Simple Radio Player

A small, modern internet radio player for Windows 11 — tens of thousands of stations from around the world, no account, no ads, no clutter. Written in C# with WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK).

Free and ad-free — and it will stay that way. If you find it useful, donations are very welcome: ☕ Support via PayPal (the link and a QR code are also inside the app: ⚙ menu → About).

Polska wersja tego pliku: README.pl.md

Features

• plays MP3, AAC and HLS streams as well as PLS/M3U/ASX playlists;
• works out of the box — ships with a starter set of the 1,000 most popular stations; the full directory (tens of thousands of stations) is one click away;
• station directory from the community-run Radio Browser — with logos, tags and websites, downloaded in batches and cached locally;
• three views: Favorites and Recently Played as tile grids with station logos, plus Browse — a searchable, filterable list (country / language / tags), sortable by any column, including popularity, with resizable columns;
• now-playing banner with the station logo, live track title and stream quality (ICY metadata); click it to open the station's website;
• records the stream to a file without re-encoding (MP3 stays MP3);
• custom stations, output device selection, sleep timer, mute, previous/next station;
• integrates with the Windows system media controls (media keys and the media overlay switch stations);
• light/dark theme following the system, Mica backdrop, own app icon;
• 9 interface languages: English, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Ukrainian, Belarusian.

Download

Grab the installer or the portable ZIP from the Releases page.

Requirements: Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763) or newer, 64-bit. The app is self-contained — no separate .NET installation needed.

Note: version 1.0 is not digitally signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may show a warning on first launch. Click More info → Run anyway. Every release lists SHA-256 checksums so you can verify the download, and the full source is here if you prefer to build it yourself.

Building from source

Install the .NET SDK 10 (once):

winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10

Then, in the repository folder:

dotnet restore SimpleRadioPlayer
dotnet build SimpleRadioPlayer
dotnet run --project SimpleRadioPlayer

Run the unit tests:

dotnet test Tests\SimpleRadioPlayer.Core.Tests

Build a release package (starter database → tests → publish → ZIP → checksum) and the installer:

.\scripts\build-release.ps1
& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" installer\SimpleRadioPlayer.iss

Getting started in the app

1. The bundled starter set is available immediately. For the full directory open the ⚙ menu (bottom right) and choose Update Database — the download runs in batches with a progress counter; clicking again cancels it.
2. Use the three view buttons under the banner: Favorites, Recently Played, Browse. In Browse, type in the search box or use the Country / Language / Tags filters; click a column header to sort, drag the header edges to resize columns.
3. Double-click (or Enter) plays a station; Space or the star toggles a favorite; ⏮ ⏭ jump through the visible list.
4. The record button saves the current stream to Music\SimpleRadioPlayer (direct MP3/AAC streams only, not HLS).
5. The ⚙ menu also holds Add / Edit / Delete Station, theme, language, and About.

User data

Everything the app remembers lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SimpleRadioPlayer\:

settings.json          settings (language, theme, volume, device, window)
favorites.json         favorite station IDs
recent.json            recently played stations
custom-stations.json   user-added stations
cache\stations.json    last good copy of the full station database
logs\simple-radio.log  application log

Favorites survive database updates: they are stored by the stable Radio Browser stationuuid.

Translations

Interface strings live in plain UTF-8 key=value files under SimpleRadioPlayer\Localization\. To add a language, copy en.txt to xx.txt (language code), translate the values after =, and the app will list it in the ⚙ menu → Language on the next start. Pull requests with new translations are very welcome.

Project layout

SimpleRadioPlayer\            WinUI 3 application
  Assets\                     icons, QR code, starter station database
  Controls\                   column splitter control
  Localization\               translation files (9 languages)
  Models\                     data models
  Services\                   Radio Browser client, playback, recording
  Styles\                     shared WinUI styles
  ViewModels\                 main window state
  Views\                      add/edit station dialog
Tests\SimpleRadioPlayer.Core.Tests\   unit tests
installer\                    Inno Setup installer script
scripts\                      release and starter-database scripts
docs\                         release notes

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. When reporting a problem, please attach the log file from %LOCALAPPDATA%\SimpleRadioPlayer\logs\simple-radio.log.

Credits & licence

Station directory: radio-browser.info — thanks to the community keeping it alive.

Author: Łukasz Huk · LinkedIn · simpleradioplayer.com

Licence: GNU GPL — see LICENSE.