Archives For November 30, 1999

Shortwave, free and open-source internet radio player for Gnome, released version 2.0.0 today.

The new release introduces a mini player mode. It is a super compact window widget with a few control buttons, and displays the current radio station and playing song name.

Other changes in Shortwave 2.0.0 include:

  • Show system notification when start playing a new song.
  • Redesign the station details window, and add ability to copy the stream URL.
  • Improved keyboard navigation of the user interface.
  • Prevent system from going suspend or hibernate during audio playback.

And Shortwave now is built as GTK4 application. For the UI, you’ll see the bottom corners rounded.

How to Install Shortwave 2.0.0 in Ubuntu:

The radio player is available in Ubuntu Software as Snap package, it is however not updated at the moment of writing.

Besides building from source(impossible as it depends GTK4), so far the only way is installing the containerised Flatpak package.

1.) Open terminal either from system application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to install the flatpak daemon if you don’t have it:

sudo apt install flatpak

2.) Add the flathub repository which hosts the flatpak package:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then install Shortwave flatpak package via command:

flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave

Once installed, launch the internet radio player from your system application menu and enjoy!

(Optional) To remove Shortwave, simply run command in terminal:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave

Shortwave, an internet radio player desktop application for Linux, released its first stable version 1.0 today. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04 and higher.

Shortwave is a new desktop radio app for Linux built with Rust. It provides access to a station database with over 25,000 stations. It features:

  • Create your own library where you can add your favourite stations
  • Easily search and discover new radio stations
  • Automatic recognition of songs, with the possibility to save them individually
  • Responsive application layout, compatible for small and large screens
  • Play audio on supported network devices (e.g. Google Chromecasts)
  • Seamless integration into the GNOME desktop environment
  • Import stations from Gradio.

How to install Shortwave in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 18.04 and higher, Shortwave radio player can be easily installed via Flatpak from flathub repository.

First do following steps to setup flathub repository if you’re first time installing a flatpak package in Ubuntu:

1.) Open terminal either from system application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command:

sudo apt install flatpak

2.) Add the flathub repository which hosts the flatpak package:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then install Shortwave flatpak package via command:

flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave

Once installed, launch the internet radio player from your system application menu and enjoy!

(Optional) To remove Shortwave, simply run command in terminal:

flatpak uninstall de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave

PyRadio is an open-source curses based internet radio player that runs in command console. The software is implemented in Python, and uses mplayer or VLC for media playback.

The community has recently made the snap package for PyRadio to make it easy to install the tool in Ubuntu 16.04 and higher either via Ubuntu Software:

or by running command in terminal:

snap install pyradio

Since snap app contains most required libraries and dependencies, the installation file is kinda large.

To start the radio player, run command:

pyradio --play

And here are keyboard shortcuts:

  • Up/Down/j/k/PgUp/PgDown Change station selection
  • Enter Play selected station
  • -/+ Change volume
  • m Mute
  • r Select and play a random station
  • g Jump to first station
  • <n>G Jump to n-th station
  • Space Stop/start playing selected station
  • Esc/q Quit

Gradio

Gradio, an open-source GTK+ internet radio application, has reached the 6.0 release.

Now it’s available as snap app while the official PPA can no longer build it for Ubuntu 16.04 due to the old system GTK+3 library.

Gradio 6.0 release highlights:

  • Group your radio stations into collections
  • New sorting options.
  • export and import station library.
  • create and edit stations.
  • New details sidebar, selection system.
  • Gradio 6.0 requires GTK 3.22 or higher
  • and many more.

How to Install Gradio via Snap in Ubuntu:

Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “terminal” from app launcher. When it opens, do following steps:

1. For Ubuntu 14.04 only, you need to first install snapd daemon if you don’t have it:

sudo apt-get install snapd

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and hit Enter.

2. Install Gradio snap app via command:

sudo snap install gradio

3. Install Gnome environment via commands:

sudo snap install gnome-3-24

sudo snap connect gradio:gnome-3-24-platform gnome-3-24:gnome-3-24-platform

Finally launch Gradio desktop radio app from your application launcher and enjoy!

How to Remove:

To remove the snap version of Gradio, simply run following command in terminal:

sudo snap remove gradio

Gradio

There are a few applications available for listening internet radio stations in Ubuntu Desktop. Gradio is new one that allows users to find radio stations by typing a keyword in the search box, and then listen to one internet radio by clicking on it.

The simple tool requires GTK3 >= 3.18, so it works on Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, and their derivatives, e.g., Linux Mint 18 and Elementary OS 0.4 Loki.

Gradio Internet Radio App

How to install Gradio in Ubuntu 16.04:

The pre-compiled binary packages are available for download at the link below:

Download Gradio (.deb)

Choose amd64.deb for 64-bit system and i386.deb for 32-bit system, and then click install the package via Ubuntu Software.

For those who want to add the PPA and receive future updates via Software Updater, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands to add the PPA repository (so far supports for Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:haecker-felix/gradio-daily

sudo apt update

sudo apt install gradio

(Optional) To remove the software, simply run apt command with remove flag:

sudo apt remove gradio

And the PPA can be remove by launching Software & Updates utility and navigating to Other Software tab.