LockedIn AI Alternative: A Copilot That Can't Show Up in Your Screen Share (2026)

If you are looking at LockedIn AI, you have probably already asked the only question that matters during a live interview: will the interviewer see it when I share my screen?

With LockedIn AI, the honest answer is “it depends which version you run” — and that is the whole problem. LockedIn ships three form factors, and one of them lives inside the browser, where screen capture can pick it up. This page explains why that happens (it is physics, not a bug), credits the things LockedIn genuinely does well, and shows where Dusky takes a different approach: one native window, always excluded from capture at the operating-system level, with no toggle to forget and no second form factor to trip over.

We keep this honest. Where a number is client-rendered or comes from someone else’s review, we say so. Competitor facts here were verified against LockedIn AI’s own site on 2026-07-12; prices in this category change often, so treat anything dated as “as of July 2026.”

The short version

	LockedIn AI	Dusky
Form factors	Web app, desktop app (Win 10+ / macOS 13.1+), and a VSCode/Cursor extension (lockedinai.com)	One native desktop app (macOS 12+, Windows 10/11 64-bit) — no browser extension, no web tab
How stealth works	Desktop app “runs in full Stealth Mode”; web/extension path draws inside the page (lockedinai.com/support)	OS-level exclusion via macOS content protection API + Windows display affinity API, always on (stealth docs)
Stealth toggle	Stealth is tied to the desktop app specifically	Always on — “no stealth on/off switch to leave in the wrong position”
Pricing model	Unlimited (Monthly/Quarterly), Credits (0.5 credits/min, never expire), and Lifetime (lockedinai.com/support); dollar amounts render client-side	Flat one-time passes: $0 trial, $19 / 7 days, $69 / 8 weeks, plus $39/mo Pro (pricing)
Refunds	Pricing page says “Money-back guarantee”; refund-policy page says “no refunds are offered once a subscription has started” (pricing vs refund policy)	None — “all sales are final.” A free 15-minute trial exists so you test first
Free tier	Yes — “Free to start · No credit card required” (lockedinai.com)	Yes — 15 minutes of AI-assistance time, no credit card

Two contradictions in that table are worth the rest of this article: the form-factor problem, and the refund-policy problem. Both are checkable against LockedIn’s own site today.

What LockedIn AI does well (credit where it’s due)

We are not here to run LockedIn down. It gets several things right, and if you are comparing tools you should know them.

• There is a genuine free tier. LockedIn’s homepage says it plainly: “Free to start · No credit card required,” and “All new users get free access” (lockedinai.com, verified 2026-07-12). Not every competitor in this space lets you try before paying.
• Credits never expire. LockedIn’s support center states credits are “deducted at a flat rate of 0.5 credits per minute across all meeting modes” and that “Credits never expire” (lockedinai.com/support). If you buy a credit pack and go quiet for two months, the balance is still there. That is a fairer model than many.
• Broad platform coverage. LockedIn lists Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and more, plus coding-assessment platforms, and captures interviewer audio at the system level (lockedinai.com).
• A real desktop app with real stealth. LockedIn’s desktop app “runs in full Stealth Mode and stays completely invisible during screen sharing,” per its support center (lockedinai.com/support). The desktop path uses the same class of native OS exclusion that Dusky uses. Credit where it is due: when you run LockedIn’s native desktop app and set it up correctly, the mechanism is sound.

So the desktop app is fine. The trouble is that the desktop app is not the only way people run LockedIn — and the other ways cannot use that mechanism at all.

The form-factor problem: an extension can’t hide from screen share

Here is the part no ranking page explains clearly, so take a minute with it — it will make you a smarter buyer no matter which tool you pick.

Screen sharing on Zoom, Meet, or Teams is pixel capture. The app asks the operating system for the composited pixels of a display or a window, and it draws whatever it gets back. It does not enumerate your running programs. A video-call app sees pixels, not processes.

That single fact decides whether a copilot can hide.

A native desktop window can ask the OS to be excluded from capture. On macOS, a native window can set NSWindow.sharingType = .none, and the window server drops it before any capture happens. On Windows, a native window can call SetWindowDisplayAffinity with the WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE flag, and the Desktop Window Manager removes that window from every output path — BitBlt, Desktop Duplication, Windows Graphics Capture — before the pixels ever reach the capturing app. This is documented, reproducible engineering, not marketing. (See the technical write-up by engineer Adam Svoboda, How interview cheating tools hide from Zoom, 2025, and Microsoft’s SetWindowDisplayAffinity docs.)

A browser extension cannot do any of that. An extension overlay is drawn inside the browser’s own window and page — it is part of the page’s pixels. It has no separate operating-system window of its own, so there is no window handle to attach an exclusion flag to. When you share that browser window or your whole screen, the overlay is captured like any other pixel on the page. This is the structural reason browser-based copilots leak while correctly built native ones do not (Svoboda, 2025).

LockedIn ships both kinds. Its own site lists a web app (Chrome, Edge, Chromium, Opera, Brave), a desktop app, and a VSCode/Cursor extension (lockedinai.com, verified 2026-07-12). The desktop app can use native exclusion. The web and extension paths, by their nature, cannot — they live in the page. So if you reach for the extension because it is the fastest thing to install, you have quietly picked the one form factor that the OS cannot hide for you. That is not a defect LockedIn can patch; it is where the pixels are.

LockedIn AI itself acknowledges the risk, and does so twice. Its support center hosts an article titled “How to do share the screen without being caught” (support.lockedinai.com), and a LockedIn blog post, “Screen Share Strategies” (2024-07-03), coaches users to “interact with it through keyboard shortcuts so that you do not visibly switch back to the tab” and to “make sure the tool does not fire off notifications and does not place icons on the main monitor” (lockedinai.com/blog). A vendor confident in true invisibility would not need to teach its users how not to get caught — that guidance is a plain admission that the leak risk is real and has to be managed by hand. Reviewers, for their part, report that the browser-extension version does show up during screen sharing (Interview Sidekick review, updated June 2026) — treat that as a single interested-party account, but note it is exactly what the form factor predicts.

Native exclusion isn’t magic either — the honest caveats

We hold ourselves to the same standard. OS-level exclusion is strong, but it is not absolute, and any tool that tells you it is “100% undetectable” is overselling. Even a correctly excluded native window can be captured by some paths: Svoboda found QuickTime’s screen recorder bypassed the protection, and Zoom needs its “Advanced capture with window filtering” setting for exclusion to behave reliably (Svoboda, 2025). Microsoft’s own docs warn that SetWindowDisplayAffinity is not a security or DRM guarantee — a photograph of your screen still captures everything (Microsoft docs). None of this beats a phone camera pointed at your monitor, a locked-down proctoring client that inspects your process list, or an interviewer watching your eyes.

We put those limits on our own site, and we go deeper into them in Is LockedIn AI detectable?. The point here is narrow: on a plain video call, a correctly-excluded native window is genuinely invisible to the screen share, and a browser-page overlay is not. Form factor decides it.

The trust problem: two refund policies, same company

The second checkable contradiction is about money, and it is the kind of thing that erodes trust across this whole category.

LockedIn AI’s pricing page advertises a “Money-back guarantee” as a plan bullet (lockedinai.com/pricing).

LockedIn AI’s own refund-policy page says the opposite: “no refunds are offered once a subscription has started.” Only annual plans qualify for a partial refund, and only if cancelled within 7 days; monthly and quarterly plans are non-refundable (lockedinai.com/refund-policy).

Both pages are live on the same site. A “money-back guarantee” that the company’s own refund policy describes as “no refunds… once a subscription has started” is not a guarantee — it is marketing on one page and a policy on another. We are flagging it because it is exactly the kind of quiet gap that makes people distrust an entire product niche.

We would rather be plain than clever. Dusky’s policy is one sentence, stated the same way everywhere: all sales are final, and we do not offer refunds. That is why the trial exists — you get 15 minutes of real AI-assistance time, with every feature unlocked and no credit card, so you can decide before you pay instead of arguing about it after (pricing).

The privacy problem: your interview audio, in someone else’s cloud

The third thing worth checking before you commit is where your interview data goes, and here again LockedIn’s own policy is the source.

Because LockedIn is a cloud tool, the audio and documents it works with leave your machine. LockedIn’s privacy policy describes capturing your microphone and system audio and turning your uploaded resume into vector embeddings, then fanning that data out to four external processors — AssemblyAI for transcription, Azure OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Pinecone (lockedinai.com/privacy-policy, verified 2026-07-12). The policy does not address encryption of that data, and it auto-deletes only after an account has been inactive for more than a year. To LockedIn’s credit, the same policy states it does not sell your data.

This is not a scandal — it is what a cloud copilot is, and every hosted tool in this category routes your audio and transcripts through third parties. But it is a real architectural difference from how Dusky works. Dusky is pass-through: it does not store your transcripts, screenshots, or conversations on any server. The only thing kept server-side is the email address you sign in with (via Supabase, for auth). Your Interview Context — the CV and job description you paste in — stays on your own machine, encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and is wiped when you sign out. Dusky does use AssemblyAI for transcription and an AI provider to generate answers, the same class of services LockedIn uses, so we are not claiming your audio never touches a third party — it does, in the moment, to produce an answer. The difference is that nothing about your session is retained afterward.

A note on LockedIn’s pricing (what we can and can’t confirm)

We tried to give you LockedIn’s exact prices from LockedIn’s own pages, and we could not fully, because the dollar amounts on its pricing page are rendered client-side rather than in the page’s HTML (lockedinai.com/pricing, verified 2026-07-12). What LockedIn’s own pages do confirm is the structure: “Unlimited General” and “Unlimited Professional” plans (Monthly and Quarterly), pay-as-you-go “Credit Plans” at 0.5 credits/minute, and a one-time “Lifetime Plan” (lockedinai.com/support).

For the actual dollar amounts we can only pass along what third-party reviews report, clearly labeled as such since we could not read them on LockedIn’s own page: Monthly Unlimited at about $54.99/month, an annual plan around $299, a one-time lifetime plan at $1,499.25, and a free tier of roughly 10 minutes per day, as of July 2026. Every one of those is a third-party figure, not a number LockedIn publishes in readable page source, so treat them all as approximate — and note that a $1,499.25 lifetime price is precisely the kind of commitment you would want to see stated plainly on a first-party page before paying.

Contrast that with what you can see before you spend anything on Dusky, because every number is on one public page (pricing):

• Trial — $0. 15 minutes of AI-assistance time (the clock only runs while Dusky is actively answering, not while it sits idle). Every feature on. No credit card.
• Weekly Pass — $19, one-time, 7 days of unlimited use. Best for one or two interviews.
• Job Hunt Pass — $69, one-time, 8 weeks of unlimited use. The recommended plan for an active search — roughly $9/week.
• Pro — $39/month, auto-renewing, cancel anytime. Best for consultants interviewing continuously.

No credit meter ticking down mid-answer, no per-minute math, no wondering whether a pack expired. You buy a window of time and it is yours until it ends.

How Dusky is built differently

Dusky is one native desktop app, and the invisibility is the default, not a setting:

• One form factor, no leaky path. There is no Dusky browser extension and no web tab. Because the copilot is a native window, it uses the macOS content protection API and the Windows display affinity API to exclude itself from screen capture (stealth docs) — “OS-level screen share exclusion, not browser tricks” (interview copilot).
• Always on — nothing to toggle. “Invisibility is not a mode you have to remember to switch on… There is no stealth on/off switch to leave in the wrong position before a call” (stealth docs). The overlay is capture-excluded in every session by default, and even the small hint pill is hidden from screen share.
• Tested platforms. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack Huddles, most browser-based conferencing tools, and CoderPad (stealth docs). Zoom coverage includes the desktop app, browser client, and any share mode.
• Structure, not scripts. Dusky grounds answers in your CV and the job description so you sound like yourself — “frameworks and outlines, not word-for-word answers” (interview copilot). Whether using any copilot is appropriate in your interview is your call to make; Dusky makes no claim that it is.

Two honest limits you should know going in: on Windows, Dusky currently ships unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you at install — choose “More info → Run anyway.” And on any machine, corporate MDM or group-policy restrictions can block the permissions the exclusion relies on. That is why we say, on every relevant page: test invisibility on your own setup before every real interview. Dusky includes a built-in Invisibility Test in onboarding, and you can repeat it anytime.

Who should still pick LockedIn AI

If you specifically want a copilot that lives inside VSCode or Cursor, or you prefer a pure browser workflow and are not screen-sharing your interview, LockedIn’s extension and web app are built for exactly that. If credits-that-never-expire suit how you interview — occasional, spread out over months — that model is genuinely reasonable. Just go in knowing which form factor you are running and what it can and cannot hide, and read both the pricing page and the refund policy before you count on a refund.

If what you want is one native window that is excluded from screen share by default, with pricing you can read in full before paying, that is the gap Dusky is built to fill.

Try Dusky free

You do not have to take our word for the screen-share part — test it yourself.

Download Dusky and run the built-in Invisibility Test on your own machine. The trial is $0 with no credit card: 15 minutes of AI-assistance time with every feature unlocked, counted only while Dusky is actively answering. If it fits how you interview, a $19 one-time Weekly Pass or the $69 Job Hunt Pass takes it from there — no subscription to forget.

Download at getdusky.app — macOS 12+ and Windows 10/11.

See how Dusky stacks up against the rest of the field in our best AI interview assistants guide, or dig into the detection question in Is LockedIn AI detectable?.

FAQ

Can the interviewer see LockedIn AI when I share my screen?

It depends which version you run. LockedIn’s desktop app “runs in full Stealth Mode and stays completely invisible during screen sharing,” per its support center (lockedinai.com/support). Its browser extension and web app, however, draw inside the browser page, which screen capture records like any other pixels — that form factor structurally cannot be excluded by the OS (Svoboda, 2025). If invisibility on a shared screen is your priority, the form factor is the thing to check first.

Why can a native app hide from screen share but a browser extension can’t?

Screen sharing captures pixels, not programs. A native window can tell the operating system to exclude it from capture — NSWindow.sharingType = .none on macOS, or SetWindowDisplayAffinity(WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE) on Windows — and the compositor drops it before the pixels ever reach Zoom or Teams (Microsoft docs; Svoboda, 2025). A browser extension has no separate OS window — its overlay is part of the page — so there is nothing to exclude, and it gets captured.

Does LockedIn AI offer refunds?

Its pages disagree. LockedIn’s pricing page lists a “Money-back guarantee” (lockedinai.com/pricing), while its own refund-policy page states “no refunds are offered once a subscription has started” — only annual plans get a partial refund if cancelled within 7 days, with monthly and quarterly plans non-refundable (lockedinai.com/refund-policy). Read both before you rely on either. Dusky does not offer refunds at all, which is exactly why we give you a free 15-minute trial to test first.

How much does Dusky cost compared to LockedIn AI?

Dusky publishes every price on one page: a $0 trial (15 minutes of AI-assistance time, no card), a $19 one-time Weekly Pass (7 days), a $69 Job Hunt Pass (8 weeks, recommended), and $39/month Pro (pricing). LockedIn’s dollar amounts render client-side and are not shown in its page source; a third-party review put its monthly plan near $54.99/month as of July 2026, but that is not a first-party number — re-check it on LockedIn’s own page before relying on it.

Is Dusky guaranteed to be invisible?

No — and we would not trust any tool that guarantees it. On a plain video call, a correctly set-up native window is genuinely invisible to the screen share, but exclusion can fail on some capture paths (QuickTime, GPU or kernel-level grabs), on old OS builds, on locked-down corporate machines, and against a phone camera pointed at your screen (Svoboda, 2025). That is why Dusky ships a built-in Invisibility Test and why we say to run it before every real interview. More detail in Is LockedIn AI detectable? and on our Stealth Mode docs.