Download on the App Store
Quick guide
Finding stations. Under “Discover”, the charts show what is played most right now in your country, on your continent or worldwide. Below are genres from the 60s to techno, “Surprise me” for a random find, and filters for country, language and sound quality. In “Search” a few words are enough, upper or lower case does not matter. Tap a station to play it; the star makes it a favorite.
The player. Tap the small bar at the bottom to open the player, swipe down to close it. There:
- Swipe left or right on the cover to switch between album cover, music cassette and tape recorder. Tapping an album cover opens the song at Apple.
- Swipe or tap the visualizer to change its style.
- Cassette full screen (iPhone): the cassette button to the right of AirPlay shows the cassette across the whole screen. Swipe to turn it over, like a real cassette; tap to close. Held sideways, it stays the right way up.
- At the bottom: the star for favorites, the moon for the sleep timer (fades out gently), AirPlay for speakers and TVs.
- “Add to Library” adds the song that is playing to your Apple Music library, in the playlist “Final Radio” (Apple Music subscription required).
Setting up the cassette and tape recorder. In Settings (gear) under “Replace the cover with”: cover, music cassette or tape recorder. With the cassette, a row of eleven cassettes appears below to swipe through and tap. The field “Name on the tape” holds what is printed on the cassette and the tape recorder: your name or a word, up to 8 characters.
iPhone Duo. Unfolded, the player splits at the fold: the cover large on the left, cassette or tape recorder and all controls on the right. Swiping on the left half brings the cassette or tape recorder over to the left in large; the cover then moves small to the top right.
Apple TV. With the Siri Remote: click to select, press and hold for the menu (e.g. add to favorites). The Play/Pause button starts and stops the radio from anywhere. Select the cover, then left/right: cover, cassette, tape recorder. Your favorites appear in the top row of the Home Screen.
Favorites and history. In “Favorites”, “Edit” changes the order; swipe left to delete. “History” shows the stations and songs you heard last; songs with ↗ open at Apple, and the ⋯ menu saves the list as text or a spreadsheet.
Also. Widgets for the Home and Lock Screen, CarPlay in the car, the Apple Watch as a remote, and Siri (“Play 80s80s with Final Radio”).
Frequently asked questions
Why is the album cover sometimes missing?
Final Radio looks up the cover at Apple using the artist and title the station sends. It only appears when Apple finds exactly this song by exactly this artist, because a wrong cover would be worse than none. So there is no cover when
- the station has typos in the title or name (“Micheal Jackson”) or swaps artist and title;
- the station names special versions that Apple does not have like that (live recordings, its own remixes, “Radio Edit”, “anniversary version”). The app already leaves out brackets, “feat.” and “Radio Edit” when searching, but not every spelling can be guessed;
- Apple only has the song on compilations (“Top 100”, “Now That’s What I Call Music”) – then the app shows the link to the song, but no unrelated compilation cover;
- an ad, news, a presenter or a jingle is on;
- the song is not offered in the App Store of your country. Apple does not offer this search in mainland China, so the app shows no covers there;
- Apple’s search is busy for a moment (it allows only about 20 requests a minute) – then the app asks again a little later.
Instead of the cover, the app shows the station picture. The cover lookup can be switched off in Settings (“Look up album covers at Apple”).
Why does a title look wrong or odd?
Title and artist come from the station. Typos, CAPITAL LETTERS, ad notes or show names come from there; Final Radio largely shows the details as the station sends them.
A station does not play.
Stations change their addresses quite often. On the second try, Final Radio automatically reloads the address from the station directory radio-browser.info. If it still does not play, another entry of the same station in the search usually helps.
No title is shown.
Title and artist come from the station itself. Not every station sends them.
The visualizer does not move.
It only shows real sound data, never a fake animation. For a few stations in special formats (e.g. Ogg/Opus, FLAC) the app plays through the system player, which provides no sound data; then it stays still on purpose.
My favorites on all devices?
With an iCloud account, the app keeps the favorites list the same through your own iCloud (switch in Settings, can be turned off). History and settings stay on each device.
How do I get my favorites from the web app into the app?
In the web app, save them as a file under Settings → Back up; in the app, open it under “Favorites” → ⋯ → “Import favorites”.
What happens to my data?
Nothing on our side: no account, no tracking, no server of our own. History and settings stay on your device; the favorites list, if you like, in your own iCloud account at Apple. Details in the privacy policy (German).
Contact
Questions, bugs, wishes: development@arke.de. Please tell us your device, the iOS, macOS, tvOS or watchOS version and the station concerned. A screenshot of “Technical info (for troubleshooting)” in Settings helps us find the cause.
For broadcasters
Final Radio does not store, alter or redistribute any broadcast. It plays your stream directly from your server, at the address you publish for listeners, unchanged and including your own advertising. The station list comes from the free directory radio-browser.info. If you do not want your station in Final Radio, or want details changed, write to development@arke.de; we remove your station with the next update, usually within a few days. We also forward your request to the radio-browser.info maintainers, so the station can be removed from the shared directory that many other apps use.