A full breakdown of every live feature, how it works, and what you can expect — plus answers to the questions we get most.
Press your configured hotkey, speak your question, and release. Updog transcribes your voice using ElevenLabs Scribe, sends the question to a leading AI model with full context about what game you're playing, and reads the answer back to you in a natural voice. The whole round-trip — speak to answer — takes a few seconds.
You never leave your game. The overlay sits on top of everything, including fullscreen windows, so the answer appears and plays right there while you keep playing.
Updog has the full knowledge of a leading AI model behind it, scoped to your current game. That includes:
Speech-to-text uses ElevenLabs Scribe — a professional-grade transcription model. A basic gaming headset is all you need. Text-to-speech is powered by ElevenLabs, streamed sentence-by-sentence so answers start playing fast and feel conversational, not robotic.
Fully configurable. Set any key combination you want in settings — it registers globally so it works even when Updog isn't the focused window.
Voice Q&A isn't limited to supported titles. If Updog can detect your game, answers are scoped. If not, it still answers from general knowledge.
Updog keeps two kinds of memory working at all times.
Session memory is the full conversation history from your current play session. Updog can refer back to anything said earlier in the same sitting — if you asked about a boss ten minutes ago and now ask a follow-up, it has the context.
Persistent memory survives between sessions. In the background, Updog extracts the facts worth keeping from your conversations — things you've told it about how you play and what you care about — so it remembers you across sessions instead of starting from zero every launch.
Not everything gets stored. Updog filters out noise and only keeps facts that are likely to be useful later — so your memory doesn't fill up with filler. You're not remembering the chat history; you're remembering the things that matter.
There's a built-in Memory Inspector (the 💭 button in the overlay) that shows you every stored fact. You can delete anything you don't want kept. Nothing is hidden.
Goals, builds, progress, in-game names, preferences, things you mentioned mid-session. Anything you'd want a co-op partner to know.
In BYOK mode, memories live on your machine in your user data folder. In Hosted mode, they sync to your account.
When you ask about a quest, Updog opens a dedicated guide window alongside the main overlay. Steps are blurred by default. The first step is visible — each step after requires a deliberate click to reveal. You control exactly how much you want to know.
A Reveal All button exists for when you just need to get unstuck fast. It also toggles back — so you can re-blur what you've already read if you want to stop spoiling yourself.
Standard mode gives you step-by-step guidance sourced from real guides, with a citation at the bottom so you know where the information came from.
Story companion mode is for players who want to stay immersed. Instead of mechanical steps, Updog foreshadows — gives you in-world hints and direction without breaking narrative tension or revealing what comes next.
Achievement hunter mode tracks missable content in real time. If there's an achievement, collectible, or side event tied to your current quest that you could permanently lock yourself out of, Updog flags it before it's too late.
Quest data isn't cached from a static database. Every guide is researched at the moment you ask, using a leading AI model with live web access — so the information is current even for recently patched games or newly released content.
Just ask about a quest by name — "help me with the Agheel Lake dragon" — and Updog detects the intent and opens the Quest Helper automatically.
Quest guides are scoped to your detected game. Updog knows which game you're in, so it searches for the right guide rather than pulling from a wrong title.
When screen awareness is on, Updog takes a read of your screen alongside your voice questions. It can see your inventory, your map, that cryptic tooltip, the enemy health bar, whatever is visible. This makes answers dramatically more specific — instead of general advice about an item class, it can respond to the exact item you're looking at.
Screen awareness runs as a continuous VLM (vision language model) feed — not a one-time screenshot per question. This means Updog can react in real time to what's changing on screen, not just what you happened to be looking at when you pressed the hotkey.
Off by default. You enable it deliberately. A clear indicator in the overlay shows when it's active — there's no ambiguity about whether Updog is watching.
You can also choose exactly which window or monitor Updog sees using the Screen/Window Select setting. If you've got Discord open on a second screen, Updog doesn't need to see that.
Screen awareness automatically stops when your game exits. It doesn't keep watching your desktop after a session ends.
Vision tokens are more expensive than text. Screen awareness is a premium feature — usage is tracked and the Hosted tier accounts for it in its subscription design.
Updog watches your foreground window and matches it against a library of 170+ known game executables. When it finds a match, it immediately locks focus — all subsequent answers are scoped to that game, and a background game is never adopted.
For games it doesn't recognise out of the box, it grabs the window title and sends it through a background AI classifier. If the classifier confirms it's a game, the title is used and the result is cached permanently — so the second time you play that game, detection is instant.
When Updog knows you're in Elden Ring, it answers Elden Ring questions. It doesn't pull in advice from Dark Souls, it doesn't confuse similar mechanics from other games, and it doesn't give generic answers. The detected game is injected into every prompt so context is always correct.
The overlay shows a game badge when a title is detected — so you always know what Updog thinks you're playing. If it's wrong (rare, but possible with unusual launchers), you can dismiss it. When you exit the game, the badge clears and screen awareness automatically turns off.
Popular PC titles across all genres — RPGs, MMOs, shooters, strategy, survival, and more. The list grows with every update.
Window title + AI classification covers most games the library misses. Results are cached so detection improves with use.
A persona bundles a name, a personality, a speech style, and a voice into one switchable character. Change personas mid-session and Updog instantly takes on the new voice and attitude — no restart, no reload.
Hand-author it. Write the name, personality, and speech style yourself, pick a voice, and save. Full control over every word of how your companion behaves.
Let the AI draft it. Describe the character you want in plain language — "a sarcastic veteran who's seen every dungeon twice" — and Updog's AI assist writes a complete original persona for you: personality, speech style, a voice suggestion, even signature filler phrases. Accept it as-is or tweak it in the editor before saving.
The AI assist builds original companions. Ask it for a named, trademarked character and it won't reproduce it — it creates an original character inspired by that archetype instead, and tells you it did. You get the vibe you were after without the legal baggage.
Choose from a set of high-quality, pre-vetted voices. Each persona remembers its own, applied to both spoken answers and any proactive comments.
Personas can have their own in-character "let me look that up" lines that play while an answer is being fetched — a small touch that keeps them feeling alive.
Push-to-talk is the default, but Natural Conversation Mode is there when you'd rather not touch a key. Flip it on and Updog listens continuously, transcribes what you say, and responds — no button, no interruption to your hands on the controls.
The hard part of always-on listening isn't hearing you — it's knowing whether you meant it. Updog filters your speech to tell the difference between a question aimed at it and chatter aimed at your teammates, the game, or yourself. For noisy setups you can switch on a wake word, so it only responds when you say its name.
With proactive mode enabled, Updog can react to big moments on screen and chime in unprompted. Prefer it to only speak when spoken to? Leave proactive off — it's off by default.
Natural Conversation Mode is off by default. Turn it on, turn it off, add a wake word, or fall back to push-to-talk anytime.
The mic mutes itself while Updog is speaking, so it never hears its own voice through your speakers and replies to itself.
Sign in once and your memory, settings, and personas travel with you. Whether you're reinstalling on the same machine or switching to a new rig, Updog comes back exactly as you left it — same remembered facts, same hotkey config, same personality setup.
In the Hosted version, your account is managed by Updog. Login is email-based, everything syncs to our backend, and you don't think about infrastructure.
In the BYOK version, login is still available for syncing settings — but your API calls go directly from your machine to the service providers (Anthropic, ElevenLabs). We never touch your keys or your API traffic.
The facts Updog has learned about your playstyle and goals sync to your account — not just to one machine.
Hotkey config, persona choice, screen awareness preferences, voice settings — all follow your account.