Pausing and resuming
You can pause a session at any time and pick up where you left off. The paused gap is not transcribed.
How to pause
While recording, the session panel shows a Pause button. Click it. The status indicator changes to amber and shows Paused.
How to resume
When paused, the same button now reads Resume. Click it. Recording continues into the same session — no separate file, no new patient detail entry.
When to use pause
- Stepping out of the room briefly
- Discussing something off the record (admin questions, scheduling)
- Taking a private call
- Anything you don't want in the transcript
The resulting transcript will look continuous — there's no marker showing where the pause happened. If you want a clear demarcation in the note, you can mention it to your client and pause: e.g. "Let's pause the recording for a minute," then resume after.
What pause is not for
- Don't use pause to extend a session over a lunch break or several hours. Long pauses keep the audio file open and Confidant alive, which is fine technically but invites accidents (forgetting to resume, your computer sleeping mid-pause). For long gaps, just stop the session and start a new one when you're ready.
- Pause doesn't discard audio. If you paused after saying something you wish you hadn't recorded, that audio before the pause is still in the file. Stop the session and decide whether to keep it.
What if my computer goes to sleep while paused?
A paused session survives a brief sleep, but a long sleep (or a low-battery shutdown) can corrupt the in-progress audio file. The session won't auto-resume, and on next launch Confidant may show the session in a "needs recovery" state. If this happens, contact support — the partial audio is usually salvageable.