Hi, it’s Carlo.

I’ve been quietly building something that’s a bit of a departure for me. You probably know me from my Shortcuts automation tools — Actions For Obsidian, Browser Actions, that sort of thing. Practical, useful, but not exactly exciting at parties.

Well, I’ve been working on a new macOS app called Listening Post, and I’m having a lot of fun with it.

The idea is simple: Always-on ambient music recognition! LP sits in your menu bar and listens to the music around you — via your Mac’s mic. Not just Spotify or Apple Music, but everything: the radio, a vinyl record, a YouTube video, whatever’s playing at a coffee shop. It identifies the song and then does whatever you want with it — scrobble to Last.fm or ListenBrainz, post to Bluesky or Mastodon, export to local files, trigger a Shortcut. Mix and match.

The parts I care about most: no audio ever leaves your Mac (recognition happens locally via Apple’s ShazamKit), and your listening history is stored on your machine first. You share to services rather than rely on them. Your data, your rules.

It’s currently in public beta — free to use, and I’d genuinely love to hear what you think. What do you listen to that your current tools don’t track? What would make something like this useful to you?

You can download the beta at https://actions.work/listening-post, and reply to this email with thoughts, questions, or feedback. I read every email.

Thanks,
— Carlo