Gloss: redefine your productivity with the invisible AI desktop assistant
Gloss is an innovative open-source AI-powered productivity tool developed by the Pickle team. Unlike traditional software, Gloss operates discreetly in the background, capturing both screen activity and audio inputs to transform them into structured knowledge. This unique functionality enables real-time meeting transcription, automatic summarization, context-aware understanding, and instant Q&A capabilities.
What sets Gloss apart is its minimalist design philosophy. The application remains completely invisible during operation – it doesn’t appear in screen recordings, screenshots, or the system dock. This ensures that users can enjoy all the benefits of AI assistance without any disruption to their workflow. Available for both macOS and Windows systems, Gloss offers a free tier with no registration required, making it an accessible solution for anyone looking to enhance their productivity with cutting-edge AI technology.

Key Features of Gloss
- Real-time content capture and voice recognition: gloss silently monitors your screen activity and audio inputs, including meeting conversations. This data is then processed into structured information for easy reference.
- Contextual understanding and summarization: by combining visual and auditory inputs, Gloss generates high-quality meeting notes, summaries, and task lists tailored to your needs.
- Instantaneous question answering: users can pose questions at any time, and the AI will provide answers based on previously captured screen activity and audio content.
- Invisible operation: gloss remains hidden from view during operation, ensuring uninterrupted focus on your tasks without distracting UI elements.
- Advanced meeting management: automatically records meetings with speaker identification, extracts key points, and produces concise summaries for review.
- Knowledge retention: saves user interactions and voice commands as organized documentation, facilitating easy access to past information and insights.
Getting Started with Gloss
- For macOS Users:
- Download the precompiled version: visit the Gloss GitHub Releases page. Choose the latest .dmg file (recommended) or .zip archive for installation. Drag the Gloss application to your “Applications” folder after opening the .dmg file.
- Launch Gloss: locate the application in your “Applications” folder and double-click to start it up.
- Setup and configuration: upon launching, follow on-screen instructions for initial setup. You may need to provide an OpenAI API key (optional). Use keyboard shortcuts like Cmd + \ to show/hide the main window and Cmd + Enter to access the AI assistant interface.
- For Windows Users:
- Install required dependencies: ensure Python and Node.js (version 20.x.x recommended) are installed. If not already installed, use the following commands to set up Node.js:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.0/install.sh | bash nvm install 20 nvm use 20
- Complete the installation: after installing Node.js, proceed to download and install Gloss from its official repository. Follow on-screen instructions to set up the application for Windows environment.