Troubleshooting
Audio is missing
Section titled “Audio is missing”Open Settings → Permissions and check both audio permissions:
- Microphone captures your voice.
- System audio captures the other people on the call.
If macOS shows either permission as denied, use the button beside it to open System Settings. Restart Loofah after changing the permission.
The transcript is not live
Section titled “The transcript is not live”Open Settings → Transcription and inspect the selected model. A model marked After recording does not produce text until you stop. The live streaming model supports English, so other selected languages also cause the app to transcribe after recording.
If no transcript appears at all, confirm that the model download finished and that it supports the selected spoken languages. See Languages.
No summary appears
Section titled “No summary appears”Summaries need an Intelligence model and enough transcript text. Open Settings → Intelligence and select a model.
For LM Studio or Ollama, make sure the local server is running and the selected model is available. See Transcription and summaries.
A recording disappeared
Section titled “A recording disappeared”Loofah keeps recordings indefinitely. If audio is missing, check whether it was explicitly deleted or is still downloading from your sync provider. Older app versions could remove audio according to a retention setting.
See Data, privacy, and retention.
An imported file does nothing
Section titled “An imported file does nothing”Audio imports accept WAV, MP3, OGG, MP4, M4A, FLAC, WebM, and AAC. Transcript imports accept SRT and VTT.
For audio, make sure a downloaded Transcription model is selected. See Import audio or a transcript.
Notes are missing after the directory-layout update
Section titled “Notes are missing after the directory-layout update”Run loof doctor to inspect the vault. Sessions must live directly under sessions/<id>/.
Open the updated desktop app to migrate older readable directory names. CLI and MCP
access do not perform migration.
If the desktop shows a migration notice, inspect its paths and reasons. A destination already in use, duplicate source IDs, unreadable metadata, or a failed move leaves the source untouched and excludes it from Loofah. Resolve the reported issue and restart the app to retry. Healthy canonical sessions remain available.
Stop older desktop builds on every device sharing the vault before upgrading and opening the new build: older versions rename the directories back. The update preserves session IDs, contents, and internal attachment links. Saved Finder bookmarks to readable paths may need updating.
Get more help
Section titled “Get more help”Open a GitHub issue and include the app version, what you expected, and what happened.
For CLI and MCP failures, use the error reference.
CLI search cache needs repair
Section titled “CLI search cache needs repair”Missing or incompatible caches initialize automatically on first CLI/MCP use. For cache errors, run loof --json doctor, then loof --json init to repair the local cache. For cache_busy, retry after the other operation finishes. If an error says write_persisted: true, the vault write succeeded: fix the reported issue and refresh the cache without repeating the write.