Offline meeting recording in Notetaker
Last updated: October 5, 2026
Available on: Mac, Windows
If a meeting starts without internet or its live transcript stops during a connection drop, Notetaker can save audio on your device for later transcription. Offline recording still needs working local storage.
Start a meeting offline
Important: Free up storage before a meeting you expect to record offline — if Flow can't save audio locally, an offline recording stops automatically.
Start a Notetaker recording.
Choose Record offline on the “Live transcript unavailable” card to begin recording on your device.
The card appears when Live Transcript is enabled and your device is offline. Recording waits for your choice without stopping or replacing an existing recording. With Live Transcript disabled, or offline consent already given, recording starts directly; pausing and resuming an offline-started meeting keeps offline mode.
Cancel or dismissing the card cancels that start attempt. A newer start attempt replaces the earlier offer; if the confirmation cannot appear, recording does not start. Offline recording also cannot start if Flow cannot save audio on the device.
When the connection drops during recording
Recording continues locally, and the notepad shows “You're offline. Don't worry, we're still recording!” while the live transcript is disconnected. Live transcription reconnects automatically, though recovery can take longer after an extended outage.
Short interruptions catch up in the live transcript without a marker. After longer outages, a separate transcript note reads “Offline for <duration> — audio was captured and will be transcribed after the meeting”. Those sections can remain missing until post-meeting transcription finishes. Live translation is unavailable while the transcript is offline.
“Connection lost. Audio saved up to here.” means a recording that had already started ended unexpectedly because of a connection or transcription error—not merely that it went offline. The message clears after 30 seconds or when another recording starts; without an open meeting window, Flow shows a separate “Connection lost” notification.
Get the transcript after recording
Post-meeting transcription must be enabled, and Notetaker cloud sync must be allowed. If cloud sync is blocked, audio is not uploaded, no post-meeting transcript or summary is produced, and only the local transcript remains.
Stop the recording when the meeting ends.
Reconnect to the internet so Flow can upload and process the saved audio.
Open the meeting's Transcript tab to read the completed transcript.
The post-meeting transcript replaces the live version when available. Until then—or while newer recorded sections are awaiting processing—the complete live transcript is shown.
Automatic processing: A successfully started offline meeting with captured audio processes automatically, even below five minutes. Failed starts, Mac user-switch interruptions and meetings with an existing summary follow the recovery paths below.
Limits: Saved audio files over 500 MB cannot upload; retrying does not bypass this limit. Meetings with 50 or fewer spoken words show “The meeting was too short to summarize.”
Waiting: During an offline upload, “Waiting for a connection” appears in the floating recorder window and the hub, and the meeting stays listed until it uploads. Other network or security-certificate failures do not necessarily show this status.
Uploads pause when connectivity drops or the computer sleeps, then resume automatically after connectivity returns or the computer wakes on Mac and Windows. Resumption is not instant.
If processing is waiting or fails
While “Waiting for a connection” appears, Retry requests another upload attempt without using up a retry attempt or creating a duplicate upload.
Click Retry after reconnecting.
Check whether processing advances; if still offline, the upload keeps waiting.
“We hit a snag processing your meeting” allows retrying when usable audio remains. “We couldn't process your meeting” means retrying is unavailable.
Automatic recovery has retry and audio-retention limits. A stalled upload can stop showing as uploading after one hour without a change, even though later recovery attempts remain possible; exhausted retries produce a failed state.
Recover an interrupted meeting
“Couldn't start recording”
This card can follow a live-transcription failure or an enterprise recording confirmation that could not complete. Read its body: “We couldn't start live transcription. Your audio was saved on this device.” means content survived; “We couldn't capture any audio, so nothing was saved.” means it did not.
Choose Try again to resume a surviving meeting or start a new recording if none survived.
Click Generate summary once online to process a retained failed-start meeting.
A retained failed start waits for manual processing rather than uploading and summarizing automatically. Ignoring or dismissing the card does not delete it.
Empty meetings and failed starts with under 10 seconds of audio are discarded when recording closes, except resumed meetings or meetings containing typed notes.
Storage failure or Flow closing unexpectedly
A full disk shows “Storage Full”; other audio-saving errors show “There was an error”. Both notices offer Restart Flow and Contact us.
After an offline storage failure stops recording, surviving audio can be recovered automatically at startup, after waking the computer or during later attempts. Recovery needs nonempty saved audio and is limited by retention, privacy protections and retry limits—it is not guaranteed.
Free storage if the disk is full.
Restart Flow to allow another recovery attempt.
Check the meeting's Transcript tab after processing; contact support if saved audio remains unprocessed.
Warning: If Live Transcript was enabled at the start and the meeting was not started in offline mode, an audio-saving failure lets recording continue with its live transcript, but skips post-meeting transcription. Partial local audio is discarded, so content captured only during an outage can be lost; previously recovered audio is retained when no usable replacement exists.
A live-transcribed meeting can also continue without post-meeting transcription if its local audio file cannot be created at the start; that failure does not show the storage notice.
If Flow closes unexpectedly, reopening it prepares surviving audio for recovery and bases the meeting's end time and duration on the saved audio. Empty audio cannot be recovered.
Computer sleep or switching Mac accounts
On Mac, when automatic stopping for sleep is enabled, sleep ends recording at the moment the computer sleeps. The slept interval does not increase meeting duration or weekly quota use; this automatic sleep-stop behavior does not apply on Windows.
Warning: Audio not captured during sleep cannot be recovered. A sleep-gap note is not saved audio.
Switching to another Mac account ends recording immediately and saves it locally for manual Generate summary processing. Locking the screen or starting a screensaver without sleep does not trigger this user-switch stop; if sleep happened first, the sleep outcome takes precedence.
Adding audio to a meeting with a summary
Automatic processing preserves an existing generated or edited summary, but can replace an empty summary or a “too short to summarize” placeholder.
Warning: Clicking Update Summary deliberately replaces the existing summary. The Summary editor is read-only during the update.
The update control is available from the Summary and Transcript tabs when newer audio is eligible. It is not offered for imported meetings, blocked Notetaker cloud sync or missing or empty local audio.
If an update is refused because the full recording is no longer available, “Update failed. Showing the previous summary.” preserves the old summary, and no Retry button appears.
Keep or discard a saved recording
Warning: Discard on “Couldn't start recording” or “Started by mistake?” deletes a newly started meeting only if it has no typed notes. On a resumed meeting, Discard dismisses the card without deleting or reverting anything—including newly appended words.
Discarding an eligible new meeting removes its local recording and content, restores its weekly quota allowance and closes its window. For “Started by mistake?”, it also returns you to Notetaker.
Keep on “Started by mistake?” only dismisses the card: the meeting is already saved. That recording is not silently resumed while you are deciding whether to discard it.
Storage and privacy
Notetaker transcripts and summaries are stored in Wispr's cloud when syncing is allowed. Local meeting audio is kept for 7 days by default; once removed, it cannot support later transcription or resuming. Resume is also unavailable for unusable audio or a deleted transcript.
A signed personal or organization HIPAA BAA blocks Notetaker recording and syncing. After account settings load, turning off personal or organization cloud storage does not itself block those actions. With cloud storage off, recording can be temporarily blocked for up to 8 seconds after sign-in while those settings load.
Dictation cloud storage: Turning this off disables the Notetaker transcript retention control and notes sync. It is not a blanket Notetaker upload-blocking control.
Local data storage: This controls dictation, not Notetaker transcripts. Notetaker transcript retention separately deletes older transcripts from your devices and Wispr's servers.
Improve the model for everyone is a separate choice that covers both Notetaker and dictation.
Other offline actions
Notes, titles and summary edits save locally without internet. A title-bar warning badge can indicate a save problem or a recovered summary.
Copying an existing meeting link works offline if it is already saved on your device. Creating a link, changing visibility, adding recipients and searching for people require a connection—even if sharing controls remain visible. Your organization can also disable sharing.
Still need help?
Contact support if saved audio remains unprocessed after reconnecting and retrying, or Flow still cannot save audio after you free storage. Include your platform, device, the message shown and the steps you tried.