The connection indicator
During practice, Offbook streams your audio over a live connection for speech recognition. When everything is healthy, you won't see anything. If there's a problem, a status pill appears in the corner:
- Connecting… / Reconnecting… (yellow): a temporary drop; Offbook reconnects automatically. Give it a few seconds.
- Disconnected (red): the connection couldn't be restored. Click Retry, or refresh the page.
- "Buffer High - Audio Paused" / "Slow connection detected" (orange): your network can't keep up with the audio stream, so capture is paused briefly to catch up.
Fixing an unstable connection
- Refresh the page. This rebuilds the connection cleanly (you'll also see "Session expired. Please refresh the page." after long idle periods).
- Move closer to your router or switch from Wi-Fi to a wired connection if possible.
- Pause large downloads, video calls, or streaming on the same network.
- If you're on a VPN or a strict corporate/school network, try without it; some networks block the WebSocket connections Offbook uses for live speech.
"Too many requests"
If you see this, the service is briefly rate-limiting. Wait a moment and try again.
Tip: Practice audio (your scene partner's lines) is pre-generated and plays locally, so brief connection blips affect speech recognition, not playback. Manual mode (advance with Enter) works even on a shaky connection.