What Works Offline
12scribe is designed to work reliably without an internet connection. The core recording experience — capturing audio, adding markers, pausing and resuming, managing projects — does not depend on network connectivity at all. Your recordings are stored locally on your device and remain fully accessible regardless of connection status.
The only features that require an active internet connection are transcription (which sends audio to the server for AI processing) and cloud sync (which uploads metadata and optionally audio to the cloud). Everything else — recording, playback, marker creation and editing, project management, local search — works entirely on-device.
This architecture makes 12scribe a practical audio recording app for environments where connectivity is unreliable or unavailable: university lecture halls with overloaded Wi-Fi, underground meeting rooms with no cellular signal, outdoor field research locations, conference venues with spotty coverage, or planes and trains with intermittent connectivity.
Automatic Queue
When you request transcription while offline — either by tapping Transcribe manually or through the auto-transcription setting — the request does not fail or show an error. Instead, 12scribe silently adds it to an automatic queue stored on your device. The queued request saves everything needed to process it later: which recording session, which project, which language setting, and all relevant metadata.
You can queue multiple transcription requests while offline. Record an entire day of lectures, and each session's transcription request gets queued individually. There is no limit to the number of requests in the queue. The queue persists across app restarts — even if you close 12scribe and reopen it later, queued requests are preserved.
This design means you never need to think about connectivity when recording. Record freely, let the queue build up, and the system processes everything automatically when connectivity returns. Your focus stays on capturing the audio, not managing network status.
Going Online
When your device reconnects to the internet — whether you join a Wi-Fi network, move back into cellular range, or re-enable airplane mode — 12scribe automatically detects the restored connection and begins processing the transcription queue. Here is what happens in sequence:
- The app detects network availability and checks for any queued transcription requests on the device
- Audio files are uploaded to the server one at a time, starting with the oldest queued request. This sequential approach prevents overwhelming your connection with multiple large uploads simultaneously.
- Each uploaded recording enters the standard transcription pipeline: Pending, Processing, Completed. The same progress tracking and status indicators apply as with any online transcription.
- You receive a push notification for each completed transcription, letting you know that a specific recording is now ready to read and search.
The queue processing is fully automatic — you do not need to open the app, navigate to a specific screen, or tap any buttons. As long as 12scribe is installed and has background permissions enabled, it handles the entire upload and processing cycle. However, opening the app while connected can speed up the process by triggering an immediate sync check.
If your connection drops again during queue processing (for example, you move through an area with spotty coverage), the queue pauses safely and resumes from where it left off when connectivity returns. No requests are lost, no uploads need to restart from scratch — the system handles interruptions gracefully.
Status Indicators
While offline, the app displays clear visual indicators so you always know the state of your recordings and pending requests:
- Queued badge on recording sessions waiting for transcription — shows the total number of requests in the queue, so you know how many recordings will be processed when you reconnect
- No connection indicator in the app's status area — a clear visual reminder that transcription and cloud sync are temporarily paused due to network unavailability
- Upload progress — appears when you reconnect and queue processing begins. Shows each file being uploaded with a progress bar, the file size, and estimated time remaining
- Individual session status — each queued session updates its status badge as it moves through the pipeline: from Queued to Uploading to Pending to Processing to Completed
You can view the full queue from the project view at any time. Each queued session displays its position in the queue (e.g., "3 of 7") and estimated processing time once the upload phase begins. This lets you prioritize — if one recording is more urgent, you can manually move it to the front of the queue.
Offline recording combined with automatic queued transcription means you never face a choice between recording now and waiting for connectivity. Record everything that matters, wherever you are, and let the automated queue handle transcription processing later. The result is always the same: fully transcribed, searchable, AI-analyzable recordings. For a complete picture of the transcription process, see How Transcription Works. For the recording workflow itself, see How to Record Audio in 12scribe.