The worst time to find out your recorder failed is after the meeting. Oatmeal is built so a problem costs you seconds, not the whole conversation.
Saved as it goes
Oatmeal saves audio in 30-second pieces while it records. A crash, a forced restart or a flat battery can cost at most the piece in progress; everything before it is safe.
When you open Oatmeal again, it shows what happened and lets you choose: carry on recording the same meeting, or keep what was saved.
Problems you can see
- Level meters for your microphone and your Mac’s audio show that both are coming through.
- A five-second check tells you if your microphone stops sending sound.
- Gaps are shown. If audio drops out, the gap appears in the recording instead of being stitched over.
- Recording status stays visible the whole time.
Long jobs, too
Transcribing a long meeting can be stopped and resumed later without starting over, and you can restart it from scratch if you prefer.