01
It arms itself
Open Zoom and Plainly is already listening. No bot joins the meeting and no one else sees it.
No recording
Audio is transcribed in the moment and discarded. There is no file to leak.
macOS & Windows · works over Zoom, Meet, Teams
When the fast talker says “table that” you'll know what he means.
Plainly puts live captions on top of your call and, underneath every sentence, the same thing said plainly — or in your language. It turns itself on when a call starts and disappears when it ends.
Two lines.Always.
Nobody slows down for you
A native speaker on a client call talks fast and idiomatically, and if you are listening in a second language you lose the thread — not because the words are hard, but because the idioms are. Asking them to repeat it costs you the room. Plainly listens to the call audio, shows what was said, and directly under it a plain-English rewrite of the same sentence, so you recover the meaning without ever leaving the call.
How it works
02
Two lines, always
What they said, and underneath it the plain version. Idioms get a dotted underline you can tap for the meaning.
03
Keep only what you pin
Pinned phrases go to a list you can review after the call. Everything else is gone when you hang up.
Three placements
Put it wherever it gets in the way least
Placement 01
Floating card
The primary direction. The live line is boosted in size and given the accent rule; older lines fade back. Scrolling up detaches from live and reveals a “jump to live” pill.
Keeps two lines of history. Covers a corner of the video grid.
Placement 02
Bottom bar
One line, minimal footprint. Covers no faces and carries the largest type of the three, so it is the one to use when the call is the whole screen.
Trade-off: no history at all — catching up means opening the panel.
Placement 03
Side panel
Docked, for reading along. Best for long calls where you want to scan back over what was said earlier.
Trade-off: costs horizontal space, so the video grid shrinks.
What you get
Two Lines,
Always
What they said, and underneath it the same thing said plainly.
Idioms,
Explained
Tap the dotted underline for what it actually means
Any Language You Read Faster
Plain English, Spanish, Korean or Portuguese — switched mid-call.
Pinned Phrases & Recap
Keep only what you pin. Everything else is gone when you hang up.
The second line
Plain English, or yours
The bottom line defaults to plain English. The same slot can hold any language you read faster than you listen — switch it mid-call from the menu bar.
Plain English
Let's postpone that.
Default
Spanish
Dejémoslo para más tarde.
Available
Korean
그건 나중으로 미루죠.
Available
Portuguese
Vamos deixar isso para depois.
Available
Off
Captions only, no second line.
Available
Privacy
Nothing is saved unless you pin it
No bot in your meeting
Nothing joins the call and no participant list shows an extra name.
Invisible to everyone else
The overlay is drawn on your screen only — it does not appear in a shared screen.
Pins are yours alone
Pinned phrases stay on your machine unless you export them yourself.
Pricing
Free for 1:1 calls
Free
$0
For one-on-one calls, for as long as you like.
- Unlimited 1:1 calls
- Plain English second line
- Up to 20 pinned phrases
Pro
$8 / month
For anyone who takes group calls in a second language.
- Group calls, any size
- All second-line languages
- Unlimited pins and post-call recaps
- Custom vocabulary for names and jargon
Team
$6 / seat / month
For teams that work across languages every day.
- Everything in Pro
- Shared vocabulary across the team
- SSO and centrally managed privacy modes
Say it once. Understand it twice.
plainly
Your next callmakes sense
Free for 1:1 calls. No recording, no bot joining your meeting, nothing to configure before it works.
All downloads
macOS will block the first launch — here's how to open it
Plainly is not yet signed with an Apple Developer certificate, so macOS shows “Apple could not verify Plainly is free of malware.” That is Gatekeeper doing its job on any unsigned app, not a problem with the download.
- Open the .dmg and drag Plainly into your Applications folder.
- Open Plainly once. macOS blocks it — click Done.
- Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, then scroll down to Security.
- Next to “Plainly was blocked”, click Open Anyway and confirm with Touch ID or your password.
On macOS 15 and later, right-click → Open no longer works. Apple removed that bypass; System Settings is the only route.
Prefer the Terminal? This clears the quarantine flag on the app so it opens straight away:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Plainly.app