AMARadio

AMARadio is an open-source Android application for worldwide radio streaming. By leveraging the community-supported radio-browser.info database, AMARadio provides instant access to thousands of stations in a stable, modern, and user-friendly environment.

Core Philosophy

AMARadio was developed to enable an honest and distraction-free listening experience. The app is completely ad-free, contains no tracking, and no unnecessary bloatware. Originally started as a personal project to create a simple and accessible interface for global radio, the app remains consistently transparent and easy to use – for everyone.

Key Features

• Instantaneous UI: Thanks to a highly optimized architecture, switching between tabs and opening the player occurs without delay or flickering.
• Advanced Android Auto Integration:
  • Stability (Media-Anchor): Specialized logic to prevent session disconnects during station switches on modern Android versions (15+).
  • HLS/TS Support: Full compatibility with complex Transport Stream formats.
  • Optimized UI: Compact list designs, driver-safe folder hierarchy, and prioritized metadata (Station Name first) for maximum legibility.
• Modern Home Screen Widgets: Feature-rich widgets based on Jetpack Glance.
  • Anti-Ghost Architecture: Optimized to prevent "black app" entries in Android Recents via direct background service starts.
  • Sequential Sync: High-performance reactive model with Mutex-based update sequencing for 100% state consistency.
  • Live Track Info: Real-time Artist and Song Title displays using optimized Media3 event listeners.
  • Professional Previews: Adaptive XML-based previews in the system widget picker.
• Comprehensive Accessibility: Fully optimized for TalkBack and screen readers. Features semantic grouping of information, localized accessibility strings in over 74 languages, and "speaking" status icons for fluid navigation.
• Advanced Search & Filtering: Find stations by Name, Country, Language, or Tags. Metadata for over 11,000 tags is cached locally in a high-performance SQL database to enable instant offline suggestions.
• Community Support (Click Counting): Supports the global ranking of radio stations by reporting playback clicks directly to the official radio-browser.info API.
• Dynamic UI Scaling: Custom settings allow for the adjustment of the user interface size from Compact to Extra Large.
• Broad Language Support: Support for over 74 languages, including a variety of African languages (Afrikaans, Amharic, Swahili, Zulu) with a dedicated in-app language selector.
• Modern Design: Developed with Jetpack Compose, featuring seamless support for Dark/Light modes and edge-to-edge system integration.
• High-Performance Streaming: A robust engine based on AndroidX Media3 (ExoPlayer) with real-time audio thread prioritization, strict audio focus handling, dynamic session management, and asynchronous network processing to prevent UI lag.
• Data Consistency: Specialized logic for instant synchronization between the Smartphone UI, Home Screen Widgets, and Android Auto units using direct SQL access and proactive reactive flows.
• High Availability: Integrated failover support via mirror servers ensures uninterrupted station browsing even if the primary database is offline.
• Smart Management: Includes a sleep timer, efficient favorites management, and full support for M3U playlist export/import.
• Robust Data Resilience: Features a unique Dual-Database Architecture that strictly separates the global radio catalog from personal user data (Favorites, History, Filters). This ensures your personal settings are never lost during global database updates.

Screenshots

Getting Started

Installation

The latest version introduces a high-performance Dual-Database Architecture, SQL metadata caching, and official click count support. You can download the application from the Google Play Store or the GitHub releases page.

Building from Source

To build the project locally, ensure you have the latest version of Android Studio installed.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ounben/AMARadio.git

2. Open the project in Android Studio.
3. Build using the Gradle wrapper:

   ./gradlew assembleDebug

Technical Specification

• Language: 100% Kotlin
• UI Framework: Jetpack Compose & Material 3
• Architecture: MVVM with Activity-scoped ViewModels for state management
• Persistence:
  • Station Catalog: High-performance SQL for the worldwide radio database.
  • User Storage: Dedicated SQL-based UserDatabase for Favorites, History, and custom Filters (migrated from legacy JSON).
• Networking: OkHttp 5 & Coroutines for API communication, Coil for async image loading
• Media Engine: AndroidX Media3 (ExoPlayer)
• Target SDK: 37 (Android 17)
• Minimum SDK: 26 (Android 8.0)

UML

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and appreciated. If you wish to improve the codebase, fix bugs, or update translations, please follow these steps:

• Report issues via the GitHub Issue Tracker.
• Submit improvements via Pull Requests.
• Translation updates are highly encouraged to improve global accessibility.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Detailed information can be found in the LICENSE file.

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AMARadio - Professional Radio Streaming for Android.