Read AI App: Desktop, Mobile, Extension and What Each Needs

Read AI has eight ways in, all free to download with a Read account: the web app, a Windows and macOS desktop app, iPhone and Android apps, a Chromium extension, a Zoom App, a Teams app and a Google Meet add-on. They capture in three ways. The extension, the Zoom App, the Teams app and a pasted meeting link in the web app send Read's visible assistant into the call. The Google Meet add-on records through Meet's own recording, with no bot, once someone approves a consent request. The desktop and mobile apps record locally, so nobody else in the conversation sees them. Your plan, not the app, sets the limits: Free stops at 5 meeting reports a month, reports shared with you included, and meetings up to 1 hour.

Eight apps on one account, and what each one is for

Pick by where the conversation happens. Scheduled video calls on Zoom, Teams or Google Meet are the assistant's home ground, and the apps there mostly decide how it gets in. Calls on Webex, GoTo Meeting, RingCentral, Slack huddles or a dialer are different, because the assistant cannot join them, so the desktop app takes over. Face-to-face meetings belong to the phone apps. Everything lands in one account and syncs across devices, so a report recorded on a phone shows up on the web and inside Ask Read on your laptop.

The web app stays the control room. Prepare pre-reads and Readouts, the email and messaging summaries, exist only there, and settings such as Auto-Join Preferences sit in your account settings. One rule covers every surface: once you connect a calendar, Read joins every event on it by default, including during the 7-day Enterprise trial, and sends the recap to everyone with access. Our guide on how to remove Read AI covers the switches, from Auto-Join Preferences to the Read stop and Opt out chat commands.

Desktop app: bot-free audio for calls the assistant cannot join

The desktop app runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11 and on macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, with separate builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Its Record button captures your microphone and system audio, so it works on any platform: Slack huddles, Webex, dialer calls and the Teams calls started from Chat that the assistant cannot enter ^[1]. You still get a transcript, a summary, action items and key questions. During the call, Ask Read can answer questions about what you missed; Read AI calls this Catch Me Up.

What it leaves out matters. Desktop recordings are audio only: no video, no coaching, no participant-level deep-dive metrics and no speaker attribution, so the transcript does not say who said what. Bias and charisma scores come from video analysis, so they never appear on these reports. Readout topic reports and daily summaries are missing from the desktop app as well and stay on the web. Audio and video playback of any report starts on Enterprise, whichever app captured it.

The bigger change is social. In desktop mode Read does not appear in the participant list and posts nothing in chat, so other people cannot see it recording ^[2]. Read AI puts the duty on you: tell participants and collect consent, because the product cannot enforce it. The app reminds you before each recording and offers a disclosure message with a link anyone can use to opt out and have the recording deleted. That link works only if you share it. The chat commands that remove the assistant do nothing here.

iPhone and Android: in-person meetings, not phone calls

The mobile apps exist for face-to-face conversations, and both are free in the App Store and on Google Play. The iPhone app needs iOS 18.0 or later ^[3]. The Android app, listed as Read AI: Meeting Notes, needs Android 12 or later. Both record in-person audio with a live transcript and summary, and most reports are ready in about 5 to 15 minutes. The apps also carry your summaries, transcripts, notifications, Ask Read and report templates.

The limit people trip over is simple. The phone cannot record calls. Phone calls, FaceTime and virtual meetings on the same phone are out, because another app is already using the microphone, and a Webex call on that phone fails for the same reason. For those, run the desktop app on a computer or bring the assistant into a Zoom, Teams or Meet call. Mobile capture is invisible too, so the app shows a consent notification with suggested wording to share with the room. Speaker attribution and coaching are absent, and in-app audio and video playback needs Enterprise or Enterprise+.

Browser extension: a calendar switch now that the Gmail tools are gone

The extension runs on Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave), and every feature works on Free ^[4]. It lets you switch Read on or off for single Google Calendar events and add the assistant to an unscheduled Meet, Zoom or Teams meeting. It installs without permission to read all sites. Zoom and Teams call detection, which prompts you to add Read when you join without it, works only after you allow extra permissions. The Scheduling agent's real-time suggestions also need the extension, on Google Calendar only.

If you came for the Gmail tools, skip the install. The extension's Gmail features, meaning the email digest, reply drafting and thread summaries, were deprecated in January 2026. Email summaries now arrive as Readouts in the web app after you connect Gmail or Outlook; Free gets them for 14 days after first connecting, paid plans without a time limit. One quirk applies to any manual add, including through the extension: the report gets a generic title, loses the guest list in integrations and is not shared automatically with participants.

Inside Zoom, Teams and Google Meet

Zoom App

The Zoom App works only in the Zoom desktop client for Windows or Mac, version 5.7.3 or higher; Zoom on a phone or in a browser cannot run it. Opening it during a meeting makes the assistant join as a participant. Since November 2026, Zoom requires bots to be authorized by a signed-in user, so Read joins a Zoom meeting only if you connected your Zoom account and are in that meeting signed in to it. A free Zoom account is enough. A Zoom admin may need to enable Zoom Apps or pre-approve Read, and removing the app from Installed Apps disconnects Read from Zoom entirely.

Zoom One Pro, Business and Business Plus subscribers can also get Read through Zoom Essential Apps, which is a separate Zoom Apps plan free for 12 months. It covers transcripts, summaries and real-time metrics for the first 5 meetings a month, recordings up to 60 minutes, participant insights and a Workspace for up to 10 users. It has no audio or video playback. After the 12 months the account drops to Free automatically unless someone upgrades it.

Teams app

The Teams app is free on Microsoft AppSource but needs a paid Teams or Microsoft 365 account, and only an organizer, co-organizer or presenter can add Read to a meeting with it. It puts the live dashboard, with a real-time transcript, summaries and metrics, plus Ask Read into the meeting sidebar. Underneath, Read still joins as an anonymous, unverified guest, so your tenant must let anonymous users join meetings. It cannot enter Teams calls started from Chat. The desktop app covers those.

Google Meet add-on

The add-on, Read Notetaker, installs free from the Google Workspace Marketplace and records through Meet's native recording, so no bot joins and no extension is needed. Someone in the meeting must approve a consent request within 10 minutes of the start before recording begins; with Google Calendar connected it can start automatically at the scheduled time. A Google Workspace admin may have turned off the recording permission it needs. Run the add-on and the assistant in the same call and you get two separate reports.

Which plan each app needs, and where the limits bite

No app costs extra. The plan sets the limits everywhere. Free covers 5 meeting reports a month, and reports other people share with you count toward those 5; from the sixth, reports show as out of quota with no transcript. Meetings stop at 1 hour on Free, and at the cap Read builds the report from what it captured up to then. Free also includes no upload minutes; Pro starts at 100 a month. Our article on whether Read AI is free walks through the quota.

Paid plans remove the report cap. Pro costs $15 per user per month billed annually or $19.75 per user per month billed monthly, with 4-hour meetings and 100 upload minutes a month; billed annually, that is $180 a year per user by our arithmetic. Enterprise costs $22.50 per user per month billed annually or $29.75 per user per month billed monthly, and adds audio and video playback, inside the mobile apps too. Enterprise+ raises the meeting cap to 8 hours and requires 5+ licenses; Read AI routes it through sales. Read AI does not offer refunds.

New accounts start with a 7-day trial of Enterprise, with no card, so playback works on the web and in the desktop and mobile apps for that week. The account then drops to the Free plan on its own. The trial carries no upload minutes. Paid seats are per person: every member of a Workspace needs a license on the same plan, and Free users cannot join one.

The bottom line

Install by situation, not by habit. For scheduled Zoom and Teams calls, the extension or the platform's own app gets the assistant in, with speaker labels and coaching intact; on Zoom only with your Zoom account connected and you in the meeting, signed in. On Meet, the extension sends the assistant, or the Meet add-on records with no bot. For Webex, Slack huddles or a Teams call from Chat, the desktop app is the route, at the cost of audio-only reports and a consent job that is yours alone. For the meeting room, use the phone. Then judge the plan by volume: past 5 reports a month (shared ones count) or meetings over 1 hour, Free runs out in every app at once.