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Yes—if the notes, AI model and any speech-recognition model are on your device, a local AI note assistant can work without an internet connection. Offline access to notes alone does not mean the assistant’s AI is offline: some apps keep notes on-device but send AI requests to a cloud service.
What “offline” means for a note assistant
There are two separate questions: can you open your notes without internet, and can the assistant process them without internet? Obsidian says its notes are stored locally and accessible offline. Its sync service is an additional feature: a local copy stays on each device while Obsidian Sync uses an off-site remote vault. Obsidian explains local storage and sync.
AI processing requires a model and a route to that model. If the app sends prompts to a hosted provider, the AI feature needs connectivity even if the notebook itself opens offline. A local setup instead runs inference on the device. Ollama, for example, documents a local API at http://localhost:11434; requests to that local endpoint use a model installed on the device. Ollama’s API documentation distinguishes local use from cloud requests.
What must be installed before you disconnect
- A note app with local files: Your vault or notebook must be present on the device, not only in a remote service.
- A local inference runtime and model: Install the runtime and download the model while online, then configure the assistant to use the local endpoint instead of a hosted API. Ollama’s quickstart describes downloading and running a model.
- Enough device memory: Requirements depend on the model and context length. Ollama’s quickstart gives Gemma 4 E2B as an example: the model download is about 7.2 GB, and Ollama recommends 8 GB of available VRAM or unified memory. These figures apply to that example, not every local model.
- A local transcription model, if you use voice: Voice capture may involve separate speech-recognition and summarization steps. Both need an offline path if you expect the entire voice-note workflow to work disconnected.
How to set up and verify an offline workflow
- Choose local note storage. Confirm that the notes or vault are saved on the device and open a few while online.
- Install a local runtime and download a model. For an Ollama setup, follow its quickstart to install Ollama and download a model before disconnecting.
- Point the assistant to the local model. Use the local provider or endpoint, such as Ollama’s
http://localhost:11434, rather than entering a hosted provider’s API key or selecting its cloud option. - Configure voice processing separately. If needed, choose a plugin that explicitly documents on-device transcription, and check that the following summary or cleanup step also uses the local model.
- Test with networking disabled. Disconnect Wi-Fi and mobile data, then try opening notes, searching, generating a response, transcribing a recording and exporting anything you need. Treat sync and features that retrieve online content as separate workflows.
Voice notes and other features can still need the internet
Some note-taking plugins describe on-device speech recognition. Obsidian’s Speech Kit listing describes on-device dictation and transcription, with an online fast path also available; Voice Scribe describes local Whisper transcription. Those descriptions identify possible local routes, but they do not establish transcription accuracy across devices, languages or recordings. See the Speech Kit listing and Voice Scribe listing.
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Check secondary features, too. The Synapse plugin listing describes local-provider options, but also notes that link enrichment can fetch third-party pages and caption-first transcription requests YouTube pages. Obsidian says network calls depend on which services and features are used. An assistant can therefore have a working local AI path while a particular convenience feature still tries to access the internet. See Synapse’s listing and Obsidian’s security considerations.
What to expect from a local model
Offline capability does not by itself establish how fast or accurate the assistant will be. The cited setup documentation does not provide a benchmark showing that local models match cloud models, nor a general transcription-accuracy figure. Results depend on the chosen model, device, context length and—for speech—language and recording conditions. Test the specific tasks you rely on rather than treating model download size or memory guidance as a measure of quality.
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- ONE-TAP RECORDING FOR REAL-LIFE MOMENTS: Capture meetings, phone calls, and in-person conversations instantly with a simple tap, no typing, no interruptions, just effortless note-taking anywhere you go.
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Local processing can avoid sending note text or audio to a hosted AI provider when the workflow truly stays on-device. That is not a guarantee that the whole application makes no network connections: sync, online transcription paths, page fetching and other enabled services may communicate externally.
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