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Using the Application
The top bar is shared by every mode:
- World Media opens the current view.
- Library, Tuner, Grid, Discovery, and About switch modes.
- The Sleep control starts or cancels the sleep timer.
- The gear opens Settings.
- Shutdown asks the local runtime to stop catalog workers, artwork, media, downloads, recording, and FFmpeg work before the process exits.
The bottom player bar is global. It survives mode switches, so you can start a station in Library, inspect Grid, and return without losing the current player. Video appears in a movable overlay above the bar; audio keeps the bar visible without showing a video element.
Library is the main browse and search surface.
The search box accepts ordinary words such as news, BBC, or Prelinger.
Search fan-outs run against every enabled source and stream partial results into
the grid as providers answer. The additional filters are:
-
Country — ISO-style country code, for example
USorGB. -
Lang — language token, for example
en. - Year ≥ and Year ≤ — inclusive numeric year bounds.
Changing the search starts a new page-0 search generation. An old generation is cancelled so late responses cannot overwrite the new query. Search results are bounded to the first page from each source; blank search text returns to the continuous browse chain.
- Browse → All Sources shows the enabled-source pool.
- Browse → Favorites switches to the separately persisted favorite pool. Search/source filters do not hide favorites accidentally.
- By Type selects Radio, TV, Video, or Audio.
- By Archive selects one of the eleven source adapters.
The number beside a row is the session count for the selected catalog (or the persisted favorite count). The status word beside a source is a compact health indicator:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pull | More catalog work is available or being scheduled. |
| Sync | A live snapshot is being refreshed. |
| Live | The source has a current live snapshot. |
| Wait | The source is rate limited or retrying after an error. |
| Stale | A prior live snapshot is still shown while refresh retries. |
| Done | A finite cursor reached an authoritative end. |
| Off | The source is disabled in Settings. |
The full status summary above the cards groups the currently relevant sources as Collecting, Waiting, and Done. Status words are intentionally short; hovering a source exposes the longer reason.
Selecting a sidebar row changes the local filter and re-renders the collected pool; it does not start a duplicate fetch. The background chain continues for all enabled sources, so rapidly switching tabs cannot wipe the catalog.
At startup the app fetches a page from every enabled source. It then asks ready sources for more pages in a fair rotation. The scroll sentinel asks for another page when the user nears the end of the mounted window. Retry now retries waiting sources without changing their cursor. Check again resets finite sources that completed the current catalog and starts another pass.
The resident catalog is not evicted during an ordinary session. The renderer mounts an initial 300-card window and advances it in 200-card steps; this is a DOM/reflow safeguard, not a data discard. Items remain searchable and counted, including sessions well above 40,000 items.
Each card can contain artwork, title, source, year/country, license, and a star. Artwork is lazy: the first visible/nearby cards are prioritized and off-screen cards wait for the viewport. A missing logo leaves a source-branded placeholder and can be retried without affecting the catalog item.
Click the card body to open its detail panel and start playback. The panel can show:
- title and description;
- source, country, language, tags, year, and license;
- Play or Try next behavior for live candidates;
- Download when a finite original is available;
- Record audio/video when the item is live and FFmpeg is ready;
- a link to the provider's Source page.
Click the star on a card, detail panel, or player bar to add/remove a favorite. Favorites retain stable item identity and favorite-scoped EQ. Short-lived local artwork and media relay URLs are deliberately removed before persistence and resolved again on a later launch.
Grid is a live guide. Choose Live TV or Radio, then optionally filter by category, country, source, and the text Filter… box. The built-in category list includes News, Music, Sports, Movies, Documentary, Kids, Entertainment, and Education.
Click a tile or press Enter/Space while it is focused to play it. Tile logos are viewport hydrated, so the first visible rows load before far-away rows. The Grid and Library share the same artwork relay and playback priority rules.
Grid does not host channels or manufacture schedules. IPTV, Owncast, PeerTube, Radio Browser, gPodder live entries, and C3VOC contribute whatever public live items they report at refresh time.
Tuner provides a radio-style way to step through live media:
- Choose Radio or TV.
- Filter by country and source.
- Drag the dial, use Left/Up or Right/Down, or focus the dial and use arrow keys.
- Press Enter or Space to play the selected item.
The MHz/CH number is cosmetic navigation feedback. It is not a promise that a station broadcasts on that terrestrial frequency. Tuner reuses the live adapter/snapshot lane and content-rating preference.
Discovery is a bounded random picker. Select Any, Radio, TV, Video, or Audio, then optionally provide country, tag, and source filters. Surprise Me starts a globally scheduled attempt; Surprise Me Again or Next chooses another item.
Each provider gets its own deadline and the scheduler cancels losing/expired attempts. A provider that is slow or unavailable does not block the other providers indefinitely. Discovery is not a guarantee of uniqueness across all time; it is a fresh candidate selection from current provider data.
About is a static reference page. It lists the eleven sources, their media types, capabilities, home links, rights notes, privacy guarantees, app version, hls.js and dash.js notices, and optional FFmpeg licensing information. The counts on About are descriptive; live counts belong to Library.
Open Settings with the gear. Changes that say “immediately” apply without a restart; the local server port is explicitly marked for next launch.
- Theme: System, Dark · Teal, Light, Midnight · Blue, Forest · Green, Ember · Orange, or Amethyst · Violet.
- Default mode on launch: Library, Tuner, Grid, or Discovery (About is accepted by the state normalizer but is not offered as a default selector).
The native caption bar mirrors the selected palette when Windows permits it.
Show explicit/NSFW content is off by default. Turning it on is a deliberate user gesture and reveals provider-marked items with a visible rating label. It does not relax URL validation, redirect checks, private-network blocking, malformed-schema rejection, or Owncast verification. Turning it off hides marked items everywhere while keeping saved favorites as non-revealing placeholders.
Enter a whole port from 1024 through 65535 and choose Save for next
launch. The current process continues on its existing port; restart World
Media to activate the saved port. The app normally uses 9124 and searches a
safe fallback range only when the configured port is occupied. A forced port
environment variable is intended for diagnostics, not ordinary use.
- Recorder: on by default. Turning it off prevents new recordings and asks active recordings/FFmpeg preparation to stop. It reserves playback bandwidth and CPU; downloads remain available. An idle recorder uses essentially no resources.
- Recording quality: Compact (96 kbps/480p), Balanced (160 kbps/720p), or High (256 kbps audio/1080p video). Source media is never upscaled.
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Open downloads: opens the runtime's approved
downloadsdirectory. - The runtime card shows the portable root, downloads root, FFmpeg tools root, and whether the portable location is writable.
Every source has an independent switch. Disabling a source cancels its queued catalog/snapshot work and removes its ordinary Library items; existing favorites remain visible. Re-enabling creates a fresh source progress lane.
Clear local cache is a reset, not a thumbnail-only cleanup. It removes favorites, preferences, volume, EQ, and job history from the browser profile and clears catalog/artwork cache records. It keeps downloaded media and managed FFmpeg tools. Back up the data directory before using it.
The Sleep selector offers Off, 1 minute, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and Custom (0.1–720 minutes). Ten seconds before expiry it fades both audio and video volume, pauses playback, restores the pre-fade volume, and cancels itself.
Cards, sidebar rows, dialogs, the tuner dial, sliders, and buttons expose keyboard focus and ARIA labels. Enter/Space activates focused cards and tuner selection; arrow keys navigate sidebar/tuner controls; Escape closes Settings and EQ dialogs. Reduced-motion and forced-colors behavior is covered by the frontend accessibility tests.
Repository · Latest release · Open Media Explorer 0.1.2