit
- Good for recaps, briefs, and handoffs you need to pass on
- A real .docx, not a plain-text dump
Presentations and PDFs
- Ask for a deck and get a native PowerPoint file, ready to present or edit
- Or a clean PDF when you just need something to send and sign off on
- Real .pptx and .pdf files, built from what was discussed
Built, saved, ready to share
- Shoulder Surf offers to build the file, then shows honest progress while it works
- Every file saves to your library automatically
- Send it by email or AirDrop, or share the whole conversation with its files attached
- Close the app mid-build and your file is waiting when you come back
People
- Everyone who has turned up in your meetings, in one place, A to Z with search
- Each person opens with your hours together, what they tend to care about, and how things are trending
- Match someone to a contact without handing over Contacts permission, then call, message, or email them from their page
- Tap a project they appear in and land on that project
- A title you typed is never quietly replaced by one the AI inferred
- When two names turn out to be the same person, you pick which name it keeps
Memory you can check
- Memories from a meeting point back to it, so you can check them
- See, edit or delete any memory in the Memory tab
- Rename a speaker after the fact and the correction reaches Meeting Memory too
Export & sharing
- Pick any combination and send via AirDrop, email, or any app
- Transcript: full text with speaker labels
- Audio: compressed M4A recording
- Subtitles (SRT): timestamped captions with speaker labels, synced to your audio
- Summary: AI-generated meeting summary
- Images: photos captured during the session
Action items you can close
- AI extracts action items with responsible parties
- Check one off, and uncheck it if you were wrong
- Pick a deadline from a date picker and an owner from the people who were actually in the meeting
- Completed items keep their history and reopen cleanly
- Send them to iOS Reminders, filed in a list for that project and date
Audio recording & playback
- Every session automatically recorded in optimized M4A format
- Voice Memos-style waveform visualization with seek and scrub
- Skip forward/back 15 seconds
- Share audio files or open in third-party players
Keeping it tidy
- Rename a meeting from its overflow menu
- Rename a speaker and it offers to rerun the summary with the right names
- Export a full transcript to a file
- Pick the meeting language where you pick the project
iCloud sync
- Every meeting (transcript, AI responses, speaker labels, sentiment analysis, tags, and audio) syncs across your devices through iCloud
- Start a session on your iPhone during a meeting, then pick up your iPad later to review the full transcript
- Chat with the AI about what was discussed from any synced device
iCloud Drive backup
- Audio recordings saved to iCloud Drive in a clean folder structure organized by project and date
- Open the Files app on any device (iPhone, iPad, or Mac) and your recordings are right there
- Turn it on once in Settings and every meeting backs itself up when it ends
Project tagging
- Organize meetings by project, "Q1 Launch", "Client ABC", etc.
- Tag during or after sessions
- Filter meeting history by project
- Cross-meeting context for recurring topics
Post-session chat
- Continue asking questions after the meeting ends
- Threaded conversations with full transcript context
- Attach new photos for follow-up analysis
- Copy and share individual responses
Reports that go somewhere
- Generate a report for any meeting, not just your most recent one
- Reports arrive as a readable document in Slack, Notion, Mail, and anywhere else the share sheet reaches
- A PDF fallback, so nothing turns up as raw markup
- Collapsed sections expand before it sends, so what people get is the whole report
Share a link
- Send a link to a meeting with the same include toggles as a file export: queries and chat, the report, photos, audio
- It tells you what it sends and who hosts it before you send it
- Anyone with the link can open it, with no sign-in
- Links expire after 30 days by default (you can pick a different length), and you can revoke one any time
- Revoking stops the page, but it cannot pull back a message already delivered, or a link preview cached outside Shoulder Surf
Straight from Messages
- Shoulder Surf turns up in the Messages app drawer
- Pick a meeting already on your device and one tap puts a card in the conversation
- The drawer lists only meetings you have already recorded, so it stays empty until there is one
- It creates nothing and reads nothing new
Multi-provider support
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Moonshot and Alibaba, with your own key for each
- OpenRouter, one key that opens a curated set of further models
- More than 60 models in all
- Apple Intelligence (on-device and free, on iPhones that support it)
- Managed AI (auto-selected by your subscription tier)
- Switch models per session or globally
Cost transparency
- A context meter shows how much room a chat question uses
- Image resolution control to optimize tokens
Full privacy
- Keys stored in iOS Keychain, never in plain text
- API calls go directly from your device to the provider
- Keys never sent to Shoulder Surf servers
- No Shoulder Surf account needed when you use your own key
Visual & auditory
- Dynamic Type support, so text follows your system size settings in most of the app
- VoiceOver with 150+ custom labels and state-aware descriptions
- 6-bar audio level meter for visual confirmation of mic input
- Key indicators pair color with shape or text, like the level meter's rising bars
Motor & cognitive
- Touch targets built to Apple's 44pt guideline
- Reduce Motion support disables springs and fling physics
- Non-intrusive auto-dismissing notifications
- Progressive disclosure, advanced features hidden until needed
Live transcription helps you follow along when audio is unclear. Rolling summaries keep you anchored during long or fast-moving discussions. Help Me Respond gives you a starting point when you need a moment to think. These features are useful for everyone, and especially valuable if you process information differently, work in a second language, or prefer reading over listening.
