Whisply and Tactiq, two different categories

Tactiq is a browser extension. You install it in Chrome (and a few Chromium cousins), and it hooks into Google Meet, Zoom on the web, and Microsoft Teams to pull the closed captions out of the meeting. It then turns those captions into a transcript, runs AI summaries on top, and saves the result so you can search it later or push it into Notion, Slack, or your CRM. It is good at what it does. If your whole working day happens inside Chrome tabs, Tactiq fits there.

Whisply is a Mac-native app. It sits in your menu bar and you pull it open with Cmd+Return. It can see your screen and hear your microphone if you grant those permissions, and on the Pro Undetected tier it can act on your Mac through Accessibility. It is not a transcript service. It is a live assistant that answers questions while the conversation is still happening, in any application you have open, not just a browser meeting tab.

These are not two versions of the same product. One is a transcript layer for browser meetings. The other is a real-time overlay that runs above every app on your Mac. The closest thing they share is that both can be useful during a call.

Tactiq runs inside Chrome, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium browsers. It works on whichever operating system that browser runs on, so Tactiq is available on Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. The catch is that it only sees what the browser sees. If your call is in the native Zoom client, the desktop Teams app, FaceTime, Webex, Discord, or a custom video tool, Tactiq cannot reach it.

Whisply runs on macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. That is the only platform. In exchange for being Mac-only, it gets to use system-level APIs that a browser extension cannot touch. It can listen to system audio. It can read what is on your screen across any window. It can stay above your active app no matter which one you are in. If you spend most of your time outside Chrome, that difference shows up immediately.

Tactiq is organized around the transcript. The transcript is the artifact. Summaries, action items, and AI follow-ups are all derived from that transcript after the meeting (and sometimes near-live during it). The mental model is: capture everything, refine later, share the document.

Whisply is organized around the answer. There is no shared transcript artifact you hand to your team. The point is the moment, mid-call, when you need a number you half-remember, a sharper way to phrase your next sentence, or a definition you do not want to admit you forgot. You press Cmd+Return, you read the answer on your screen, you keep talking. The conversation is the artifact. The help is private to you.

Both approaches are valid. They serve different jobs. If you are running a sales team that needs every call logged and analyzed, Tactiq is closer to your shape. If you are the person in the call who needs to perform well right now, Whisply is closer to yours.

Tactiq's core flow pulls captions through the browser, which means it does not usually need to add a notetaker bot to the participant list (that is one of the things people like about it compared to Otter, Fireflies, and Read.ai). It is well-behaved on that front for browser-based meetings.

Whisply takes that even further. There is no participant added to your meeting, ever, because Whisply does not join the meeting. It listens through your Mac's microphone or system audio, on your machine. The host sees the normal participant list. Your colleagues see a normal screen if you share. The other side has no way of knowing Whisply is running, because there is no signal to find.

If your concern is that meeting-AI tools change how the room behaves the moment a bot appears, Whisply removes the bot question entirely. If your concern is that you want every word captured and shared with your team, that is a different concern, and Tactiq handles it well.

On the Pro Undetected tier, Whisply can act on your Mac. With Accessibility permission granted, it can click, type, scroll, and move through apps on your behalf. Tell it to file a follow-up in your CRM, draft a reply in your email client, or pull the right tab forward, and it does the actual work, not just the writing.

Tactiq does not do this. It is a capture and summary tool. Once the meeting is over and the transcript is processed, the work of doing things with that information is on you (or on a separate automation tool you wire up through Zapier or similar).

If your bottleneck is the doing, not the remembering, Whisply's Computer Use is the bigger lift. If your bottleneck is the remembering, Tactiq is doing exactly what you need.

Tactiq's privacy model is straightforward extension model. The extension reads the captions in your browser, sends the transcript to Tactiq's servers for AI processing, and stores the result in your Tactiq account. That is normal and reasonable for what it does. You should still check what your IT team allows for browser extensions that read meeting content.

Whisply's overlay window uses a system-level content protection flag on macOS so it stays out of screen sharing and most screen recordings by default. If you share your screen mid-call, your colleagues see your work, not the Whisply panel hovering on top of it. That is a small detail until the moment you accidentally screen-share with the assistant open. Then it is the whole point.

Tactiq has a free tier (transcripts on a small number of meetings per month), a paid plan around $12 per month per user, and a team plan around $20 per month per user, with an enterprise tier on top. Pricing on their site is the source of truth, and it does shift, so check before you buy.

Whisply has a Free tier (limited daily messages, core meeting assist), Pro at $19.99 monthly or $11.99 monthly on the annual plan, and Pro Undetected at $149.99 monthly or $44.99 monthly on the annual plan. The Pro Undetected tier is what unlocks Computer Use and the armed proctor-resistant mode for exam and assessment scenarios. Models are included on every tier, so there is no separate OpenAI or Anthropic key to manage.