Resonance

Overview

Resonance is a podcast app by Nostios that does more than just play audio. It maps where you listen, tracks your habits over time, and gives you real insight into how you consume podcasts — all without collecting a byte of your data.

Most podcast apps treat listening as a passive activity. Resonance treats it as something worth remembering. Go for a morning run and the app maps your route to the episodes you heard along the way. Commute across town and see your path drawn on a map with markers for every pause, podcast switch, and stop. Over time, your Stats dashboard builds out a full picture — streaks, milestones, top shows, listening patterns by hour and day of week, genre breakdowns, personal records, and more.

Beyond the tracking, Resonance covers everything you expect from a podcast app: streaming and offline playback, a queue, custom playlists, per-podcast speed and skip settings, a sleep timer with fade-out, episode ratings, and full search and discovery across the iTunes podcast directory. You can import subscriptions from any other app via OPML, add private RSS feeds directly, and export all of your data at any time.

There are no accounts, no ads, and no data leaving your device. Everything — subscriptions, playback history, downloaded episodes, GPS routes — is stored locally on your phone and stays there.

Installation

1. 1

   Download Resonance

   Find Resonance on the App Store, or tap the direct link on our website.

2. 2

   Open the App

   Launch Resonance from your home screen. A brief splash screen appears, then you land on the Home tab. No account or sign-up required.

3. 3

   Optional: Location Permission

   Resonance will ask for location permission so it can map your listening routes. This is entirely optional. If granted, your location is recorded while you listen and stored only on your device. You can change this at any time in your device settings.

Your First Podcast

Adding your first podcast takes just a few taps.

1. 1

   Tap the Search tab

   From the bottom navigation bar, tap the magnifying glass icon to open Search.

2. 2

   Find a podcast

   Type a podcast name, topic, or keyword. Results appear as you type. You can also browse by category or check what’s trending.

3. 3

   Follow and play

   Tap a podcast to view its details, then tap Follow to subscribe. Tap any episode and hit Play to start listening.

RSS Feeds & Import

Adding a podcast by RSS URL

For podcasts not in the iTunes directory — such as Patreon-exclusive shows or independent feeds — tap the icon on the Search tab, paste the full RSS URL, and the podcast loads just like any other show.

Importing from another podcast app

If you’re switching from another app, you can bring your subscriptions with you via OPML.

1. 1

   Export from your current app

   Most podcast apps support OPML export in their settings. Export and save the file.

2. 2

   Import into Resonance

   Go to Settings > Data Management > Import OPML and select your file. Your subscriptions are added automatically, with artwork and metadata fetched for each podcast.

Home Screen

The Home tab is your starting point. It adapts to your listening habits and shows content you care about.

Sections

• New Releases — The latest episodes from podcasts you follow
• Continue Listening — Up to three episodes you’ve started but not finished. Your currently-playing episode always appears first. Tap any card to pick up where you left off
• Favorite Podcasts — Quick-access row of podcasts you’ve rated 5 stars
• Playlists — Your custom playlists displayed as cards
• Remember this? — A personalized prompt highlighting a past episode or podcast worth revisiting
• You Might Like These — Up to 12 podcast recommendations based on the genres you listen to, sourced from iTunes top charts and excluding podcasts you already follow
• Just Listened To — Up to 10 recently completed episodes (where you listened to at least 70% of the episode)

Long press

Long press any episode card in Continue Listening, New Releases, or Recently Played to access quick actions — play, queue, add to playlist, rate, download, and more.

Home actions

• Shuffle (toolbar) — Plays a random episode from a random subscribed podcast
• Settings (gear icon) — Opens the Settings screen
• Pull to Refresh — Pull down to reload recommendations

Now Playing

Tap the mini player bar at the bottom of the screen to expand the full Now Playing view.

Artwork carousel

Swipe between two pages: the episode’s artwork, and a scrollable view of the episode’s description text.

Seek bar

A full-width slider showing your position in the episode. Elapsed time is shown on the left, remaining time on the right.

Transport controls

• Skip Back — Jumps backward by your configured amount (default: 15 seconds)
• Play / Pause — Large central button
• Skip Forward — Jumps forward by your configured amount (default: 30 seconds)

Volume & audio routing

A system volume slider with speaker icons.

Bottom action row

• Speed — Displays the current playback rate (e.g. “1.5x”). Tap to cycle through speeds
• Sleep Timer — Moon icon. Tap to set a sleep timer. Icon fills when a timer is active
• AirPlay — Route audio to external devices
• Rate — Star icon. Tap to rate the current episode from 1 to 5 stars or add a note to your listening journal
• More — Three-dot menu: Remove Download, Mark as Played/Unplayed, Go to Podcast, Share

Mini player

When an episode is loaded, a compact mini player floats above the tab bar on every screen. It shows a thin progress bar, the episode artwork and title, and Skip Back / Play–Pause / Skip Forward buttons. Tap anywhere on the bar to open the full Now Playing screen.

Playback Controls

Starting playback

There are several ways to start playing an episode:

• Tap Play on any episode detail page
• Tap a Continue Listening card on the Home screen
• Tap the play button on an episode in your Queue
• Tap the play button on a downloaded episode in your Downloads list
• Use the Shuffle button on the Home screen or a podcast’s detail page

Lock screen & control center

Full playback controls are available from the Lock Screen, Control Center, and any connected Bluetooth or AirPlay device.

Progress saving

Your playback position is saved automatically every 5 seconds. If the app is closed, your phone dies, or you switch episodes, you can always resume exactly where you left off.

Speed & Skip Settings

Playback speed

Resonance supports nine playback speeds: 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x, 2.5x, and 3x.

• Global default speed — Set in Settings. Applies to any podcast without its own speed override
• Per-podcast speed — Set in a podcast’s settings (gear icon on the podcast detail page). Overrides the global default for that show. Useful if you speed up conversational podcasts but listen to narrative shows at normal speed

Skip intro & outro

Many podcasts have repetitive intros or outros. Resonance can automatically skip them on a per-podcast basis:

• Skip Intro (0–120 seconds, 5-second increments) — When an episode starts, Resonance automatically seeks past the intro
• Skip Outro (0–120 seconds) — When the remaining time equals your skip-outro setting, the episode is treated as complete

Automatic skipping is off by default. Configure these from the gear icon on any podcast’s detail page.

Skip forward & back

Customize how far the skip buttons jump in Settings > Controls. Both skip back and skip forward can be set independently from 5 to 60 seconds in 5-second increments (defaults: 15s back, 30s forward).

Sleep Timer

The sleep timer lets you fall asleep to a podcast without worrying about losing your place.

Timer options

• 15 minutes
• 30 minutes
• 45 minutes
• 60 minutes
• 120 minutes
• End of Episode

How it works

Tap the moon icon in the Now Playing screen and select a duration. When the timer expires, audio fades out gradually over 30 seconds, then pauses. Your position is saved. If a timer is already running, you can cancel it from the same sheet.

Background & Auto-Play

Background playback

Resonance continues playing audio when you switch to other apps or lock your screen. Full playback controls are available from the Lock Screen, Control Center, and connected audio devices.

Auto-play next

When enabled (on by default), Resonance automatically plays the next episode in your queue after the current one finishes. If auto-play is off, playback stops at the end of each episode. Toggle this in Settings > Playback.

Podcasts & Subscriptions

The Library tab is where you manage everything you’ve saved, queued, downloaded, and organized. It has five segments accessible via a picker at the top: Podcasts, Queue, Playlists, Downloads, and Favorites.

Following vs. saving

There are two ways to keep track of a podcast:

• Following — Subscribes you to the podcast. New episodes appear in your New Releases on the Home screen
• Saving — Bookmarks the podcast for later without subscribing. Saved podcasts show a small bookmark badge on their artwork

Following and saving are mutually exclusive — following a podcast removes the bookmark, and vice versa.

Browsing your collection

• Layout — A 3-column grid displaying podcast artwork and titles
• Search — Filter by title or author name
• Sort — Title A–Z, Title Z–A, Recently Updated (by latest episode), Recently Added (by date followed or saved), or My Top Rated

Podcast detail page

Tap any podcast to see its artwork, title, author, genre, a Follow/Following button, a bookmark button, and a star rating. An expandable “About This Show” section displays the podcast’s description.

The episode list supports filtering (All or Added), searching by title, and six sort options (Newest, Oldest, Title A–Z, Title Z–A, Rating High–Low, Rating Low–High). Sort preference is saved per podcast.

Toolbar actions include Share (generates a pod.link URL), Shuffle (plays a random episode), and Settings (per-podcast configuration).

Queue & Playlists

Queue

Your up-next list. Episodes play in order from top to bottom. Tap an episode’s name to view its detail page, or tap the play button to start playing immediately.

• Add to Queue — Swipe right on any episode, or from an episode detail page, tap Queue (adds to end) or Play Next (inserts at front)
• Reorder — Hold and drag to rearrange
• Remove — Swipe left to remove individual items
• Clear — Remove all items at once

Playlists

Custom collections of episodes that you curate manually.

• Create — Tap the add button, give it a name and optional description
• Add episodes — From any episode detail page, tap the playlist icon and choose a playlist. Duplicates are prevented automatically
• Reorder — Drag to rearrange within a playlist
• Edit or delete — Update the name and description, or delete the entire playlist

Downloads

Download episodes to listen offline. Downloads continue in the background, even if you leave the app.

How to download

Tap the download button on an episode detail page, or use swipe actions and context menus throughout the app.

Managing downloads

Downloads are organized into three sections in the Library:

• Downloading — Active and pending downloads with progress indicators. Swipe to cancel
• Failed — Downloads that encountered errors. Swipe to remove, or retry from the episode detail page
• Downloaded — Completed downloads ready for offline playback. Tap the play button to start listening, or tap the episode name to view its detail page. Swipe to delete

Supported audio formats

MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG, Opus, MP4, and M4B.

Favorites

The Favorites segment in the Library shows your highest-rated content, split into two tabs:

• Podcasts — All podcasts you’ve rated 5 stars, shown in a grid
• Episodes — All episodes you’ve rated 5 stars, shown in a list. Tap an episode’s name to view its detail page, or tap the play button to start playing

Rate a podcast or episode 5 stars to have it appear here.

Episode Management

Episode detail page

Tap any episode to see its full detail: artwork, title, podcast name, publication date, duration, and description. If partially played, a progress bar shows elapsed and remaining time.

The action row offers: Play Next, Queue, Add to Playlist, Download, and Mark as Played/Unplayed. You can also rate the episode from 1 to 5 stars and add notes to your listening journal.

Share an episode by using the share icon in the top toolbar.

Swipe actions

On any episode in a podcast’s list:

• Swipe right — Add to Queue
• Swipe left — Save, Download, or Hide

Hiding episodes

Hate seeing promo episodes in your feed? Same.

Swipe left on an episode and tap Hide to remove it from the list. To see them again, open the podcast’s settings and enable Show Hidden Episodes — they appear at reduced opacity with an Unhide option.

Ratings & notes

Rate podcasts and episodes from 1 to 5 stars. Ratings are used to populate your Favorites, influence Home screen recommendations, and are tracked in your Stats under Rating Insights.

Write notes so you can remember your thoughts about what you listen to.

Search & Browse

Searching

Type a podcast name, topic, or keyword into the search bar. Results are organized into two sections:

• Podcasts — Matching podcasts from the iTunes directory (the same catalog used by Apple Podcasts)
• Episodes from Your Library — Matching episodes from podcasts you already follow

Browse

When the search bar is empty, the Browse view displays:

• Recent Searches — Tappable chips of your recent search terms (up to 10)
• Trending — A carousel of trending podcasts from the iTunes directory
• Because You Like [Genre] — Up to three personalized sections based on the genres of podcasts you follow, each showing up to 6 suggestions
• Categories — A grid of 16 browsable podcast categories: Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, Fiction, Health & Fitness, History, Kids & Family, Music, News, Science, Society & Culture, Sports, Technology, True Crime, and TV & Film

Listening Stats

The Insights tab gives you a detailed breakdown of your listening habits.

Summary

• Total Time — All time spent listening across every podcast
• Sessions — Total number of individual listening sessions. A chevron indicates this card is tappable — tap to see a full session log
• Current Streak — How many consecutive days you’ve listened
• Longest Streak — Your all-time best consecutive-day streak

Milestones

Track your progress toward listening milestones: 10 hours, 50 hours, 100 hours, 500 hours, and 1,000 hours. Achieved milestones are highlighted with a checkmark. A progress bar shows how close you are to the next one.

Charts & patterns

The daily trend, day-of-week, and hour-of-day charts are grouped into a swipeable carousel so you can browse them without scrolling.

• Last 30 Days — Bar chart of daily listening time in minutes
• By Day of Week — Which days you listen most
• By Hour of Day — What times of day you listen most
• Genre Breakdown — Donut chart showing listening time by genre (up to 8 genres)

Personal records

• Longest Session — Your single longest uninterrupted listening session
• Most Episodes in a Day — Highest number of episodes in one day
• Earliest & Latest Listening — The extremes of your daily listening window

Top podcasts

A ranked list of up to 10 of your most-listened podcasts, with artwork, title, episode count, and total time.

More stats

• Episode Completion — Total started, total completed, completion rate, and average percentage listened
• Rating Insights — Average episode and podcast ratings with a star-level distribution chart
• Download Stats — Total downloads, storage used, how many you listened to, and listen rate

Listening Journal

The Journal tab on the Insights page shows your podcast activity as a chronological log. Every note you write — whether on an episode, podcast, or route — appears as its own entry in the timeline.

Browsing & navigating

Tap any entry to view all notes for that podcast or episode in one place. From there, tap the title to jump straight to the full podcast or episode detail page.

Search, filter & sort

• Search — Find entries by keyword
• Filter — Show only podcast notes or episode notes
• Sort — Newest first or oldest first

Routes & Maps

Resonance can track where you are while you listen, mapping your walks, commutes, and runs to the podcasts you were hearing at the time. This feature is entirely optional and requires location permission.

How it works

• When you start playing an episode and location permission is granted, Resonance begins recording GPS points in the background
• A new point is captured approximately every 30 meters of movement
• When you pause, a 10-minute grace period keeps the activity open. Resume within 10 minutes and the same activity continues. After 10 minutes of silence, the activity is finalized
• The starting location is reverse-geocoded to give the activity a place name (city, neighborhood, state)

Viewing your routes

Go to Insights > Routes to see your listening location history. Overview cards show total distance, number of unique places, routes tracked, and GPS points recorded.

Activities are grouped by time (Today, Yesterday, This Week, This Month, then by month). Each entry shows podcast artwork, location name, podcast titles, timestamp, duration, and route distance.

Filter by Place (activities within 1 km are grouped into clusters) or by Podcast to see routes for a specific show.

The activity map

Tap any activity to open a full map view showing:

• Route polyline — Your path drawn as a line on the map
• Start marker (green) and End marker (red)
• Pause markers (orange) — Where you paused playback
• Podcast change markers (purple) — Where you switched podcasts

A timeline scrubber lets you drag through your route chronologically. Route statistics show distance, duration, pace, and podcasts listened to. A Play button animates your route across the map.

Editing & merging routes

• Edit — Add a custom title, override the auto-detected location name, or add a description/journal entry
• Merge — If two activities are within 2 hours of each other (e.g. a walk split by a coffee stop), merge them into a single continuous route. All sessions, GPS points, and time ranges are combined
• Delete — Remove individual routes via context menu or swipe

App Settings

Access Settings from the gear icon on the Home screen, Library, or Search tab.

Playback

• Default Speed — 0.5x to 3x (9 speeds). Default: 1x. Overridden by per-podcast settings
• Auto-Play Next — On/Off. Default: On. Automatically plays the next queued episode when the current one ends

Appearance

• Theme — System / Light / Dark. Default: Dark. System follows your device’s display setting

Controls

• Skip Back — 5–60 seconds (5s increments). Default: 15 seconds
• Skip Forward — 5–60 seconds (5s increments). Default: 30 seconds

Location

Displays your current location tracking status (Enabled, Disabled, or Not Set) and provides a button to open your device’s settings for the app.

Data

• Storage Used — Total disk space used by downloads and the database
• Delete Downloads on Completion — On/Off. Default: Off. Automatically removes downloaded files after they finish playing
• Data Management — Opens the full Data Management screen for export, import, and selective data deletion. Review the Data & Privacy section of this documentation for more info on data management

About

• Version — The current app version number
• Privacy Policy — Links to nostios.com/privacy

Per-Podcast Settings

Each podcast has its own settings, accessible from the gear icon on the podcast detail page.

• Playback Speed — Default (uses global) or 0.5x–3x. Override the global speed for this podcast only
• Skip Intro — 0–120 seconds (5s increments). Default: 0. Automatically skip the beginning of each episode
• Skip Outro — 0–120 seconds (5s increments). Default: 0. Automatically skip the end of each episode
• Show Hidden Episodes — On/Off. Default: Off. Shows hidden episodes at reduced opacity instead of fully hiding them

Privacy Overview

Resonance is built with a privacy-first philosophy. Here’s what that means in practice:

• No account required — Use Resonance without creating an account or providing any personal information
• On-device data — Your listening history, stats, ratings, routes, and settings are stored locally on your device
• No ads — Resonance has no advertisements and no ad-tracking
• No analytics — No third-party analytics services. We don’t know what you listen to (nor do we care)
• No tracking — No telemetry, no usage reporting, no tracking domains
• Your data, your life — Export or delete your data at any time

Network requests

Resonance only makes network requests to:

• iTunes Search API — To search for podcasts and fetch trending/category results
• RSS feeds — To load episode lists directly from podcast publishers’ servers
• Audio streaming — To stream episode audio when not downloaded locally
• Artwork loading — To display podcast and episode artwork

No user data, listening history, location data, or personal information is sent in any of these requests.

Permissions

• Location (When In Use) — Optional. Records your location while listening in the foreground for route mapping
• Location (Always) — Optional. Records your location during background playback so route tracking continues
• Background Audio — Automatic. Allows playback to continue when the app is backgrounded or the screen is locked

Export & Import

Exporting your data

Resonance provides multiple export formats so you always have access to your own data.

1. 1

   Open Data Management

   Go to Settings > Data Management.

2. 2

   Choose a format

   JSON — Full export of all data (subscriptions, progress, sessions, activities, ratings, notes). Can be re-imported into Resonance later or used elsewhere.
   CSV — Listening sessions as a spreadsheet-compatible file.
   Journal CSV — Session notes, route journal entries, and reviews.
   OPML — Subscriptions only. Universally supported by other podcast apps for easy transfer.

3. 3

   Export

   Tap your preferred format. The file is saved to your device or shared via the share sheet.

Importing data

• JSON import — Restore a previous Resonance export (subscriptions, progress, sessions, ratings, locations)
• OPML import — Add subscriptions from another podcast app. Artwork and metadata are fetched automatically

Storage management

The Data Management screen shows a visual donut chart of your storage usage by category, along with record counts for each data type.

Data Deletion

You can selectively clear specific types of data without affecting others:

• Delete All Downloads — Removes all downloaded audio files
• Clear Listening History — Removes all session data
• Clear GPS & Routes — Removes all location and route data
• Clear Notes & Ratings — Removes all podcast and episode ratings

Architecture

This section is for developers, tinkerers, and anyone curious about how Resonance works under the hood.

App structure

Resonance is built natively using an MVVM-inspired architecture with a service layer. Views are organized by feature (Home, Library, Player, Search, Insights, Map, Settings). Service classes are injected via the environment, each managing a specific domain.

Services

• AudioPlayerService — Core audio playback. Manages play/pause/seek, speed, sleep timer, Now Playing info center, remote commands, interruption handling, and auto-play
• SessionTrackingService — Creates and manages listening sessions and activities. Handles the 10-minute grace period for activity grouping
• LocationTrackingService — GPS tracking during playback. Buffers and persists location points
• GeocodingService — Reverse-geocodes GPS coordinates to human-readable place names
• StatisticsService — Computes all stats: totals, streaks, trends, top podcasts, genres, completions, ratings, downloads, and personal records
• QueuePlaylistService — Queue and playlist management with ordering, deduplication, and drag-and-drop reordering
• DownloadService — Background download management with progress tracking, reconnection on launch, and local file lookup
• SettingsService — App settings and per-podcast settings persistence
• RatingService — 1–5 star ratings for podcasts and episodes
• ExportImportService — JSON, CSV, and OPML export and import
• NavigationRouter — Programmatic navigation across tabs for deep-linking

Data models

The app uses 17 data models for its local database schema: Subscription, EpisodeProgress, ListeningSession, ListeningActivity, LocationPoint, QueueItem, Playlist, PlaylistEpisode, Download, SavedEpisode, SavedPodcast, PodcastRating, EpisodeRating, HiddenEpisode, SearchHistory, AppSetting, and PodcastSetting.

Denormalized data pattern

Episodes are not stored as persistent database records. Episode data is fetched live from RSS feeds each time you view a podcast. When an episode is added to a queue, playlist, download, or session, its metadata (title, artwork, audio URL, duration) is copied into that record.

This means the app works fully offline for queued, downloaded, and in-progress episodes. Listening history remains complete even if a podcast feed disappears. The live feed always shows the latest episodes with no stale-data problem.

Audio & Downloads

Audio engine

• Playback category — Plays audio even when the device is silenced
• Audio mode — Optimized for spoken audio
• Routing — Prefers last-used audio route (long-form audio policy)
• Now Playing — Full integration with the system Now Playing info center including artwork (LRU-cached), title, artist, duration, elapsed time, and playback rate
• Remote commands — Play, Pause, Toggle, Skip Forward, Skip Back, and Change Playback Position

Download system

• Downloads start immediately and continue in the background
• The app is woken when background downloads complete
• Files are stored locally with UUID-based filenames
• On launch, the download service reconnects to any active background tasks and restarts any that were lost
• Supported formats: MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG, Opus, MP4, M4B

Search & discovery

• Podcast search — iTunes Search API
• Trending — iTunes top charts API
• Categories — iTunes genre IDs
• Episode search — Local search across subscribed podcast RSS feeds
• RSS parsing — Direct XML parsing of standard podcast RSS/Atom feeds

Sharing

Resonance generates shareable links using the pod.link format. Podcast links use the iTunes ID, and episode links append an MD5 hash of the episode GUID.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Issues

Contact Support

If you can’t find an answer here, we’re happy to help.

• Email — hello@nostios.com
• Website — nostios.com

When reporting an issue, please include your device model, OS version, and a description of the problem. Screenshots are always helpful.