Echo

Echo is a menu-bar app that remembers every song, podcast and video you play, across your apps and your browser, in one tidy history. Press the global shortcut from anywhere and a fast, keyboard-first overlay appears. Choose anything and it resumes at the exact spot you left off, and videos can come back in a floating picture-in-picture player that hovers over your work.

Native apps that publish to macOS Now Playing, including Spotify, Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, work out of the box. Add the free companion browser extension and Echo also remembers anything you play in your browser: YouTube, Spotify Web, SoundCloud, podcasts, and any tab with audio or video.

You only need the extension for media you play in your browser; native apps like Spotify, Apple Music and Apple Podcasts work without it. It's free, and Echo's Settings, under General, has a button for each browser in the Browsers row. The Chrome listing works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Dia, Vivaldi and Opera, and Firefox has its own listing. Safari's comes with Echo: click Safari, switch Echo on in Safari's Extensions settings, and allow it on every website (Safari 18.4 or later). There's nothing to pair or configure. While the Echo app is running, the extension connects on its own and the Extension row in Settings switches to "Connected".

Your history is Echo's main window. Press ⌘⇧E from anywhere, or click the Echo icon in the menu bar and choose Open Echo. The All tab lists everything Echo has noted, newest first, and you can start typing to search it. Shelf, Moments and Saved, when you have them switched on, are narrower views of the same history. The History section under Settings, General only sets how long Echo keeps its notes; it is not where they live. If you have changed the shortcut, the menu bar item shows your own.

Echo works out of the box. The one permission that matters for Spotify and Apple Music is Automation: Echo asks macOS for it the first time it sees either app running, and it powers both remembering what's playing and resuming it at the exact second. If you ever declined it, or the prompt never appeared, open Settings, Privacy & Permissions, and press Grant next to Automation. It works whether or not a player is open: Echo opens one in the background for a moment, asks macOS, and closes it again. Echo's overlay will also offer the same button whenever it can't see the players. Two permissions are optional and only for specific features: Accessibility lets Echo control Apple Podcasts and resume things in the background more reliably, and Screen Recording is used solely by "Hide Spotify & Music On Resume" to cover a tiny corner of the screen behind the hidden player window. Echo never records your screen. After granting either one, quit and reopen Echo.

Press Cmd-Shift-E from anywhere on your Mac (or click the three-bar icon in the menu bar) and Echo's overlay appears: what's playing now pinned at the top, then everything else, newest first. Just start typing to filter, use the arrow keys to move, and press Return to resume quietly in the background. Cmd-Return resumes and brings the app or tab to the front, and Esc closes the overlay. You can change any of these keys in Settings, under Shortcuts.

Only if you choose it. Echo can only remember what you play while it's running, so the welcome offers to open it at login, and the choice is yours: nothing is switched on without asking. You can change your mind any time with Launch At Login in Settings, under Startup, and Echo respects that choice permanently. It lives in the menu bar only, so it never adds a window or a Dock icon to your day.

Echo checks for updates automatically in the background about once an hour, and shortly after it launches, so you'll be offered new versions as they ship. To check right now, click the Echo icon in the menu bar and choose "Check for Updates...". Every update is included with your licence at no extra cost, and updates are signed and verified before they install.

Safari's extension comes with Echo 1.0.22 and later, so there's nothing to download. Open Echo once, then in Echo's Settings, under General, click Safari in the Browsers row. Safari opens its Extensions settings with Echo selected: switch it on, and when Safari asks, choose Always Allow on Every Website. It needs Safari 18.4 or later, and it updates along with Echo.

Yes. While something plays, Echo quietly notes your position every few seconds, and it always keeps the furthest point you reached, so scrubbing back or an accidental restart never loses your place. Resume then returns you to that exact spot: YouTube videos reopen at the right second, Spotify and Apple Music jump to the exact track and position, and podcasts pick up mid-episode. If you finish something and later start it again from the top, Echo notices and lets it begin fresh.

Yes, Spotify is one of Echo's best-supported apps. With the desktop app, Echo remembers every track and resumes the exact song at the exact position, quietly in the background, without the Spotify window jumping in front of you. Spotify in a browser tab is remembered too, as one tidy entry that always shows your latest track. And if you pick a Spotify web item while the desktop app is installed, Echo is smart enough to hand playback to the app instead of opening a tab.

That's intentional. Re-picking a three-minute song almost always means "play this song", not "continue it from 1:47", so ordinary music starts from the top. Long-form listening is different: podcasts, videos, and any music longer than 20 minutes (DJ sets, mixes, ambient tracks, audiobooks) resume exactly where you left off, because that's the thing you most want to continue. So the short stuff behaves like a jukebox and the long stuff behaves like a bookmark, automatically.

With the browser extension installed, every YouTube video you watch for more than a few seconds joins your history, keyed to the video itself, so the same video opened from different links or tabs stays one entry. Press Return on it later and it comes back at the exact second, playing in Echo's own floating player, no tab required. Cmd-Return reopens the real YouTube tab instead. Videos that block embedding still work: Echo hands them to your browser's built-in floating player automatically.

Resume a video and it can float in a small window that stays on top while you work. Hover over the picture and it fades to a ghost so you can see and click whatever is behind it, without moving the window. A slim control bar gives you a scrubber, 10-second skips, play and pause, playback speed (1x, 1.5x and 2x), open-in-browser, and close. Choose which screen corner it lives in, and how far from the edge, in Settings under Playback. Ctrl-Option-P toggles it from anywhere.

Yes. Any browser video can play sound-only in the background, with no window at all, which is perfect for talks, podcasts on YouTube and music videos. Echo remembers how you last enjoyed each video, watching or just listening, and a plain Return repeats that choice. Option-Return flips it for a single play, and the watch toggle on the now-playing card (or Ctrl-Option-P) switches between watching and listening live, without interrupting playback. The default for first-time videos is in Settings, under Playback.

That's Echo's single-playback rule: when you start something new, whatever was already playing pauses, so two things never talk over each other. It works across everything, desktop apps and browser tabs alike, and it deliberately never pauses a live call: meeting sites like Google Meet, Zoom, Teams and Slack are always left alone. Spotify on desktop and Spotify in a tab count as one player, so they won't fight each other. You can choose in Settings, under Playback, Auto-Pause: Except Music keeps your music playing while you watch a video or listen to a podcast, and Never leaves everything playing.

Moments are bookmarked spots inside whatever you're listening to or watching. Hear something worth coming back to? Press Ctrl-Option-M from anywhere and Echo saves the spot, wound back ten seconds so you get the run-up rather than the instant you pressed the key. A small confirmation appears on screen. Your Moments live in their own tab in the overlay (Cmd-6), each one jumps straight to its second, and you can add a note to remember why you saved it.

The Shelf is your "continue watching" list for the whole Mac: podcasts and videos you've genuinely started but haven't finished. Echo works this out from how far through you are, so nothing needs marking by hand. Things you're at least 80% through appear in their own "almost done" group, ideal for a quick finish, and anything untouched for three weeks quietly drops off so the Shelf never becomes a guilt pile. Find it in the overlay's scope bar, or press Cmd-5.

Two ways. Pin an item (Cmd-P) to float it to the top of your history, or Save it (Cmd-S) to add it to your Saved queue of things to start later (Cmd-7 to view). Both are permanently kept: even if you set Keep History to the last 7 days or the last 50 items in Settings, pinned and saved items are never pruned. Everything else ages out according to your Keep History choice, which defaults to keeping everything.

Yes. Select an item in the overlay, press Cmd-K to open its actions, and choose Send to Phone. Echo shows a QR code, generated entirely on your Mac, that links to the item anchored at your exact playback position. Point your phone's camera at it and the video or track opens right where you left off on the Mac. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; it's simply a link with your spot built in.

Yes, every shortcut in Echo is rebindable, from the global summon key (Cmd-Shift-E by default) down to the individual overlay keys for tabs, actions and navigation. Open Settings, choose Shortcuts, click a shortcut and press your new combination. Echo checks for clashes as you record and tells you if a key is already taken. Global shortcuts and letter keys need a modifier (Cmd, Option, Ctrl or Shift) so they can't collide with typing in the search box, and Reset All puts everything back to the defaults.

Yes. Install it in each browser you use, for example Safari and Chrome, and Echo keeps one history across all of them. Each video resumes in the browser it came from, and starting something new pauses whatever else is playing.

Echo is $9.99, a one-time purchase, with no subscription and no account. One licence covers up to three Macs and every future update is included. There is no time-limited trial; instead there is a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it, try it properly, and email support@theodorehq.com for a full refund if it is not for you. It needs macOS 13 or later.

Your key was shown right after checkout and emailed to you with your purchase receipt, so a quick search of your inbox for "Polar" or "Echo" usually finds it. If it's nowhere to be found, email support@theodorehq.com from the address you bought with and we'll look it up and get you back in, usually within a day. There's also a shortcut inside the app: Settings, Licence, "Lost Your Key?" opens that email for you.

Each Echo licence activates up to 3 Macs, and you can manage those devices yourself at any time. Sign in to your Polar account with your purchase email and you will see your licence key and the Macs it is currently active on. Deactivating a Mac you no longer use frees that slot immediately.

This is worth knowing if you reinstall macOS or reset your Mac, because a fresh install claims a new slot even on the same machine. Deactivating the old entry afterwards puts it straight back. If you cannot access the portal or something does not look right, email support@theodorehq.com from your purchase email address and we will sort it for you.

Yes. Echo itself is fully local, so capturing and resuming work with no connection at all. The only thing that needs the internet occasionally is your licence: Echo confirms it quietly in the background, and a Mac can stay offline for up to 7 days between checks. If you've been away longer than that, Echo asks you to connect once so it can verify the licence, then carries on as normal. Nothing about your listening history is involved in that check.

Three quick checks usually solve this. First, make sure the extension is installed and the Echo app is open: in Echo's Settings under General, the Browser row should say "Connected", and in Chrome and Firefox, the extension's toolbar icon also shows a green dot. Second, check the site: the extension watches the major media sites, including YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Twitch, Deezer and Amazon Music. Third, remember Echo only notes things after about 10 seconds of actual, audible playback, so muted clips and quick previews are skipped on purpose.

That message means the extension can't reach the Echo app right now. Open Echo (check for the three-bar icon in the menu bar) and the extension reconnects automatically within a few seconds, no pairing needed. If Echo is open but still not detected, make sure your licence is activated, since Echo only starts its browser connection once it's unlocked, and try quitting and reopening your browser once so it picks up the fresh connection. Keeping your browser up to date also helps: the most reliable connection method needs Chrome 144 or newer.

Echo is choosy on purpose, so your history stays meaningful. Things are only noted after about 10 seconds of continuous, audible play (adjustable in Settings, General, "Only Note After"), so skipped tracks and muted autoplay clips never appear. Messaging, mail, meetings and document sites (WhatsApp, Slack, Google Meet, Google Docs and friends) are always ignored, as are screen recorders. Also check that Pause Echo isn't switched on, and that the app or site isn't in your Never Record lists under Settings, Privacy & Permissions.

Echo saves your position every few seconds while something plays. If you deliberately move back to an earlier moment, Echo takes that as your new place and returns you there next time. Otherwise it keeps the furthest point you genuinely reached, so an accidental restart can't erase your progress. If a resume seems off, play the item for a few seconds so a fresh position is written, then it will be exact from there. Two behaviours are deliberate: finishing something and starting it again from the top resets it so you can rewatch, and ordinary songs restart from the beginning by design, while podcasts, videos and long music continue mid-way.

Browsers only let a brand-new or long-idle tab start making sound while it's front and centre, a rule designed to stop pages autoplaying behind your back. So when a resume needs a fresh tab, Echo opens it in front just long enough to get it playing, then returns you to the tab and app you were in while the audio continues in the background. Granting Echo the Accessibility permission (Settings, Privacy & Permissions) makes these quiet resumes succeed more often. Videos resumed with plain Return normally use Echo's own player instead, which avoids tabs entirely.

Yes. Echo already tucks the player away moments after a quiet resume, but for complete invisibility turn on "Hide Spotify & Music On Resume" in Settings, under Playback. It needs two macOS permissions: Accessibility, to move the player's window out of sight, and Screen Recording, which is used only to copy the small strip of screen behind the parked window so it's perfectly covered. Nothing is ever recorded or sent anywhere. macOS asks about Accessibility by itself. Screen Recording usually has to be switched on by hand, so Echo opens that pane in System Settings for you. After granting both, quit and reopen Echo and resumes become fully seamless.

Apple Podcasts is the one app that offers no direct way for other apps to control it, so Echo presses its Play control for you through the Accessibility permission. Grant it in Echo's Settings, under Privacy & Permissions (or when macOS asks), then quit and reopen Echo. From then on, picking an episode resumes Podcasts quietly in the background, and Echo will even launch the app for you if it's closed. Without the permission, Echo still tries its best, but resume is much more reliable with it granted.

When a keyboard combination is already claimed by another app or by macOS itself, the system gives it to whoever registered first, so Echo's press never arrives. The fix is quick: open Settings, go to Shortcuts, click the shortcut and record a new combination. Echo validates it as you type and warns about clashes with its own keys. Combinations with two modifiers (like Cmd-Shift or Ctrl-Option) are rarely taken. If the overlay opens but a key inside it does nothing, check the same panel, since every overlay key is rebindable too.

Email support@theodorehq.com. A real person, not a bot, reads every message and usually replies within a day. Whether it is a question, a bug report, or an idea for Echo, we would love to hear from you. You can also report bugs, request features, and vote on ideas right here on the feedback board.

Next to none. Echo is designed to sit in the background using a fraction of a percent of your Mac's processing power, whether music is playing or not, so it has no meaningful effect on battery or performance. The menu-bar icon animates gently while something is playing and holds still when paused; if you would rather it never moved, turn off Animate Menu-Bar Icon in Settings. If Activity Monitor ever shows Echo working harder than that, make sure you are on the latest version (Echo menu > Check for Updates), as 1.0.16 made Echo dramatically lighter.

Safari lets you allow an extension on one website at a time, so Echo only sees the sites you've allowed. Click Echo's icon in Safari's toolbar: when access is missing it shows "Echo needs to see what you play" with an Allow on Every Website button, and one click sorts it.

Make sure you have Echo 1.0.22 or later and Safari 18.4 or later, then open Echo once, since that's when Safari finds its extension. If it still doesn't appear, quit and reopen Safari.

When Echo can see nothing at all, it is nearly always because macOS has not let it ask Spotify or Apple Music what's playing. That is the Automation permission. Echo requests it the moment it first sees one of those apps running, and if it was declined, or the prompt never appeared, the empty overlay says so and offers a Grant Permission button right there. You can also open Settings, Privacy & Permissions, where Automation sits at the top with Grant and Open buttons. macOS will only answer while a player is actually open, so Echo opens one in the background for a moment, asks, and closes it again. Once it's allowed, play something for about ten seconds and it appears.

Completely. Everything Echo records stays on your Mac: there is no account, no cloud and no analytics. The browser extension only reads the title, artwork and playback position of tabs that are playing media, and passes them straight to the Echo app over a private channel on your Mac that never touches the internet. It never reads your browsing history or page content, and nothing is ever sent to us. Echo itself goes online only for update and licence checks, to fetch the cover art a player or page already published, and to play YouTube videos in its floating player through YouTube's own embedded player. None of these carries your history, and the privacy policy lists each one.

Everything you play stays on your Mac: history, artwork, Moments and listening sessions live in local files under your user library, and your licence key sits in the macOS Keychain. Echo has no analytics, no telemetry and no account. The only network traffic is: an occasional licence check with our payment provider (your key and your Mac's name, never your history), the hourly check for app updates, fetching the cover images a player or page already published, and YouTube's own embedded player when you watch a video in Echo's floating player. So the floating player opens instantly, Echo loads YouTube's player shortly after launch and prepares a YouTube video you are already watching, without showing or playing it. Playing something naturally streams from that service, exactly as if you'd pressed play yourself. The privacy policy lists each of these.

Absolutely, you're in full control. In Settings, under Privacy & Permissions, add any app or website to the Never Record lists and Echo will ignore it completely. Sensitive places are already excluded for you: messaging, mail, meetings and document sites never enter your history. You can also pause all tracking with one switch (Settings, General, Pause Echo), remove any single item or a whole app's items from the overlay, clear everything, or cap how long history is kept. Deleting an item also removes its cached artwork from disk.

Not unless you ask it to. Diagnostic Logging is off by default. If you're troubleshooting something with us, you can turn it on in Settings, under Privacy & Permissions, and Echo keeps a local log you can export and attach to a support email yourself. Nothing is ever sent automatically, the file lives only on your Mac, and switching the toggle off deletes it immediately so nothing lingers.

That is Safari's standard wording for any extension allowed on every website, and it describes what Safari lets extensions do, not what Echo does. Echo's extension only reads the title, artwork and playback position of tabs that are playing media, and hands them to the Echo app on your Mac. It never reads your browsing history or page content, and nothing leaves your Mac.