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.
You can also save to Earwig manually via its web app.
Of course, you can save Earwig on your iOS device via its Share sheet.
And if you have a URL in your clipboard, Earwig can save that when you launch the app.
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.
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.
When playing an article, Earwig displays its text in a distraction-free format. It also highlights 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 primary focus is on listening, but it also offers a visually appealing option. Switch to Immersive mode for a more pleasing presentation.
Interacting with Content
Marking as Favorite
Favorting content helps support the content creator.
You can find items marked as favorite in the Favorites folder.
Subscribing
Subscribe to a creator’s feed to receive updates from them when they publish new content.
Training Recommendations
Favoriting and subscribing helps Earwig provide relevant content in its Discovery section.
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.
Archiving
When you’re finished with an item on your list, it can be moved to the Archive for long-term storage.
Discovering Content
Get great recommendations curated for you based on your favorites and subscriptions. Find content worthy of your time.
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.
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.
