Answers

Not to use it. There is no sign-up to write, record, film or search, and the app opens on your drawer the first time you launch it. An account exists for one thing: a backup belongs to a person rather than to a phone, so signing in is what makes your songs come back after a phone is lost.

Nearly all of it. Recording, filming, writing, chords, versions, playback and search run against the database on the phone. Three things need a connection: reading handwriting from a photograph, writing down a take you spoke, and the backup if you subscribe to one.

It stays in the drawer. Songs are never deleted — the most that happens is that you archive one, which moves it to a quieter room you can still open, and bring it back from whenever you like.

No, and that is deliberate. A take is a moment: it is kept as it was sung. You can name it, archive the song it belongs to, or record another one beside it, but nothing rewrites what you already sang.

Because the app turns off the processing that phones apply to calls. Echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain control all fight a singing voice, and they are switched off explicitly; takes are recorded as AAC at 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz.

In the app's own storage on your phone, alongside the database that lists them. That is inside the app's documents, so your phone's own backup already carries it. Settings will also hand you every song and every recording in one file whenever you ask, free — and a subscription keeps a copy on our servers under your account.

Three things. A page of handwriting you photograph and a take you speak both go off to be read, and only when you ask. The app reports which features get used and crashes when it crashes, as counts and labels rather than anything you wrote. And if you subscribe, your songs, takes and videos are backed up under your account. Without a subscription nothing you write or record leaves the phone except the two you asked for.

Yes. Each field reads the direction of the text you actually typed rather than the language of the phone, so a Hebrew lyric right-aligns itself inside an English interface, line by line.

The app is free, with no advertising, and taking a copy of everything out of it is free and always will be. Reading a photographed page and writing down a take cost us money each time, so a free account gets a monthly allowance of them. A subscription lifts that allowance and adds a backup of your songs, takes and videos.