Close-up of person’s head wearing headphones and data flowing into them.

Design Concept: What if Pocket, Overcast, and YouTube had a baby?

An Audio App for Listeners with Rich Information Diets

Always Listening

I always have earbuds on because I’m always listening to something. When I’m running, doing chores, even when I’m showering. The bursts of laughter coming from the bathroom? That’s me!

Listening to audio is a core element of my information diet. You can trace my first taste of podcasts to early 2008. And ever since read-it-later apps introduced text-to-speech functionality, things hockeysticked from there.

An Embarrassment of Riches

There’s a lot of great audio-friendly content available including:

• Podcasts
• YouTube video essays, talks, and presentations
• Online articles

Such an app would be appealing to voracious listeners to audio content, such as information workers, blue collar workers, commuters, fitness enthusiasts, and more.

All-In-One

Currently, there are three disparate ways to access this content:

• Podcast players
• YouTube
• Read-later apps’ text-to-speech feature

Wouldn’t it be great if a single app could do all that? Yes it would! Unfortunately no such app exists so I did the next best thing other than building one. I designed one!

Earwig is a mobile audio app for avid listeners. It allows them to listen to podcasts, YouTube video essays, and online articles, all in one place.

Features

Saving to Earwig

It’s easy to save to Earwig from any desktop computer, tablet, or mobile device. When you save a link to Earwig, they’re added to your content library.

You can save to Earwig via browser extension.

The Earwig browser extension triggering a pop-up confirming the saving of content

You can also save to Earwig manually via its web app.

The “Add” button icon in the Earwig web app leading to manually saving content

Of course, you can save Earwig on your iOS device via its Share sheet.

iOS’ Share sheet triggered from the Earwig player screen

And if you have a URL in your clipboard, Earwig can save that when you launch the app.

The Earwig mobile app requesting to “save copied URL”

Content Library

Launch Earwig to access your content library. It’s organized based on your preferences. It also takes your interactions with previous content into consideration.

The Earwig mobile app displaying a list of saved content

Preferences you can set include:

• Publication date
• Download status
• Length
• Prioritized creators
• Prioritized topics

Content interactions taken into account:

• Likes
• Subscriptions
• Shares

Playing Content

Earwig will play audio content as if you were streaming a song or a music app. It also supports standard playback options as well as more advanced controls.

Earwig’s playback speed options for articles, podcast episodes, and YouTube videos

Earwig’s seek back/ahead controls

When playing an article, Earwig displays its text in a distraction-free format. It also highlights words as they are spoken.

Earwig highlighting words as they are spoken

Even more nuanced playback settings are available.

• Set seek back/ahead by number of words or seconds.
• Turn on auto-play to start the next item when one item ends.
• Turn on one-tap play to immediate play an item when tapped in a list.
• Turn on smart resume to rewind a bit after pausing.
• Turn on auto-archive to archive an item when it ends.

Earwig supports podcast episode show notes and YouTube video descriptions.

Earwig’s content player displaying a podcast episode’s show notes

Earwig’s content player displaying a YouTube video’s description

Earwig’s primary focus is on listening, but it also offers a visually appealing option. Switch to Immersive mode for a more pleasing presentation.

Earwig’s content player in Immersive mode

Interacting with Content

Marking as Favorite

Favorting content helps support the content creator.

Earwig’s “Favorite” option triggers the same action in the content’s publisher

You can find items marked as favorite in the Favorites folder.

The Earwig mobile app displaying a list of favorited content

Subscribing

Subscribe to a creator’s feed to receive updates from them when they publish new content.

Earwig’s “Subscribe” option triggers the same action where the content was published

Training Recommendations

Favoriting and subscribing helps Earwig provide relevant content in its Discovery section.

Earwig learning from favoriting and subscribing actions to generate more meaningful content recommendations

Sharing

Share any content from your library with friends and with other apps. You can also share the current point or the highlighted text to provide additional context.

Earwig’s “Share” options dialog with advanced URL sharing options

Archiving

When you’re finished with an item on your list, it can be moved to the Archive for long-term storage.

Earwig’s “Archive” option sending content to the its “Archive” screen

Discovering Content

Get great recommendations curated for you based on your favorites and subscriptions. Find content worthy of your time.

Earwig’s “Discover” screen highlighting recommended content

Final Thoughts

Earwig is an all-in-one mobile audio app for listeners with rich information diets. It also makes articles and YouTube videos more accessible.

I’ll admit it’s technically challenging to build and support such an app. Furthermore, there may be legal and ethical issues around downloading YouTube videos.

And speaking of which, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Huffduffer, a service I discovered days ago. It turns bookmarked YouTube videos into a podcast that you can subscribe to. The workflow is somewhat clunky, but it works like a charm. It’s now part of my daily listening solutions.

Figma scratch pad containing the UI elements used to design Earwig and this post

This project turned out to be a delightful months-long distraction. What started off as some doodles in Procreate eventually led to quite an adventure. I got to learn from studying the UI of some of my favorite apps. I fought Midjourney attempting to produce an app icon — I don’t think it knows what an earwig looks like.

I’m not sure if this exploration will amount to anything. But I hope it added something interesting to the well-travelled road of designing mobile audio players.