Your Mac now has a memory for where you were

Interruptions happen to everyone, but when you are the kind of person who juggles many tabs and context-switches a lot, losing the thread of something you were watching or listening to can happen a dozen times a day. You close a tab, get called away, start something else, and the original thing just... disappears from working memory. Finding it again means scrolling through history, guessing at a timestamp, or giving up entirely.

Echo is a native macOS menu bar app that remembers everything you play across native apps and the browser, so you always have somewhere to look when you lose the thread.

Why does losing your place happen so often?

When you are deep in a video essay or halfway through a long podcast episode and something pulls you away, the details of where you were do not always survive the interruption. The browser tab might still be open, but you have no idea of the timestamp. Or the tab is gone entirely. Or you can remember the topic but not which video it was.

This is not a personal failing. Working memory has a limited capacity, and when a task-switch floods it with new information, older context falls out. The problem is that most apps treat playback as a temporary thing: once you navigate away or close the window, that moment is gone.

What Echo actually does

Echo runs quietly in the background and logs every track, episode, video, and podcast you play, whether that is in a native app like Podcasts, Music, or Spotify, or in a browser tab. Everything ends up in one searchable on-device history.

When you need to find something, you press ⌘⇧E from anywhere on your Mac and Echo opens. You can see everything you have been playing, search by title or app, and resume any item at the exact moment you left off. One keystroke, exact timestamp, no hunting.

The Shelf: a holding place for half-finished things

Sometimes you start something, get pulled away, and know you want to come back but it is not the kind of thing that lives in your recent history for long. Echo has a Shelf: a dedicated space where you can park half-finished videos, episodes, or tracks so they do not get buried.

Think of it as a small, deliberate list of things you are mid-way through. Rather than relying on your memory to recall what you were saving, the Shelf holds it visibly until you are ready. No list-making, no bookmarks tab, no sticky note on the monitor.

Moments: mark the exact point you want to return to

Sometimes you are watching something and you know right now that you will want to come back to a specific point: a passage in a lecture, a section of a documentary, a particular moment in a tutorial. A Moment in Echo bookmarks that exact timestamp so you can return to it directly.

It is the equivalent of dog-earing a page, but for anything you play on your Mac.

How to get the most out of Echo if interruptions are a regular part of your day

Let history do the remembering

You do not need to do anything for the history to work. Echo logs everything automatically in the background. The next time you cannot remember what you were watching yesterday afternoon, open Echo with ⌘⇧E and it will be there.

Use the Shelf for things you intend to finish

If you start a video you know you will not finish in one sitting, add it to the Shelf before you close the tab or switch away. It takes a second and means you will not have to reconstruct what it was later from a foggy memory of the title.

Drop a Moment when something matters

If you are watching something and a particular section is the bit you actually need to return to, set a Moment at that point. Your history will show you everything you played; a Moment tells you exactly where the important part was.

Search rather than scroll

If you remember anything at all about what you were watching, such as a word from the title, the name of the show, or the app it was in, the search in Echo will find it. You do not need to remember exactly what it was called or when you watched it.

Echo is a one-time purchase at $9.99, works across up to three Macs, and all future updates are included. Because everything is on-device, there is no subscription and no account to manage.