I recently published a short review of Receiver, a GUI internet radio player. While I was mostly positive about the app, I identified a few shortcomings. These have been fixed, so it’s only fair that I provide this update.
What’s new since my review
A hamburger icon has been added offering a menu. It lets users hide the Featured Stations section. In the version I previously tested, it was possible to hide the Featured Stations carousel, but the “Featured Stations” heading remained visible, unnecessarily cluttering the interface.
The new option removes the entire section, resulting in a cleaner layout. This improvement gets a big thumbs up from me.
As shown in the image to the right, the UI looks much better now that each station logo and accompanying text take up a consistent width.
From my perspective, the most significant improvement is that the app now successfully plays all the BBC streams I’ve tested.
The application also includes some useful feature additions including a song history feature. This allows you to save previously played tracks instead of only displaying the current song.
There’s also support for Last.fm, an online music tracking and recommendation platform that records what music you listen to and builds statistics and recommendations from it.
Areas for Improvement
- The 12 buttons used for browsing by genre occupy a significant amount of screen space. I would prefer the option to browse genres using a dropdown menu, similar to the existing language filter. That way the user could choose to completely hide the blue buttons.
- While on the subject of filtering, additional sorting options would also be a welcome improvement. The application already allows streams to be filtered by language, but the ability to filter by country would be a useful addition.
- Besides allowing songs to be downloaded from YouTube (in mp4 format), I would prefer an option that automatically saves every track that is played (just the audio).
- Some users may like the option to display desktop notifications when a new track gets played.
- As the project develops, maybe more customization options could be added such as the ability to set the color theme, a tray icon, and the ability to export and import stations.
- While a few streams include bitrate information in their title, the application would clearly benefit from displaying station information including the bitrate and codec whenever this information is available. There are several ways this could be implemented without cluttering the interface. One practical option would be to allow users to right-click on a station to view these details.
Summary
I’m often more critical of apps I really like. And I love Receiver. I’m curious about the developer’s plans, perhaps outlined in a roadmap. He probably has thought of most of the areas I’ve identified and/or has much better plans!
With a bit more development on the UI, I can see Receiver topping the open source internet radio chart.
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.