Waylight
On-device AI memory for macOS and Windows that records your screen, meetings, and docs so you can ask what you saw — and when — without a cloud copy.
Waylight earns a look because of what surrounds the recall: memory rules that exclude apps and incognito windows, one-click history clearing, and auditable logs of what was captured — plus a daily journal and live to-do list that turn raw screen memory into accountability output. If your work is confidential and you want recall without a cloud copy, this is the shape to evaluate. If you need your memory available on a phone, in a browser, or shared across a team, look elsewhere.
Verified 4d ago · liveness 73/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/waylight
- Privacy-bound professionals handling confidential material who want recall without a cloud copy
- Knowledge workers drowning in tabs, docs, and messages who need to find what they saw and when
- Remote employees with back-to-back meetings who need to remember commitments
- Researchers tracking past references across apps and documents
- Teams needing cloud sync and shared memory across people
- Anyone who needs mobile or web access to their memory
- People who do not want continuous background indexing of their activity
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Skip Waylight if you need your captured memory available on a phone, in a browser, or shared with teammates — it is a single-machine macOS and Windows desktop app with no cloud sync.
Staying on Free limits you to 1 day of retention and 100 questions per month, so day-two recall disappears unless you move up.
Per the seed data, Free is a 1-day/100-question entry point, Pro is $19/mo for 30-day retention and 1,000 questions, and Team is $49/mo per user. That puts Waylight in the same band as individual cloud recall subscriptions, but with the on-device architecture as the reason to pay — and it gets expensive per seat if you are buying for a whole team rather than for the confidential work of one person.
In short
Waylight — On-device AI memory for macOS and Windows that records your screen, meetings, and docs so you can ask what you saw — and when — without a cloud copy. Best for Privacy-bound professionals handling confidential material who want recall without a cloud copy, Knowledge workers drowning in tabs, docs, and messages who need to find what they saw and when, Remote employees with back-to-back meetings who need to remember commitments. Free to start; paid plans from $19/mo.
What people actually say about Waylight — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
30 mentions across 3 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt) · researched Jul 3, 2026.
Average across the 3 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Privacy-first: all data stays local on your machine.
- +Eliminates copy-pasting context into ChatGPT manually.
- +Cross-app search across tabs, meetings, and documents.
- +Works with common tools like Slack, Zoom, and Chrome.
- +Retrieval-Augmented Generation ensures cited sources.
- −Community feedback is virtually nonexistent for real-world use.
- −No user reports on indexing accuracy or speed.
- −Unclear how it handles large volumes of activity data.
- −Potential high resource usage from constant screen indexing.
- −Integration with Telegram etc. not yet confirmed.
- • Potential hardware upgrade if indexing slows old machines
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Waylight? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Passive on-device capture of screen changes and activity
- Natural language chat over everything you have viewed
- Answers grounded in your actual screen content with citations
- Local small models tuned to your hardware
- Offline by default with zero cloud uploads
- Memory rules to exclude specific apps and incognito windows
- One-click history clearing
- Auditable activity logs
- Customizable retention periods
- Daily journal summarizing what you worked on, by app and document
- Activity timeline with per-entry summaries
- Live to-do list generated from recent activity
- Refresh to pull the latest context into your task list
- Add, edit, and delete tasks in the to-do list
- Desktop app for macOS and Windows
About Waylight
Waylight is a desktop AI assistant for macOS and Windows that passively captures what happens on your computer — meetings, documents, websites, messages — and lets you chat with that captured context later. Instead of copying text into ChatGPT, you ask the question directly: 'What did I agree to in that meeting?' and get an answer grounded in what you actually viewed. The vendor page states screen understanding and chat run on-device with zero cloud uploads, models run locally, and the app is offline by default. Beyond recall, Waylight turns activity into output: a daily journal summarizes what you worked on by app and document, a timeline shows per-entry summaries, and a live to-do list is generated from recent activity with a refresh that pulls in the latest context. Memory rules let you exclude specific apps and incognito windows from capture, and one-click history clearing plus auditable logs give you control over what was recorded. It is built for knowledge workers, developers, researchers, and anyone handling confidential material who wants recall without shipping their screen to a cloud. It is desktop-only — there is no mobile or web app, and shared team memory is outside its design.
Behind the Verdict
Waylight's real differentiator isn't 'AI that remembers your screen' — that much is table stakes in this category. It's the combination of an on-device architecture and an output layer. The vendor states all processing runs locally, models are tuned small models for your system, and the app is offline by default, so there is no cloud copy of your screen content. On top of that sits the part most recall tools skip: a daily journal summarizing what you worked on by app and document, an activity timeline with per-entry summaries, and a live to-do list built from recent activity that you can refresh, add to, edit, and delete from. That turns passive capture into something you actually act on. Control surfaces are unusually concrete. Memory rules exclude certain apps and incognito windows from being captured, history clears in one click, retention periods are customizable, and activity logs are auditable. If you are the kind of person whose objection to always-on capture is 'I need to know exactly what got recorded and be able to delete it,' Waylight answers that with named controls rather than a privacy badge. Where it fits: privacy-bound professionals handling confidential client, patient, or legal material who still want searchable recall; remote workers with back-to-back meetings who need to remember commitments; developers juggling VS Code, Slack, Linear, and a browser who want a record of their own workflow. Where it doesn't: it is macOS and Windows only, with no mobile or web access to your memory and no shared memory across people. Background indexing is the core mechanism, so if continuous capture of your screen is a non-starter, this design is not for you. And retention is tiered rather than infinite — the seed data caps the free plan at 1 day of memory and 100 questions per month, and Pro at 30 days and 1,000 questions — so if you want memory that stretches back indefinitely, you have to manage retention deliberately.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Waylight actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You keep Waylight running during client calls and document review with memory rules excluding personal apps. After a Tuesday call you ask what scope you agreed to, and Waylight answers from the captured meeting content without anything leaving the machine.
Outcome: You reconstruct the commitment in seconds and keep the confidential material off any cloud service.
Meetings land in Slack, Teams, and Zoom all day. You open Waylight in the morning, refresh the live to-do list built from recent activity, edit the items that matter, and during the day ask where a specific deploy announcement was mentioned.
Outcome: You start the day with an actual task list instead of a channel backlog, and you stop scrolling to find the message.
You saw a snippet weeks ago but cannot recall the file. You ask Waylight about it; it pulls the answer from your captured VS Code session and cites where it came from. At end of day the journal shows which repos and docs you actually touched.
Outcome: You recover the snippet without reopening old work, and you get an honest record of where the day went.
Use Cases
- Ask what you agreed to in yesterday's meeting and get the answer from the captured transcript.
- Find a specific Slack message about a deploy without scrolling through channel history.
- Recall a code snippet you saw in a VS Code session weeks ago.
- Pull a key point out of a long PDF you read days ago, without reopening it.
- Review a daily journal of which apps and documents you actually worked in.
- Turn recent activity into a focused to-do list at the start of the day.
- Draft a reply referencing a document that is open on your screen.
- Keep sensitive client or patient material off any cloud service while still searching it.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-02
Limitations
- Waylight runs only on macOS and Windows desktop — there is no mobile or web app.
- The seed data caps the Free tier at 1 day of retention and 100 questions per month, and Pro at 30 days and 1,000 questions, so memory does not extend indefinitely unless you manage retention deliberately.
- Background indexing is the core mechanism, which some people will not want running continuously.
- Cloud-based team collaboration and shared memory are outside its design, per the seed data.
as of 2026-10-14
Verification history
We have re-verified Waylight 11 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
Showing the 6 most recent of 11 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Waylight tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0
Ideal for
Solo users testing whether on-device screen recall fits their workflow before committing to a paid tier.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: 1 day of memory retention and 100 questions per month, with on-device capture, memory rules for excluding apps and incognito windows, and one-click history clearing.
Pro
$19/mo
Ideal for
Individual knowledge workers, developers, or researchers who need month-long recall and a daily accountability loop.
What this tier adds
Adds 30-day memory retention and 1,000 questions per month over Free, plus the daily journal and live to-do list, auditable activity logs, and customizable retention periods.
Team
$49/mo per user
Ideal for
Small teams that want each member running on Pro-level recall under one per-user plan.
What this tier adds
Adds per-user team pricing on top of everything in Pro, along with cross-app recall across Slack, Teams, Zoom, and more.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Waylight's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Per the seed data, Free is a 1-day/100-question entry point, Pro is $19/mo for 30-day retention and 1,000 questions, and Team is $49/mo per user. That puts Waylight in the same band as individual cloud recall subscriptions, but with the on-device architecture as the reason to pay — and it gets expensive per seat if you are buying for a whole team rather than for the confidential work of one person.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Waylight — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Expect a short install-and-index window rather than an onboarding project: you install the macOS or Windows app, grant screen capture permission, and let background indexing build up context before recall gets useful. First value — asking about something you viewed today — typically lands the same day; the journal and daily to-do list become meaningful after a full working day of capture.
Switching to or from Waylight
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From ChatGPT copy-paste workflow: stop pasting context in, install Waylight, and ask about the document or meeting directly since it is already captured.
- →From Rewind: switch to on-device processing, re-create your app exclusions as Waylight memory rules, and review the auditable logs to confirm what is being captured.
- →From manual meeting notes: let Waylight capture the meeting and pull commitments from it, using memory rules to exclude anything you do not want recorded.
- ↗To a cloud recall tool: export or screenshot the journal and to-do items you need, then accept that your history will be re-indexed in the new tool's cloud.
- ↗To manual notes plus a task manager: copy your live to-do list into your task manager and rely on the daily journal for a final record before clearing history.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Waylight”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Waylight” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Waylight.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Waylight
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Waylight, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
remio
Local-first AI agent that turns your files, meetings, and research into finished decks, sheets, and reports.
mymind
mymind is a private AI memory app that auto-organizes your notes, bookmarks, articles and images — no folders, no tags.
Mem
Mem is an AI knowledge base that captures your notes and meetings and organizes them for you.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Waylight vs Surge Ai
Waylight and Surge AI are entirely different tools. Waylight is for individual knowledge workers who want a private, on-device memory of their digital activity. Surge AI is a B2B platform for AI labs needing expert human feedback for training and evaluation. Choose based on whether you need personal productivity or enterprise AI alignment.
Waylight vs Praktika
Don't compare apples to oranges: Praktika is for spoken language practice, Waylight is for desktop productivity recall. Pick Praktika if you want to improve speaking fluency with AI tutors; pick Waylight if you need a searchable memory of your computer activity. No overlap in use cases.
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