Offline playback and cache
CueWee stores the songs you play on your device, so you can rehearse without a stable connection and so playback starts fast.
Play offline
- Songs you have already loaded stay available offline. When you lose connection, CueWee shows: "You are offline. Previously loaded songs and data are still available."
- On the desktop app, going offline changes what your library shows. It lists only the songs whose audio is already saved on your computer, and if nothing has been saved yet, CueWee tells you that you are offline instead of inviting you to upload a song.
- Some actions still need the internet: processing, exporting, sharing, and generating lyrics. CueWee shows "This action requires an internet connection" when you try one of them offline, whether you started it from your library or from a window like Extend Stems.
- A song that is playing when the connection drops keeps playing, all the way to the end. Nothing reloads, nothing rewinds, and the player stays exactly as you left it.
- On the song page, the buttons that need a connection are hidden while you are offline: Share, Export, and the retry and restore buttons. They come back on their own as soon as the connection does, with no reload. Everything that still works stays where it is, including editing the song info and Live Mode.
- Editing sections, beats, cut regions and stem clips needs the internet, because saving them has to reach your account. Offline, those edits are turned off, and so is Save Changes, so reconnect before you start editing. Playback settings like pitch, tempo and volume still work offline.
- In your library, songs that live only in the cloud are marked, so you know which ones need a download before you can play them offline. On desktop, that mark checks whether the audio files are really on your computer, not just whether a folder for the song exists, so a download that gets interrupted keeps the mark until it actually finishes.
- Your setlists open offline too. The Setlists page lists them from what CueWee already saved on this device, and opening one shows its songs the same way, with no connection needed. A setlist that is not fully downloaded gets a small cloud mark next to its name, so you know before you open it that some of its songs still need a connection to play.
- An open setlist also stays open if you lose the connection while you are in it. If CueWee cannot read the setlist it tells you, instead of emptying the panel, so next and previous keep working on the songs already in it.
- Changing a setlist needs the internet, because the change has to reach your account. Creating, renaming, deleting or sharing a setlist, and adding, removing or reordering its songs, all need a connection: offline, CueWee tells you so instead of making the change. It does not save anything quietly later either, so make the change again once you are back online.
- If a song opens with some of its tracks missing, CueWee says so and names them: "Some tracks are missing". The song still plays, without those instruments, and Try again downloads them once you are back online. When no track at all could be downloaded you get the full "Audio failed to download" message instead.
Download for offline
Open a song while you are online and CueWee saves it to your device. After that, it plays offline.
You do not have to sit through the whole download. If you leave the song before it finishes, CueWee keeps what it already got, and the next time you open that song it carries on from there instead of starting over.
On desktop, you can also right-click a song in your library and choose Download for offline without opening it first. If CueWee could not fetch anything, for example because you have no connection, it tells you the download failed and leaves the song marked as cloud only, instead of reporting success for a download that got nothing.
A setlist downloads every song in it the same way, all in the background, so you can move between songs without waiting. See Get your setlist ready to play.
Manage the cache
Go to Preferences → Storage, where Audio cache on this device shows how much space the downloaded songs take.
- The trash icon clears the cache and frees the space. The songs stay in your library and download again next time you play them.
- On the mobile apps, the cog icon opens a slider that sets the cache limit, and the subtitle follows it as you drag. Once the cache reaches that limit, CueWee removes the oldest downloads to make room for new ones.
The limit starts at 2 GB, and the slider goes as high as the free space on your device allows. Raising it means more songs stay ready to play offline; lowering it frees space for everything else on the phone.