Rewind AI alternatives for Mac: find the one that matches what you actually used it for

Rewind AI's Mac app stopped recording on December 19, 2025, after Meta acquired Limitless, the company behind it. Anyone who leaned on Rewind to find something from a few days or weeks back is now looking for what replaces it. The honest answer depends on which of Rewind's two jobs you actually used.

What did Rewind AI actually do?

Rewind recorded your entire screen and system audio in the background, continuously, then let you search across all of it. Meetings, documents, Slack threads, articles you skimmed, videos you watched: everything that appeared on screen was captured, transcribed, and made searchable with AI. That full-screen capture was Rewind's core feature, and it is also what made it a heavy, sensitive piece of software to run.

A large share of people who used Rewind, though, were really using it for one narrower thing inside that broader capture: figuring out what video or song they had playing, or getting back to a podcast or YouTube video they had open earlier. That is a much smaller job than recording everything on screen, and it does not require screen recording at all.

Which alternative matches what you actually need?

Splitting Rewind's replacements into two categories saves a lot of wasted setup time:

• You need full-screen recall (search across meetings, documents, any app, any window): look at an open-source screen-recording tool built for that job, covered below.
• You mainly need media memory (what did I watch, what was that song, resume the podcast I closed): Echo does this specifically, with none of the screen-recording overhead.

The full-screen recall option: Screenpipe

Screenpipe is the closest thing to what Rewind used to do. It is an open-source, MIT-licensed app that records your screen and audio, runs entirely on your own machine, and stores everything in a local database so nothing has to leave your Mac. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it is aimed at people who want the same broad, AI-searchable record of everything they saw and heard, not just media playback.

If your workflow depended on searching back through meeting notes, documents, or arbitrary app windows, Screenpipe is worth evaluating on its own merits. It is a different kind of tool than Echo, built for a different, much broader job, and it comes with the tradeoffs that any full-screen recorder has: more storage used, more to index, and a wider surface of what gets captured.

The media memory option: Echo

If what you actually lost when Rewind shut down was the ability to find a video or song you were watching or listening to a few days ago, or to jump back into a podcast you closed mid-episode, that is a narrower and much lighter problem. Echo is built specifically for it.

Echo runs on your Mac and keeps a private, searchable record of what you play: native apps like Spotify, Apple Music, and Podcasts, plus browser sources like YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitch, Spotify Web, and general web audio and video. Every item is saved with the position you reached, so pressing ⌘⇧E reopens whatever you were last playing at the exact spot, and YouTube resumes at the exact timestamp. There is no account, no cloud sync, and nothing leaves your device.

Two features go further than a plain history list. Moments let you bookmark a specific point while something is playing, so you can jump straight back to a passage in a podcast or a moment in a video later. The Shelf is a place to manually pin things you want to return to, separate from the automatic history.

How do Rewind, Screenpipe, and Echo actually compare?

Rewind and Screenpipe sit in the same category: broad, full-screen capture with AI search layered on top. Echo sits in a different category entirely, a tool built around one job, remembering and resuming what you play, done properly rather than as a side effect of recording everything.

Can I use both a full-screen tool and Echo?

Yes, and for some people that is the right setup. A full-screen recorder like Screenpipe and a media-specific tool like Echo do not compete with each other. If you want both general screen recall and a dedicated, resume-anywhere media history with timestamp accuracy, running both is reasonable. Most people who ask this question, though, find that once they separate what they actually used Rewind for, they only need one.

For a closer look at how Echo specifically compares to Rewind, see Echo vs Rewind AI. For more on what Echo tracks and how, see what is a media memory.

What should you actually pick?

• You searched Rewind mainly for videos, songs, or podcasts: Echo replaces that specific job, with better resume accuracy than Rewind ever had, and none of the screen-recording footprint.
• You relied on Rewind for meetings, documents, or general screen recall: look at Screenpipe, which is open source and built for that broader job.
• You want a fully local setup either way: both Echo and Screenpipe run entirely on-device, unlike some cloud-based recall tools that have since appeared.

Rewind tried to do both jobs in one app. Splitting them apart, a lighter media memory and a separate full-screen tool if you need it, ends up being a cleaner setup than the one Rewind offered in the first place.