REAPER Audio Workflows

REAPER says media offline? How to get your audio back

By StudioRescue Editorial

Published September 18, 2026

Quick answer

OFFLINE on a REAPER item means one of two completely different things, and they have completely different fixes. Either the files are still on your drive and REAPER has simply parked them because of a default setting in Options › Preferences › Media, or the files really have moved and REAPER needs to be pointed at them again. Click into the REAPER window and watch the items. If the word OFFLINE disappears, it is the setting. If it stays, the files moved. Your recordings are almost certainly still on the disk either way.

Opening a session and seeing OFFLINE stamped across every item is a genuinely unpleasant moment, especially if the session took hours to record. The good news is that this is one of the very few REAPER problems where the odds are strongly in your favour. REAPER does not delete audio when it loses track of it. It writes a path into the project file and shows you OFFLINE when it cannot use whatever is at the end of that path right now.

Most advice online jumps straight to relinking files. That is the right fix for one of the two causes and a complete waste of time for the other. So find out which one you have first.

The ten-second test

Before you touch a single setting, do this.

Click into the REAPER window

Click on the arrange area, the menu bar, anywhere inside REAPER, so that REAPER is definitely the active application on your desktop.

Watch the items

If OFFLINE clears and your waveforms come back within a second or two, your files were never missing. Skip to the preference fix below. Some people need to click a different window and then back into REAPER once before it refreshes.

If it stays, the files moved

OFFLINE that survives REAPER being the active window means the audio is not where the project file expects it. That is the relink problem, covered further down.

A second clue

If every single item in the project went offline at once, including items you know you have not touched, that points at the setting. If only some items are offline, usually the ones that came from a loop pack, a shared drive, or a folder you tidied up, that points at moved files.

Cause one: the setting nobody knows is on

REAPER ships with an option that deliberately releases media files whenever REAPER is not the application you are currently using. It lives in Options › Preferences › Media, and it is the option about setting media offline when the application is not active. The exact wording has shifted slightly across versions, so look for the line about media and application focus rather than hunting for an exact string.

This exists for a real reason. If you edit a file in an external editor such as Audacity or iZotope RX, REAPER letting go of the file means the editor can write over it and REAPER picks up the new version when you come back. That is a useful workflow if you use it.

If you never open your audio in another program, the setting does nothing for you except show you an alarming word. Untick it, close Preferences, and the items come back online.

This is a display and access behaviour, not damage

While items are parked this way, nothing has happened to the audio on your drive. The project has not changed, your takes have not changed, and turning the option off does not need a repair step afterwards.

Cause two: the files really did move

If OFFLINE sticks, the project file is pointing at a location that no longer holds those files. The usual culprits are renaming a folder, moving a session to a new drive or computer, emptying a downloads folder, or a cloud sync client quietly relocating things.

First, work out where the audio probably is

There is one very common trap. If you hit record before you saved the project, REAPER did not have a project folder to record into, so it used its default recording path instead, which is typically a REAPER Media folder inside your Documents folder. People then copy what they think is the whole session to a new machine, leave those files behind, and open a project full of offline items. Check that folder before you assume anything is lost.

Otherwise, search your drive for one of the missing filenames. REAPER shows the path it is looking for in the offline media dialog, which gives you the filename to search for.

Then point REAPER at the new location

Use the offline media dialog

When you open a project with missing files, REAPER lists them and offers a button to search for the files. Use it, and browse to the folder that now holds the audio.

Point at the folder, not one file

Select the folder the files now live in rather than a single file. REAPER will use that location to resolve the rest of the missing items, so a session with forty takes usually relinks in one move.

Save under a new name straight away

Once the waveforms are back, do a Save As to a new filename before you do anything else. If something goes wrong later you still have the original project file to come back to.

If the dialog did not appear

Open the Project Bay with Ctrl+B on Windows or Cmd+B on macOS and choose the Source Media tab. That lists every file the project references along with a Path column, so you can see at a glance which files are pointing somewhere unexpected. Click the Path heading to sort by location and the strays group together.

What this will not do

Relinking is bookkeeping, not restoration. Be clear on the limits.

It cannot bring back a file that was actually deleted. If the audio was emptied from the recycle bin or wiped from a drive, no REAPER setting recovers it. File recovery software is a separate job and is a race against new data being written.
It does not restore your edits if you relink to the wrong file. Pointing an item at a different take with the same name will play, and it will play the wrong thing. Check one item before you trust the whole session.
It does not fix missing plugins. Missing FX warnings on project load are a separate problem with a separate cause, even though they often show up in the same session as offline media.
It will not help if the project file itself is damaged or gone. That is a different recovery path, covered in how to recover a lost or crashed REAPER project.

Stop it happening again

Two habits remove almost all of this risk.

Save the project before you record anything. This is the single highest value change. Once the project has a home, REAPER records into that folder and your audio and your project file stay together. It costs about five seconds. Building it into a saved vocal template makes it automatic.

Consolidate before you move or archive a session. When you are about to hand a session to someone, copy it to another machine, or put it on a backup drive, use File › Save Project As and tick the option near the bottom of the dialog to copy all media into the project directory. That produces a self-contained folder with nothing pointing outside it.

Copy, do not move

REAPER also offers move variants of these commands, in the Save As dialog and in the Project Bay right-click menu. Moving is fine for files sitting in REAPER's temporary recording folder. It is dangerous for anything that came from a sample or loop library, because the files are removed from their original location and you end up with holes in the library. When in doubt, copy.

Symptom	Likely cause	Test	Fix
Every item says OFFLINE, clears when you click into REAPER	Default media focus setting	Make REAPER the active window	Untick the setting in `Preferences › Media`
OFFLINE stays no matter what	Files moved or renamed	Search for one of the filenames	Relink via the offline media dialog
Only imported loops or samples are offline	Source folder moved or deleted	Check the Path column in the Project Bay	Relink, then copy them into the project folder
Takes recorded before the first save are missing	Default recording path	Look in `Documents\REAPER Media`	Relink, then save the project first next time

If it still says offline

Try the focus trick again properly. Click a different application, then click back into REAPER. Some setups need the focus to actually change before the media comes back.
Check the drive is mounted. An external or network drive that has not woken up looks exactly like a missing file.
Check permissions and sync status. Files inside a cloud folder can show as present in the file browser while still being placeholders that have not downloaded.
Look for a filename change. A single renamed or re-encoded file will not relink even when everything else does.
Rule out a bigger problem. If the project is also silent for reasons unrelated to offline items, work through REAPER has no sound instead, because that is a playback and device issue rather than a media issue.

Takeaway

OFFLINE is two problems sharing one label. Click into REAPER first. If the word disappears, turn off the media focus option in Preferences › Media and carry on. If it does not, the files moved, so relink them from the offline media dialog by pointing REAPER at the folder rather than a single file, then save under a new name. Save the project before recording and consolidate before archiving, and you will rarely see it again.

Sources

Cockos, REAPER home page - current version 7.80, released September 13, 2026. reaper.fm
The REAPER Blog, “Why does it say OFFLINE on items in REAPER?” - identifies the Preferences › Media option that takes media offline while REAPER is inactive, and separates it from genuinely missing files. reaper.blog
Nick Storr, “Reaper Keeper”, Sound On Sound, May 2017 - REAPER's default recording path when a project has not been saved, the Project Bay Source Media tab and Path column, the Save Project As option to copy all media into the project directory, and the warning about move versus copy. soundonsound.com
Cockos, REAPER User Guide (v7.80) - reference for menu locations. reaper.fm/userguide