On the surface they look similar: two small Mac apps that sit alongside your music. But they are built for opposite moments. Sleeve is about now: making the thing currently playing look and feel great. Echo is about later: getting back to anything you have played, long after it scrolled out of view.
What Sleeve does well
Sleeve is a now-playing widget for Spotify and Apple Music. It puts a gorgeous, resizable album-art panel on your desktop with playback controls, themes and a few visual touches. If what you want is a desk centrepiece that shows what is on right now and lets you skip a track without switching apps, Sleeve is lovely at exactly that.
What it does not do is remember. Once a track ends it is gone from view, and there is no searchable history and no way to jump back into something you were halfway through yesterday. That is by design: Sleeve is a display, not a record.
What Echo does that Sleeve doesn't
Echo quietly keeps a record of everything you play, across your native apps and your browser, entirely on your Mac. Press the shortcut and you get one searchable history of every track, episode and video, and you can resume any of it at the exact second you stopped. It also bookmarks moments you want to return to, holds half-finished things on a shelf, and follows you into YouTube, Spotify Web and SoundCloud, which a Spotify-and-Apple-Music widget never touches.
Side by side
| Echo | Sleeve | |
|---|---|---|
| Shows what's playing now | Yes | Yes |
| Album-art desktop widget | Menu-bar card | Yes, its specialty |
| Playback controls | Yes | Yes |
| Keeps a searchable history | Yes | No |
| Resume at the exact spot | Yes, one keystroke | No |
| Bookmark a moment | Yes (Moments) | No |
| Works with the browser & YouTube | Yes | Spotify & Apple Music |
| Private, on-device, no account | Yes | Yes |
A widget shows the present; a memory recovers the past. Plenty of people run a now-playing widget for the look and Echo for the history and resume. Different jobs, no conflict.
Which should you choose?
Choose Sleeve if your main want is a beautiful now-playing display for Spotify or Apple Music on your desktop, and you do not need history or resume.
Choose Echo if you keep losing your place, want one history across every app and tab, need to resume a podcast or video at the exact second, or want something that also remembers what you play in the browser. If "what was I just listening to?" or "where did that video go?" sounds familiar, that is the gap Echo fills.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between Echo and Sleeve?
Does Sleeve keep a history of what you played?
Can you use Echo and Sleeve together?
Does Echo work with the browser and YouTube?
Remember and resume everything you play
Echo keeps one private history of all your media and brings any of it back at the exact second, across every app and tab.
One-time purchase, yours forever.