Common causes and what to check first
If Cluely isn’t working, the cause is usually one of four things: a connectivity or server-side problem, an account/login issue, a missing OS-level permission, or a bug from a recent update. Work through them in that order — most “not working” reports trace back to connectivity or permissions, not a broken install.
Check your connection first
Cloud-dependent interview tools round-trip your audio and requests to their own servers before you see a response. A shaky or restricted network — hotel Wi-Fi, a corporate VPN, or an interview platform blocking outbound connections — is the most common silent cause of “it just stopped responding,” and it can look identical to the app itself being broken.
- Test your connection independently. Load any other site. If that’s also slow or failing, the network is the problem, not the app.
- Check for a provider-side outage. If the backend is down or overloaded, the app can appear frozen or stop generating answers even though your machine is fine. Check the vendor’s status page or social account before assuming a local fault.
- Corporate or assessment-platform networks sometimes block exactly the kind of outbound connections these tools need. If it works at home but not on a work laptop or a specific interview platform, that’s the likely cause.
Why this matters for a live interview specifically: if a tool’s core pipeline depends on the vendor’s servers, an outage on their end during your call is outside your control — worth testing on the exact machine and network you’ll actually interview from, well before the real thing.
Account, login, and subscription state
- Confirm you’re actually logged in and the session hasn’t expired — log out and back in to force a fresh token.
- Check that your plan/subscription is active. A failed renewal or billing issue can silently gate a feature even though the app still opens normally.
OS permissions (microphone / screen recording)
Real-time interview tools need OS-level permissions to capture audio (and, for tools that also read screen content, screen-recording access). If a permission isn’t granted, the app runs but does nothing useful.
macOS
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone— confirm the app is enabled.System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording— if required, you typically need to fully quit and relaunch the app after granting it, not just re-check the box.- Permissions sometimes reset after a macOS update — re-check them if the app stopped working right after upgrading.
Windows
Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone— confirm microphone access is on for desktop apps.- Check whether another app has exclusive control of the audio device.
- On managed/work laptops, antivirus or endpoint-security software can silently block audio capture — worth checking with IT if you’re on a corporate machine.
A recent update broke it
If it worked yesterday and not today, a recent update is a plausible cause: fully quit and relaunch the app (not just close the window), restart your machine to clear stale audio-device state, and check the vendor’s support channel for other reports of the same regression.
One question worth asking before you trust any tool in this category
Can the app still do the important local part of the job if the vendor’s service is slow or temporarily unavailable? If the answer is no, reliability depends on an external service at the exact moment you need it most during a live interview. If the answer is yes, the tool is structurally more resilient.
How SyntaxCue handles this differently
SyntaxCue transcribes audio locally on your machine using whisper.cpp, and sends requests directly to your own OpenAI/Anthropic account using your own API key — there’s no SyntaxCue server sitting in the audio pipeline. A vendor-side outage on our end can’t take down your session mid-interview, because there isn’t a SyntaxCue backend in that path to go down. You’ll still need microphone permission and a working connection to your chosen LLM provider, but there’s no subscription server to lapse and no middleman backend to go dark at the worst moment.
Is this page saying Cluely is broken?
No. This page covers common reasons any cloud-dependent AI interview tool can appear to stop working, and what to check first. We don't have independently verified crash reports or outage logs to cite a specific Cluely bug.
Are there documented widespread Cluely technical failures?
We didn't find independently verified evidence of a recurring, well-documented technical issue that explains this search. If confirmed reports exist with a source, this page should be updated to cite them directly.
Does an interview tool keep working if the vendor's servers go down?
Depends on the architecture. Tools that route their core pipeline through a vendor backend can stop working entirely during an outage. Tools that process audio locally and talk directly to an LLM provider don't have that single point of failure in the audio pipeline.
What should I check first before reinstalling?
Connectivity and permissions, in that order — they cause most of these issues, and reinstalling won't fix either. Only reinstall if you suspect a corrupted build after an update.