FOSSPicks

Internet radio client

Tuner

Maybe it's because many of us have been dreaming about traveling and experiencing other cultures, but there's been a resurgence in high-quality desktop Internet radio applications. We recently looked at the fantastic Shortwave, for example, which made tuning into a global network of radio stations easy, and here we have the equally wonderful Tuner. Tuner isn't designed specifically for global radio, but it can access a huge library of available stations through its search function, along with quick access to a variety of genres, trending stations, and a discovery tab. It describes itself as a "minimalistic" Internet radio application, so it's fitting that Tuner makes such brilliant use of the GTK3+ toolkit and its human interface guidelines to reduce the screen clutter to only those buttons you need.

The top window border contains nearly all the playback functionality. It embeds the play, pause, and star (for favoriting a station) buttons. To the right of these are the station details, a search field, and a tiny configuration menu. The main window below is populated with either search results or curated selections from the genre list. The station URLs themselves are retrieved online using the API and catalog on radio-browser.info, but unlike with Shortwave, this can be changed by setting an environment variable. This allows you to host your own list of stations, for instance, or use more than one source for searches and recommendations. The application was developed as a COVID-19 project by its developer after moving from macOS to Linux, and this helps explain why its design is so clean, minimal, and functional. In fact, the project has proven so successful that the developer has been overwhelmed by the response and requirements of the community and is now looking for developers and package maintainers to help. If you're interested, take a look at the project's GitHub page.

Project Website

https://github.com/louis77/tuner

Tuner has one of the best Gnome interfaces we've seen; it is a brilliant way to explore the global Internet radio network from your desktop.

Development environment

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