Never lose a half-finished episode again

You start a long-form podcast episode over breakfast, switch to Spotify for something shorter on your commute, then open a web player at your desk for a third show. By the end of the day, you have three partly-played episodes scattered across three different apps, each one invisible to the others.

Why Does This Happen?

Each podcast app maintains its own listening state. Apple Podcasts draws a progress bar beneath episodes you have partly played and picks up where you left off - but only if you return to Apple Podcasts. Spotify keeps a partly-played state for episodes in its own queue. A browser-based web player saves nothing at all once the tab closes.

None of these apps expose their progress data to each other. There is no system-level inbox for in-progress audio. So unless you remember exactly which app you used, and roughly where you stopped, those episodes quietly sit there half-finished - or you give up and restart from the beginning.

What Most People Try (and Why It Falls Short)

The obvious workarounds all have a catch:

• Staying in one app helps within that app, but most people listen across more than one.
• Noting timestamps manually works until you forget, which is most of the time.
• Bookmarking browser tabs does not capture the playback position, only the page.
• Relying on 'Continue Listening' carousels only works inside a single app, and they disappear once you play something new.

What is missing is a single, persistent list of everything you have started but not finished - regardless of which app it came from.

How Echo Solves the Cross-App Problem

Echo is a Mac menu-bar app that keeps a Shelf: a running list of everything you have started but not finished, gathered from native apps and the browser alike. It captures podcast episodes, videos, articles, and more - and it holds your exact position in each one.

When you press ⌘⇧E, the Shelf opens and shows every piece of media you left mid-way. Selecting a podcast episode takes you straight back to the app it came from, at the precise timestamp where you stopped. There is no account to create and nothing leaves your Mac - Echo works entirely on-device.

What Gets Captured and How

Echo listens to your Mac's native media layer and your browser activity. You do not need to tag or save anything manually. When you play a podcast episode and then move on without finishing it, Echo adds it to the Shelf automatically.

This covers the two most common situations:

• Native apps (Apple Podcasts and others): Echo picks up the episode title, artwork, and playback position from the Mac's now-playing information.
• Browser players: Echo's browser extension captures the page title and position from web-based podcast players, so even a tab you closed is not lost.

A Realistic Listening Week with Echo

Here is what the cross-app problem looks like in practice - and how the Shelf handles it:

1. Monday morning: you start a 90-minute interview in Apple Podcasts, stop at 34 minutes. Echo adds it to the Shelf at 34:12.
2. Tuesday commute: you play a Spotify episode for 20 minutes, then switch it off. Echo logs it at 20:08.
3. Wednesday desk: you open a web player for a third show, close the tab after 15 minutes. Echo captures the position from the browser extension.

By Wednesday evening, pressing ⌘⇧E shows all three. Clicking any one of them reopens it at the saved position. Nothing was forgotten, and you never had to think about tracking it.

How to Get Started

Echo is a one-time purchase at $9.99, works on up to 3 Macs, and includes all future updates. After installing it from the menu bar, it runs quietly in the background. The Shelf fills itself as you listen - the only habit you need is pressing ⌘⇧E when you want to see what you left unfinished.

If you regularly listen to podcasts across more than one app, or find yourself restarting episodes because you cannot remember where you stopped, the Shelf removes that friction entirely.