Quill Radio 3.0

A radio that answers the questions you open it with.

Version 3.2.0, released 2026-10-03.

Community Access has released Quill Radio 3.0 for Windows. It is free, it is part of the QuillVille family, and it is made for people who listen to their computer rather than look at it.

Quill Radio plays internet radio, podcasts, audiobooks and archive recordings. It records what is on, and it can record what is coming later. You do everything from the keyboard, and it tells you how each thing turned out.

What 3.0 is about

Version 2.1 opened on an empty list of favorites. That is true when you have no favorites yet, but it does not help you find anything to listen to. Most of what is new in 3.0 starts from the questions people really have when they open a radio app: what can I hear, how do I find it, and how do I keep it?

You are somewhere from the very first moment

The welcome is three short screens, and each one tells you the real key for what it describes. On the second screen, one button takes you straight into Browse Stations. And the main window can show whichever part of the radio you like best, your favorites, the browse tree, search, recordings or the player, instead of opening another window on top.

More than thirty places to wander, without searching

Stations by country, by language, and by what is popular today. Podcasts by country and by subject, with no account anywhere. Whole libraries: the Internet Archive, LibriVox, Project Gutenberg, Audius, Mixcloud and ccMixter. NOAA Weather Radio by state, county or SAME code. Radio reading services. Television from the iptv.org list. None of it needs a key or a sign-in.

It works even when the internet does not

A list of stations is kept on your own computer, so a search answers the moment you press Enter, and still answers when your connection is down. The online directories add their answers as they arrive, without holding you up.

Search finds the station you meant

This came from three listeners who could not find five stations between them. When you type “Sunny 105.7 Gulf Shores Alabama”, you are giving a station’s name, its frequency, a town and a state, all at once. The directories only know some of those.

So Quill Radio now picks your search apart and asks each directory several more exact questions. “14.90 AM” finds 1490, and “1009” finds 100.9. Putting “FM” on the end no longer loses the station. And naming the state really helps. One directory only knows Sunny 105.7 as “WCSN 105.7 FM Orange Beach”, so no spelling of “Sunny” could ever find it. But there is only one 105.7 in Alabama, so now it comes first, even if you misspell the town.

Results are put in the order you most likely want. A match on the name and the frequency comes before a match on the frequency alone. A station in the place you named comes before one that just shares a word. And between two equally good matches, the one known to play comes first, then the one more people listen to.

You can also type a station’s web address into any search box. Quill Radio looks on the website for the stream. That is how you reach stations no directory lists at all, and there are more of those than you might think.

Recording that works like a recorder

Record what is playing, or schedule it, and record several stations at once. A scheduled recording can wake the computer up for itself, instead of quietly missing the show. If the connection drops, Quill Radio reconnects and joins the pieces back into one file. If Quill Radio closes unexpectedly in the middle of a recording, it offers to carry on the next time you open it. And the Recordings player answers to Winamp’s keys.

Live radio you can rewind

Missed what the announcer just said? Ctrl+Shift+Left goes back 30 seconds, and Ctrl+Shift+L brings you back to live. Podcasts, recordings and files pause and resume with Ctrl+Space.

The player is never far away

The player, Browse, Search, Recordings, Favorites and Schedule Recording are each a window of their own, side by side, not stacked on top of each other. Each has its own menu bar and the same now-playing line, and the keys for the player work in all of them. Every part of the status bar does something when you press Enter on it.

The app teaches you itself

Help > Tutorials… (Ctrl+Alt+F1) opens 41 guided tutorials, 281 steps in all, in six groups. A lesson goes one step at a time and tells you what you should hear when the step worked. It can even do the step for you. Check Follow me and it notices when you have done the step, and moves on. The keys a tutorial teaches are your own keys, so if you change a key, every lesson that mentions it tells you your new key.

F1 answers, everywhere

Press F1 in any window and you hear what the window is for, then what the control you are on does. Every menu item shows its key, and no two items in a menu bar share the same one.

Made for screen reader users from the start

Quill Radio is built by and for people who use screen readers. Here is some of what that means:

• It only says what your screen reader does not. Your screen reader already tells you window names, control names and where focus went. Quill Radio tells you the things only it knows: a result that arrived in the background, a change somewhere you are not, and how something you did turned out. Saying everything twice is how an app gets its speech turned off.
• Sizes follow your text size, so a readout grows when you make Windows’ text bigger, rather than getting cramped.
• Nothing depends on looking. Every list tells you how many items it has, anything that takes a while tells you it is working, and a source that is having a bad day says so, instead of pretending there were “no matches”.

Getting it

Quill Radio 3.0 is a free download for Windows 10 and 11. It came out on 2026-09-27 as version 3.0.1, which replaced the withdrawn 3.0.0. The current version is 3.2.0, released 2026-10-03. It follows 3.0.4 directly: there was never a public 3.1. Both downloads are on the QUILL Releases page at github.com/Community-Access/quill, under Quill Radio 3.2.0:

• Quill-Radio-Setup-Shared-3.2.0.exe is the installer, and the one most people want. It sets up the shared QuillVille Runtime if you do not already have it, then Quill Radio, with a Start Menu entry and an uninstaller.
• Quill-Radio-Portable-3.2.0.zip is the portable copy. Unpack it anywhere, even a USB stick. It writes nothing to the computer it runs on. Your settings, favorites and history are kept in a data folder next to the app, from the very first time you open it.

Both are signed, so Windows can check that nobody has changed them. Help > Check for Updates (Ctrl+Alt+U) offers whichever one you are using, and shows you what is new before you update.

Quill Radio shares its engine with QUILL, the full accessible word processor. It sits alongside Quill Cast (podcasts), Quill Weather, Audio Studio, Quill Media Player, Quill Inkwell, Quill Converter, Quill Beacon and QUILL Lite: one family, with the same keys and the same way of talking to you.

If you are upgrading from 2.x, your favorites, settings and keys all come with you.

About Community Access

Community Access makes software for blind and low-vision people that does not make them work around it. Everything in the QuillVille family is free, works from the keyboard, and is designed with a screen reader running.

Where to learn more

• Help > User Guide (Ctrl+F1) walks you through every feature, one chapter at a time. Start with Chapter 2, Your first half hour.
• Help > Tutorials (Ctrl+Alt+F1) opens the guided lessons. Begin with Play your first station, then Wander the browse tree.
• Help > Release Notes (Shift+F1) says what is new in each version.
• For help, choose Help > Get Help from Support (Ctrl+Alt+F2), or write to support@community-access.org. A person reads every message.