iPhone and Watch Capture

Capture on iPhone or Apple Watch and let the rest happen in the background.

iPhone and Apple Watch Capture

This guide explains what happens when you capture a note on iPhone or Apple Watch today.

Start recording from iPhone or Apple Watch.
Speak your note.
Tap Stop & Save.
Sundown saves the audio locally, processes it in the background, writes the transcript for the correct day, and syncs later when possible.

If you tap Cancel instead, Sundown discards the in-progress recording and does not queue, transcribe, or journal it.

Open the Record tab and tap the primary record control.
While recording, the iPhone surface exposes Stop & Save and Cancel.
After stop, the status moves through processing, saved, or queued states.
Captures are written into the local phone queue first, independent of cloud or export availability.
The recent recordings list shows the latest items with source, status, transcript preview, and playback controls when the audio file still exists and local retention allows it.
Tapping a recent recording opens a native recording detail sheet with the full transcript and any available playback or transcript actions.

Manual app open stays idle until you tap Record.
Complication and App Intent launches can auto-start recording immediately.
While recording, the watch surface exposes Stop & Save and Cancel.
After stop, the watch keeps the capture locally until the iPhone confirms it has safely taken over the capture.

Audio is saved locally.
The capture enters the phone processing queue.
Sundown transcribes from the saved audio file.
Sundown updates that day's transcript-backed view.
The touched day is added to the deferred sync backlog so Sundown Cloud or any configured export path can catch up later.

Audio is saved locally on the watch first.
The watch transfers the capture to the phone through WatchConnectivity.
The phone copies the file into its own staging directory before the callback returns.
Later processing uses that saved phone copy rather than a temporary handoff location.
The phone acknowledges the capture after it has safely saved it.
After that handoff, the phone automatically runs capture processing and deferred sync replay opportunities.

Watch transfer can be delayed. The capture stays on the watch until the phone has taken ownership.

A single transcription failure does not block later captures.
A single journal write failure does not block later captures.
Failed or deferred captures stay retryable with clear per-item details instead of being silently dropped.

Timeline updates when new local transcript content lands.
Daily View can show processing disclosure text while some entries are still pending.
Timeline pull-to-refresh can request watch retry and rerun phone follow-up work.