Receiver is a GUI internet radio player for Linux. I wrote a fairly short review of Receiver last month, following up with an update on the project’s progress.
This additional follow-up looks at the project’s progress since then, and it’s pleasing to see that some of my suggested improvements have been implemented nicely.
With version 0.5.0 the app now replaces the old home screen with a dedicated favourites page, supports drag-to-reorder there and simplifies the station info page. There’s also the addition of horizontal mouse-wheel scrolling plus more compact genre/country pills. Together with refreshing the bundled station database, and updates screenshots/captions and branding assets, Receiver is becoming a must-have app if you like internet radio.
Let’s see how the UI looks now. Here’s the dedicated favourites page. The UI is now much cleaner and uncluttered. A big improvement in my eyes.
Station information is still available by left clicking the radio icon at the bottom left corner.
Some users may miss the tiny icon in the bottom right-hand corner, which lets them download a YouTube video of the currently playing song.
I suggested that users should be able to filter by country in addition to language. That’s particularly useful when you want to find stations from your own country, for example for news or sport coverage. The developer has kindly implemented this request, which speaks volumes about their responsiveness and commitment to improving the application.
From a UI perspective, I still think the genre pills could be improved further.
Summary
Receiver is an excellent internet radio player. Install it today and you won’t regret it.
Hopefully later releases will add things like the ability to automatically save tracks (audio only) which would fit Receiver well as it already pays attention to metadata and listening history. Extra UI polish around search and metadata handling is also desirable. It’s a project I’m following avidly.
Website: github.com/meehow/receiver
Support:
Developer: meehow
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Receiver is written in Vala. Learn Vala with our recommended free books and free tutorials.