It was long overdue, but better late than never! Shortwave 4.0 is now available on Flathub:

General

• New MPRIS media controls implementation with improved CPU usage
• Song notifications are disabled by default now
• No more loading on startup, stations now get directly retrieved from cached data
• Fixed issue which sometimes prevented loading more than 8 stations from library
• Refreshed user interface by making use of new Libadwaita widgets
• Large parts of the app were reworked, providing a solid foundation for the next upcoming features

Playback

• Last station now gets restored on app launch
• Redesigned player sidebar, allowing to control volume more easily
• New recording indicator showing whether the current playback is being recorded
• Fixed buffering issue which prevented playing new stations, especially after switching stations too fast
• Fixed issues which sometimes prevented that a song gets recorded
• Fixed issue that volume remains muted after unmuting

Station Covers

• More supported image file format for station covers
• Enhanced security by loading station covers using sandboxed Glycin image library
• Non square covers automatically get a blurred background
• New generated fallback for stations without any cover image
• Improved disk usage by automatically purging no longer needed cached data

Browse / Search

• More useful station suggestions by respecting configured system language / region
• Suggestions now get updated with every start, no longer always showing the same stations
• More accessible search feature, no longer hidden in a subpage
• Search results are no longer limited at 250 stations
• Faster and more efficient search by using new grid widgets

Chromecast

• Shortwave is now a registered Google Cast app, no longer relying on the generic media player
• New backend which greatly improves communication stability with cast devices
• Improved discovery of cast devices with lower CPU and memory usage
• Now possible to change the volume of a connected cast device

Enjoy!

Ten months later, after 14.330 added and 8.634 deleted lines, Shortwave 2.0 is available! It sports new features, and comes with the well known improvements, and bugfixes as always.

Optimised user interface

The user interface got ported from GTK3 to GTK4. During this process, many elements were improved or recreated from scratch. For example the station detail dialog window got completely overhauled:

Huge thanks to Maximiliano, who did the initial port to GTK4!

Adaptive interface – taken to the next level

Shortwave has always been designed to handle any screen size from the beginning. In version 2.0 we have been able to improve this even further. There is now a compact mini player for desktop screens. This still offers access to the most important functions in a tiny window.

Other noteworthy changes

• • New desktop notifications to notify you of new songs.
  • Improved keyboard navigation in the user interface.
  • Inhibit sleep/hibernate mode during audio playback.

Download

Shortwave is available to download from Flathub:

Today I can finally announce the second Shortwave Beta release! I planned to release it earlier, but unfortunately the last few weeks were a bit busy for me

Changelog

• • Improved startup time. Shortwave should start now way faster. (#399)
  • Song recorder path is now configurable through gsettings (#406)
  • Don’t record newsticker messages / songs which are too short (#372)
  • The google cast feature isn’t experimental anymore (#368)
  • Fix AAC streams playback (#404)
  • New button in the application menu for creating new stations
  • The GNOME Shell MPRIS applet now displays the station cover
  • And of course, a bunch of other improvements / bug fixes!

Other changes:

• • Upgraded the gtk-rs stack to 0.8.0
  • Gtk.Application and Gtk.ApplicationWindow is now subclassed
  • Shortwave uses now the new radio-browser.info API (#418)

You can download the latest beta release from Flathub (Beta)! Please test it extensively and report all issues!

flatpak install https://flathub.org/beta-repo/appstream/de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave.flatpakref

Or just click here to install it. You can find the project page here.

Earlier this year I announced Shortwave, the successor of Gradio. Now, almost 11 months later, I’m proud to announce the first public beta of Shortwave.

Shortwave is an internet radio player that lets you search for stations, listen to them and record songs automatically.

Automatic recording of songs

When a station is being played, everything gets automatically recorded in the background. You hear a song you like? No problem, you can save the song afterwards and play it with your favorite music player. Songs are automatically detected based on the stream metadata.

Adaptive interface

The interface of Shortwave is completely adaptive and adapts to all screen sizes. So you can use it on the desktop, but also on your Linux (not Android!) based smartphone. For this Shortwave uses the awesome libhandy library!

Streaming

It’s possible to stream the audio playback to a network device, which implements the Google Cast protocol (e.g. Chromecast). So you can easily listen to your favorite stations e.g. from a TV.

Access to a huge database

Shortwave uses the internet service radio-browser.info as station database. It contains more than 25,000 stations. This ensures that you will find every radio station, whether a known or an exotic one. And if something is really missing, you can add your station here.

Where can I get it?

This is the first beta version of Shortwave. All basic features should work, but issues can appear. If somethings is wrong, please open a issue report here!

You can get it from Flathub (Beta). Install it with

flatpak install https://flathub.org/beta-repo/appstream/de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave.flatpakref

or just click here.