Ether Radio

Ether Radio connects your Mac directly to the broadcaster's own streaming server, so when a station fails it is almost always that server, not the app. Stations go offline for maintenance, hit their listener limit, move their stream address, or restrict access to certain countries.

Try another station first. If everything fails, it's a connection issue on your side; if only that one fails, the station is down. Stations that stay broken are eventually filtered out of the directory.

Check, in this order:

• The volume slider inside the Ether Radio popover — it is separate from your system volume.
• Your Mac's system volume, and that it isn't muted.
• The output device selected in the popover. If headphones or an AirPlay speaker were chosen and then disconnected, the audio may still be routed there.

A live stream cannot be paused and resumed the way a file can — when the connection drops, the broadcast simply carries on without you. After waking your Mac or switching between Wi-Fi and ethernet, select the station again to reconnect.

Track titles are sent by the station inside the stream itself. Not every broadcaster sends them, and some send the show name, an advert, or a station slogan instead. Ether Radio displays exactly what arrives — when nothing arrives, it shows the station name on its own.

That's deliberate. The figure in Ether Radio is measured from the stream you are actually receiving, so it reflects what the server is really sending — which is sometimes lower than the number in the station's own listing.

Ether Radio reads your Mac's region setting on first launch to decide which country's popular stations to show. You can change it from the country selector in the Browse view at any time, and your choice is remembered. The app never uses location services and never looks your location up from your IP address.

Search covers station name, city and genre, so try each in turn — many stations are listed under a call sign or a frequency rather than the name used on air. Results come back best-voted first.

If it genuinely isn't in the directory, it hasn't been submitted yet. The directory is community-run and open to anyone: adding it at radio-browser.info will make it searchable in Ether Radio.

Logos are not supplied by Apzin. Each one is hosted by whoever listed the station in the directory, and loaded from that server when the station is displayed. When there is no logo, or the link has rotted, Ether Radio draws a placeholder locally instead. Corrections go to the directory, not to us.

On your Mac, in the app's own sandboxed storage — not on any server, because Apzin runs none for this app. Alongside each favourite the app keeps a copy of the station's details so your favourites still work when you're offline.

They are not synced between Macs. Deleting the app removes them.

Ether Radio has no Dock icon and no window, so the menu bar icon is the whole app. If it isn't visible, the menu bar is usually just full — macOS hides the overflow, most often on laptops with a notch. Quit a few other menu bar apps, or hold ⌘ Command and drag icons along the menu bar to reorder them and bring Ether Radio back into view.

Right-click the ripple icon in the menu bar and choose Quit. There is no Dock icon and no menu bar app menu to quit from.

No. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and Apzin receives no data from the app at all. Your favourites and settings stay on your device.

The app does reach the internet to do its job, which means the station directory and the broadcaster you listen to can see your IP address, as they would if you opened the stream in a browser. That's set out in full in the privacy policy.

Not for listening — every station is a live internet stream. The app does cache your favourites and the last-loaded popular stations for your country, so it isn't empty when there's no connection, but playback needs the network.