Public speaking practice

A public speaking practice app you can use at home

Practise speeches and talks out loud at home, then see how you sound and how you stand: pace, filler words, vocal variety, eye contact and posture. Free, private, and it runs on your own computer.

Why practising at home is hard

Most advice about public speaking ends with "practise more". The trouble is that practising alone gives you no feedback. You can't hear your own "um"s while you're speaking, you can't see yourself slouch, and rehearsing in front of friends is awkward and hard to repeat every day.

Kayavak gives you a patient audience that notices everything and never gets bored. You speak to your computer's camera and microphone, and it tells you what an audience would see and hear.

How speech practice works in Kayavak

1. Choose Presentation and, if you like, add your slides as a PDF or an outline.
2. Record a run-through. Press Next at each slide so Kayavak can time each section.
3. Follow the live nudges. Gentle prompts appear as you go, such as "Come back to the camera" or "Sit tall", and when you speed up or pause for a long time.
4. Review your report. Replay yourself as an avatar and jump straight to the moments worth fixing.
5. Practise again. Every run-through adds to your progress charts, so you can see what's improving.

What it gives feedback on

• Pace: words per minute over time, and stretches that drag or rush.
• Vocal variety: whether your pitch and loudness move, or sit flat.
• Filler words: every "um", "basically" and "you know", highlighted in your transcript.
• Confident language: hedges like "I think maybe" or "sort of".
• Eye contact: how much you look at the camera, which stands in for your audience.
• Posture and gestures: slouching, closed arms, and how open and visible your hands are.
• Structure: how long you spent on each slide or section.

One-minute drills for one skill at a time

Long rehearsals are useful, but sometimes you want to fix one habit. Kayavak's one-minute drills each focus on a single skill, with a clear pass or fail:

• Filler-free minute
• Steady pace
• Eye contact
• Vocal variety

A drill takes about as long as making a cup of tea, which makes it easy to do one every day. If filler words are your main problem, our guide to stopping saying um pairs well with the filler drill.

A plan for the day of your talk

Got a speech, a pitch or a conference talk coming up? Set the date in a practice plan and Kayavak gives you three short tasks a day, aimed at what you most need to work on. It's a simple way to turn "I should practise" into something you actually do.

Need something to talk about? The Pitches and talks set has short prompts for practising structure (hook, point, example, close), such as a 60-second elevator pitch for yourself, introducing a speaker at a conference, or explaining your field to a room of school students.

See and hear your best version

For flagged moments, Kayavak shows a corrected version of you over what you did: standing tall, eyes on the camera, arms open. It also polishes what you said, removing fillers, hedges and repeats. With the optional local AI model installed, it rewrites your words and reads them back to you in an on-device voice, so you can hear a calmer, clearer version of your own words.

Calm the nerves with repetition

Nerves are normal, and they ease with familiarity. The more often you've said the words out loud, the less there is to fear on the day. Our guide to handling presentation nerves has practical techniques for the hours before you speak, and for the moment your mind goes blank.

Private, so you can be bad at first

Practice is where you're allowed to stumble. Kayavak never stores your video: it keeps only movement points and replays them as an avatar, so you can study your posture without watching your own face. Speech is transcribed on your computer, nothing is uploaded, there's no account, and it works offline after the first launch. See how the privacy works.

Questions

Is this a good speech practice app for beginners?

Yes. You don't need any experience. Start with a one-minute drill or a short topic from a question set, then build up to full run-throughs.

Can I practise in my own language?

Yes. Kayavak works in 13 languages: English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, with filler words and pace measured in each.

Can it analyse a talk I've already given?

Yes. Import an MP4, WebM or MOV recording of a talk. It's analysed on your computer and the video isn't kept.

Is there a version for slides and business presentations?

Yes. Presentation practice covers rehearsing with slides in more detail.