Working offline

Summits and parks rarely come with good cell coverage, so VoiceQSO is built to work without it. You can create a session and record your whole activation with no signal at all; the audio waits safely on your phone and is processed once you're back in coverage.

What works without a connection

Creating a session. The button reads Create Session (Offline) and the session is created locally on your phone.
Recording. Record exactly as you normally would, for as long as you like. Audio is stored on the device.
Browsing your sessions. The Sessions tab shows a cached copy of your list, with an Offline, showing cached sessions notice at the top.

A few things need a connection and stay hidden or disabled until you have one: adding or editing QSOs by hand, exporting, sharing links, and QRZ/Wavelog sync. An offline session's screen simply says so: "This session is offline. You can still record. QSOs and recordings will appear here after syncing."

Offline mode vs. no signal

These are two different things, and both are handled:

The Live / Offline toggle on the recording panel is a choice you make: in Offline mode nothing is uploaded while you record, even with a good connection. Handy when your battery or data plan matters more than seeing contacts appear live.
Actually having no signal is detected automatically. If you start recording with no connection, the recording is stored locally no matter what the toggle says. And if you're recording in Live mode and coverage drops mid-session, nothing is lost: chunks that can't upload are quietly queued on the device, and when you stop you'll see "Recording saved. Some audio is queued to sync."

Syncing when you're back in coverage

Recordings waiting to be processed show up as an amber card, on the Profile tab and on the session screen, reading "N recordings waiting to sync".

Get back into coverage.
Tap Sync Now on the card.
Each recording is uploaded and processed, and the extracted QSOs appear in the session just like a live recording.

Syncing is started by you, with the Sync Now button. Until you tap it, your audio simply stays on the phone, so there's no rush and nothing expires.

If something goes wrong mid-sync you'll see Sync Incomplete with a count of recordings that didn't make it. Your audio is still on the device; check your connection and tap Sync Now again.

Credits and offline recordings

Recording offline doesn't touch your QSO allowance. Credits are checked and spent when the recording is synced and processed, not when it's made. Two practical consequences:

Make sure you have enough QSOs in your allowance before syncing a big activation. If you're out, the sync fails safely and can be retried after a top-up. See Plans & pricing.
The processing mode (and its cost, for example Auto at 1.5× credits) is locked in at sync time.

Managing local audio

Offline audio lives on your phone until it's synced, so a long activation uses some storage (roughly a megabyte per minute). After a session has synced, you can free the space: open the session menu and choose Delete local audio files. The recordings stay in your account; only the local copies are removed.

Before you head out

A short checklist for an off-grid activation:

Check your QSO balance in the Profile tab so the sync won't stall later.
Charge the phone. Recording is light on battery, but a full activation adds up.
Open the app while you still have coverage now and then. The park and summit database used by Find nearby park/summit is kept as a copy on your phone and refreshed when you're online, so the lookup keeps working with zero bars, as long as the copy isn't too stale.
That's it. Session creation, references, and recording all work offline.