Quill Radio User Guide

Version 3.2.0 (build 4), the beta for testers, October 2026. 3.2.0 was prepared on 2026-10-03 and is not yet published; the last published version is 3.0.4.

Welcome

Welcome, and thank you for giving Quill Radio a try.

Quill Radio is internet radio for people who listen with a screen reader. I use one every day, and I wanted a radio that simply worked with it. So the window is small, and when it opens your cursor is already in your list of favorite stations. Arrow to a station, press Enter, and it plays. Every menu item tells you its key, everything you do is answered out loud, and a tray icon keeps the music going while you get on with something else.

If you have JAWS, NVDA or Narrator and you enjoy radio, podcasts or audiobooks, Quill Radio is for you. There is no account to make, nothing to pay and nothing to sign up for.

What you will be able to do

By the end of this guide you will be able to find a station from anywhere in the world, keep the ones you love, and start any of them with one key. You will be able to pause, rewind live radio, record a show tonight or every Tuesday, and set the radio to wake you up or send you to sleep. You will know where podcasts, audiobooks, YouTube and television fit in, how to gather any of them into a Lineup that keeps itself up to date, and how to make the keys and settings your own. And when something puzzles you, you will know where to find help.

None of that needs to happen today. Chapter 2 gets you listening in about half an hour. Everything after it is there for when you are curious.

How this guide is laid out

The chapters follow the order you are likely to want things.

  1. Chapter 1: Installing Quill Radio. Which download to choose, and how to install it or run it from a folder or USB stick.
  2. Chapter 2: Your first half hour. A hand-held first session. You play a station, keep it, record something and learn the seven keys that do most of the work.
  3. Chapter 3: Finding your way around. The main window, the status bar, Go To, the other windows, every menu, the tray, and closing.
  4. Chapter 4: Playing and moving around. The keys that work in every window, the Player, pausing, rewinding, speed, chapters and bookmarks.
  5. Chapter 5: What’s playing, and how it sounds. Song titles, song history, volume, sound cards, sound enhancements, video and captions, and the sleep and wake-up timers.
  6. Chapter 6: Finding something to listen to. Browse Stations, searching, your own servers, the catalog on your computer, and adding stations nobody lists.
  7. Chapter 7: Keeping your favorites. Folders, order, the Favorites Manager, backups, and taking it all to another computer.
  8. Chapter 8: Recording. Recording now, recording later, several at once, and what happens when the internet hiccups.
  9. Chapter 9: Podcasts, books, video and more. Podcasts, downloads, television, weather radio and Spotify.
  10. Chapter 10: Local Media, your own music and audiobooks. Playlists of the music, audiobooks and video on your computer: building them, putting them in order, and playing them from any window.
  11. Chapter 11: YouTube. Searching YouTube, playing and recording it, channels, playlists, comments, being told about new videos, and your own YouTube sign-in.
  12. Chapter 12: The ACB Media schedule and reminders. What is on, what is coming up, and being told about it.
  13. Chapter 13: The Community menu. Ask QUILL Radio, your ChatGPT plan, ACB Media podcasts, Community Picks, and suggesting a station.
  14. Chapter 14: Making Quill Radio yours. Preferences, keys, the Command Palette, quiet hours and more.
  15. Chapter 15: Safety nets. Undo, why something is dimmed, Recent Problems, Activity, and what Quill Radio connects to.
  16. Chapter 16: When you need a hand. Tutorials, F1 help, updates, Audio Health, support, and answers to common problems.
  17. Chapter 17: QUILL Lineups. Lists of anything Quill Radio and QUILL Cast can play, filled by rules you write and by hand, in your own order, and played straight through.

After the chapters comes the Keyboard reference: every key worth knowing, in small tables grouped by task.

Reading this guide with a screen reader

The guide is built from headings, so you can move through it quickly. Each chapter is a level 2 heading, each section inside a chapter is a level 3 heading, and the smaller parts of a section are level 4. In JAWS or NVDA, press 2 to jump from chapter to chapter and 3 to move between sections. Shift with the number goes back. To see every heading at once, press Insert+F6 in JAWS or Insert+F7 in NVDA and choose headings.

Now and then a short note from QUILLBee, QUILLVille’s guide, is set apart as a quote: a faster key, or something worth knowing before it catches you out. The notes are block quotes, so in a web browser Q moves to the next one in JAWS and NVDA, and Shift+Q goes back. The guide reads perfectly well if you skip them.

A few ways of writing things that you will meet everywhere:

Most sections walk you through things in numbered steps, and each step says what to press and what you should hear. Keep Quill Radio open beside the guide and try each step as you read. Alt+Tab moves you between the two.

Learning by doing: the tutorials

Quill Radio comes with 44 short guided lessons. Open them with Help > Tutorials… (Ctrl+Alt+F1). A lesson can do a step for you, notice when you have done it yourself, and always shows the keys you actually have. Wherever a chapter covers something a lesson walks through, this guide names the lesson, so you can practise straight away. Chapter 16 tells you how they work.

And whenever you wonder what something is for, press F1. Every window answers with what the window is for and what the control you are on does.

Where to go from here

You now know how this guide is laid out and how to move around it. If Quill Radio is not on your computer yet, carry on with Chapter 1, Installing Quill Radio. If it is already installed, jump to Chapter 2, Your first half hour, and we will play your first station together.

Chapter 1: Installing Quill Radio

This chapter gets Quill Radio onto your computer. It takes a few minutes, and for most people the answer is simply “use the installer”.

The two downloads

Quill Radio 3.2.0 comes in two downloads. In each file name, <version> is the release number, such as 3.2.0. Both are on the QUILL Releases page on GitHub, under the tag quill-radio-v3.2.0.

  1. The installer, Quill-Radio-Setup-Shared-<version>.exe. This is the right choice for most people. It puts Quill Radio in your Start menu and gives it an uninstaller. It also installs the QuillVille Runtime, the engine the family of Quill apps share, if your computer does not have it yet. Your favorites, history and settings are kept in the shared Quill data folder in your Windows profile, so QUILL and QUILL Cast can see them too.
  2. The portable copy, Quill-Radio-Portable-<version>.zip. Everything it needs is inside the zip: its own genuine, unchanged Python, ffmpeg for recording and mpv for playback. Unpack it anywhere, a USB stick included, and nothing downloads when it runs. Choose this when you want the whole radio to travel with you, or when you are not allowed to install software.

Installing with the installer, step by step

  1. Download Quill-Radio-Setup-Shared-3.2.0.exe and open it from your Downloads folder.
  2. If Windows SmartScreen shows a warning, see “If your antivirus or SmartScreen speaks up” below.
  3. Setup installs for your Windows account only. It does not offer an all-users installation, so it does not need administrator rights or show a UAC prompt. Both Quill Radio and the shared runtime are installed in your user profile.
  4. The setup wizard opens. Press Enter on each page to accept the usual choices. The full installation includes this guide and the release notes. Then choose Install.
  5. If the QuillVille Runtime is not on this computer yet, the installer copies it first. NVDA, JAWS and Narrator read the progress bar as a percentage.
  6. On the last page, the Launch Quill Radio checkbox starts unchecked. Press Space to check it, then choose Finish.
  7. Quill Radio opens with your cursor in the Favorite stations list. The very first time, a short welcome comes first. Chapter 2 walks you through it.

Next time, open Quill Radio from the Start menu: press the Windows key, type Quill Radio, and press Enter.

Using the portable copy, step by step

  1. Download Quill-Radio-Portable-3.2.0.zip.
  2. In File Explorer, select the zip, press the Applications key, and choose Extract All…. Choose a folder, for example on a USB stick, and choose Extract.
  3. Open the folder you extracted, then the QuillRadio folder inside it.
  4. Select QuillRadio.exe and press Enter. Quill Radio opens with your cursor in the Favorite stations list.
  5. If it does not open, give it a moment. Since 3.0.4, a message tells you what went wrong and what to do. See “If Quill Radio does not start” in Chapter 16.

One thing catches people out. If you press Enter on QuillRadio.exe while you are still inside the zip, Windows runs that one file on its own. Quill Radio notices, tells you, and asks you to extract the whole zip first.

What a portable copy keeps to itself

A portable copy writes nothing to the computer it runs on. That is true from the very first launch, and there is nothing to switch on.

Bringing your favorites from Quill Radio 2.x

Quill Radio 2.x kept your favorites in this computer’s profile, even when it ran from the portable zip. A 3.0 or later portable copy keeps its own, so the first time it starts, it looks for your old ones.

  1. Unzip Quill-Radio-Portable-3.2.0.zip and start QuillRadio.exe, as above.
  2. If an earlier Quill Radio on this computer has favorites, and this copy has none yet, a question opens titled “Favorites from an earlier Quill Radio”. It tells you how many favorite stations it found.
  3. Press Enter (Yes) to copy them into this portable copy, together with your settings, recording schedule and reminders. Quill Radio then opens with your favorites in the list.
  4. Or choose No to start with an empty list.

Good to know:

If you had the Lite installer or the Companion zip

Test versions of 3.0 also offered a small “Lite” installer and a Companion zip. Both are retired, and nothing is lost.

The QuillVille Runtime

Quill Radio belongs to a small family of apps: QUILL, Quill Radio, Quill Weather and QUILL Audio Studio. Underneath, they all run on the same Python engine. The installer puts that engine on your computer once, as a shared piece called the QuillVille Runtime, and every family app uses it. So once you have one app, the next one you add installs quickly, because the engine is already there.

You never need to look after it. Windows keeps count of how many family apps use it, and removes it only when you uninstall the last one. Uninstall Quill Radio while Quill Weather is still installed, and the runtime stays for Weather.

The portable copy does not use the shared runtime. It carries its own.

If your antivirus or SmartScreen speaks up

Quill Radio starts from a small program of its own, and the Python it runs is the official, unchanged one. Older versions started from a renamed copy of Python, and some antivirus programs mistook that for something harmful. That is gone.

Release versions are signed, so Windows can check who made the installer, the uninstaller and the app. Even so, while a new release is still new, Windows SmartScreen may show a caution. To carry on:

  1. In the SmartScreen window, choose More info.
  2. Check that the publisher is shown, then choose Run anyway.

What you learned, and where to go next

You chose between the installer and the portable copy, installed Quill Radio, and know where it keeps your things. If you came from Quill Radio 2.x, your favorites came with you. Now the fun part: go on to Chapter 2, Your first half hour, and play your first station. The tutorial Play your first station, in the Your first hour track, covers the same ground with a voice beside you.

Chapter 2: Your first half hour

This chapter assumes nothing. I will stay with you the whole way, and every step says what to press and what you should hear. Work straight down it and you will finish with a station playing, a favorite saved, a recording made, and the keys that matter under your fingers.

Two things to hold on to as you go. Escape always steps you back out of wherever you are. And nothing below can lose anything you have not deliberately saved, so explore freely.

If something does not happen the way this chapter says, please tell us. **Help

Get Help from Support…** (Ctrl+Alt+F2) fills most of the message in for you.

The tutorials in the Your first hour track cover this chapter too: Play your first station, Keep a station, and find it tomorrow, The player follows you, Do anything by name and Getting unstuck.

The first time you open it

The very first time you open Quill Radio, it greets you with three short screens: “Welcome to Quill Radio”, “Find something to listen to” and “Keep the ones you like”. Each one names the real key for what it describes, and if you have already changed a key, it tells you yours.

If you already have favorites, for example after an upgrade, a restored backup or an imported list, the welcome is skipped.

Here is how to walk through it:

  1. Open Quill Radio. The welcome opens with your cursor in its text. You should hear “Welcome to Quill Radio. Screen 1 of 3.”
  2. Read the text with the arrow keys, at your own pace.
  3. Press Alt+N for Next. The next screen opens and your cursor goes back into its text. On the last screen the same button reads Finish, and its key is Alt+F.
  4. Press Alt+B for Back to go back a screen.
  5. On screens 2 and 3, press Alt+S for Browse Stations Now… if you want to leave the welcome and go straight to Browse Stations, the list of everything there is to listen to.
  6. Press Escape, or Alt+K for Skip, to leave at any time. Skipping counts as finished, so the welcome will not come back.

Tips now and then

The welcome has one checkbox, Show me a tip now and then (Alt+T). Leave it checked. The first time you reach a place where one fact would help, Quill Radio says a single sentence about it, for example: “Live radio can be rewound. One tap of Rewind goes back 12 seconds, two quick taps a minute, three five minutes, and Back to Live catches up again.” Each tip is said once, ever. Tips never take your keyboard away. If you would rather not hear them, uncheck the box.

Every time after that

Open Quill Radio from the Start menu, or run QuillRadio.exe in the portable folder. The window opens with your cursor in the Favorite stations list.

Everything Quill Radio says goes through your screen reader, whether that is JAWS, NVDA or Narrator, and it never moves your cursor to do it.

Braille displays

What Quill Radio says also goes to your braille display, if you have one connected. Nothing is shortened, so a long song title is all there for you to pan through. The same message twice in a couple of seconds does not flash the display twice. When several messages arrive at once, you see the first straight away and then the newest. Errors always show at once. If the display is unplugged, you still hear everything. Quill Radio has no braille setting of its own, because it simply follows your screen reader.

Task 1: play your first station (about two minutes)

  1. Open Quill Radio from the Start menu, or run QuillRadio.exe from the portable folder.
  2. Wait for the window. You should hear “Favorite stations, tree”, or your screen reader’s words for an empty tree. Your cursor is already in the favorites list. On a new installation the list is empty, and that is fine.
  3. Press Ctrl+B. Browse Stations opens. Your screen reader reads the window’s title, and your cursor is in the tree on its first row, Search All Sources….
  4. Press Down Arrow a few times. Each press reads a source: Favorites, Popular Stations, Trending Now, Recently Added or Changed, By Country, By Language, By Genre, By Quality, Weather / NOAA, ACB Media, and so on. Nothing has come from the internet yet. These are just the headings.
  5. Stop on Popular Stations and press Right Arrow to open it. The first time, Quill Radio fetches the list, so give it a moment. You should hear “Loading Popular Stations”, then how many stations arrived.
  6. Press Down Arrow to move onto a station, then press Enter.
  7. You should hear “Playing” and the station’s name over a short connecting sound, and then the station itself. Well done. That is the whole idea of Quill Radio: arrow to something, press Enter.
  8. Press Ctrl+Down twice. Each press tells you the new level, for example “Volume 70 percent.” The volume moves in steps of ten, in every window.
  9. Press Enter again on the same station. It stops, and you hear “Radio stopped.” Press Enter once more and it plays again.

If it does not work:

Leave the station playing for the next task.

Task 2: keep it (about one minute)

  1. Press Escape to close Browse Stations. Your cursor goes back to the favorites list in the main window, and the station keeps playing.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+F. This is Station > Add Playing Station to Favorites. It saves whatever is playing, from wherever you are. You should hear that the station was added to your favorites.
  3. Press Down Arrow in the favorites list. There it is.
  4. Press Enter on it, and it plays. From now on, that is your way to this station: open Quill Radio, press Enter.

That is the heart of Quill Radio. Everything after this is a bonus.

Task 3: work the player from anywhere (about three minutes)

The keys that control what is playing work in every Quill Radio window, not just the main one.

  1. With something playing, press Ctrl+B to open Browse Stations again.
  2. Press Ctrl+Up. The volume goes up and you hear the new level, even though you are in the browse window. The same goes for Ctrl+P (play or pause), Ctrl+Shift+O (mute and unmute) and the other keys listed in “The player follows you” in Chapter 4.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+G. This is Go to Player. The Player window opens. Your screen reader reads its title, then the Now playing box. If the Player is already open somewhere behind you, the same key brings it to the front instead of opening a second one.
  4. Press Tab to look around it. First comes a Now playing box you can read but not change. It tells you what is on, where you are in it, how fast it is playing and how loud. Then come the buttons: Play (or Stop), Pause (or Resume), Skip Back, Skip Forward, Where Am I?, Previous Chapter, Next Chapter, Chapters…, Slower, Faster, Normal Speed, Skip Silence, Volume Down, Volume Up, Mute/Unmute, and last, Add to Favorites.
  5. Press Escape. The Player closes and you are back where you started.

Task 4: do anything by name (about one minute)

If you cannot remember a key, you never need to.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P. The Command Palette opens, from any Quill Radio window, with your cursor in its search box.
  2. Type a few letters of what you want, such as vol, record or chapter. The list gets shorter as you type.
  3. Press Down Arrow to the command you want and press Enter. It does exactly what its key or menu item would do. Each entry also tells you its key, so the palette quietly teaches you shortcuts as you go.

Task 5: record something (about three minutes)

  1. With a station playing, press Ctrl+R.
  2. You should hear “Recording started” and the station’s name. Down in the status bar, the Record cell now reads Stop Recording, with the time so far.
  3. Wait ten or twenty seconds.
  4. Press Ctrl+R again to stop. You should hear “Stopping recording”, then that the recording was saved, with the file’s name.
  5. Press Ctrl+Shift+R. The Radio Recordings window opens with your cursor in the list. Your recording is at the top, because the newest comes first.
  6. Press Enter on it. You should hear “Playing recording” and its name, and then your recording.
  7. Press Delete to remove it. A question opens: “Delete the recording …?” No is already chosen, so pressing Enter keeps your recording. To delete it, press Y, or Tab to Yes and press Enter. Your cursor moves to the recording that took its place in the list.
  8. Press Escape to close Radio Recordings.

Good to know: recordings are saved in your Music folder, in a folder called Quill Radio Recordings. A portable copy saves them in its own Recordings folder. Open in Folder in Radio Recordings shows you the file in File Explorer.

Task 6: the seven keys worth learning

Everything else is in the menus and the Command Palette. These seven carry the day:

What you want Key
Play or stop, in the main window Enter on a favorite, or Ctrl+P
Pause or resume a recording, podcast or file Ctrl+Space
Volume up or down Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down
Go to the Player, from anywhere Ctrl+Shift+G
Do something by name Ctrl+Shift+P
Browse for stations Ctrl+B
What is playing right now? Ctrl+T

If you get lost

It happens to everybody. Any of these will get you back on your feet:

What you learned, and where to go next

In half an hour you played a station, saved it as a favorite, used the player from another window, ran a command by name, and made and deleted a recording. That is genuinely most of what Quill Radio is for. When you are ready, Chapter 3, Finding your way around, shows you the rest of the main window and its menus. If you would like to practise first, the tutorial Getting unstuck is a gentle next step.

Chapter 3: Finding your way around

Now that you have heard a station, let us take a slow walk around. This chapter shows you the main window, the status bar along its bottom, Go To, the other windows Quill Radio opens, every menu, the tray icon and how to close the app. You do not need to learn it all at once. Read it once, and come back when you wonder where something lives.

The main window

The main window is a list you play from, not a busy control panel. Tab moves through six stops, in this order.

  1. Now playing, a box you can read but not change. It tells you the station and what the player is doing, the song when there is one, and anything else worth knowing, such as a recording running. Arrow through it, or copy it with Ctrl+C. It never changes under you while you are reading: any update waits until you leave the box. It does not show how long you have been listening. Press Ctrl+Shift+W for that.
  2. Favorite stations, the tree of your stations. It shows the same folders you make in the Favorites Manager. Alt+F jumps here from anywhere in the window.
  3. The play button, which tells you what it will do and to what. While nothing is playing it reads Play and the selected favorite’s name (Alt+L). While something plays it reads Stop and that station’s name (Alt+T). While a podcast, recording or file on your computer is paused it reads Resume and its name (Alt+U). If you gave the station your own name in Favorites, that is the name you hear. With a folder or nothing selected it reads Play – nothing selected, and pressing it tells you what would work. Stop does the same as Ctrl+Period. Ctrl+P presses this button from anywhere; it is the Play item on the Playback menu, which reads Stop while something plays.
  4. Website (Alt+B), which opens the station’s own website in your browser. If something is playing, you get that station’s site; if not, you get the site of the favorite you are on. It is the quickest way to a station’s schedule, such as Double Tap Live’s, and Quill Radio tells you which site it opened. If no site is saved, Quill Radio asks whether you would like to add one. Choose Add Website and enter an HTTP or HTTPS address; a missing https:// is added for you. Radio checks the address’s format but does not contact the site to test it. Check Don’t ask me again before choosing Add Website to skip this question in Quill Radio and QUILL in the future. When the address is saved, Radio opens it in your browser. Canceling or declining leaves the browser closed.
  5. Mute, a button that stays pressed while the radio is muted. It always shows the real state, even if you muted from somewhere else.
  6. Volume (Alt+O), a slider. Up and Right make it louder, Down and Left make it quieter, Page Up and Page Down move in bigger steps, Home is full volume and End is silent. If you prefer a standard Windows slider, Preferences > Slider Keys… turns Up, Down, Page Up, Page Down, Home and End round; see “Which way the slider keys go” in Chapter 5. The slider, Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down, and the Volume cell in the status bar always agree, including with each station’s remembered volume.

Along the bottom is the status bar. Tab never reaches it, so press F6. See “The status bar” below.

If you used an older version, the other buttons that used to be here have moved, not gone. Play is Enter on a station, or Ctrl+P. Record is Ctrl+R. Browse Stations is Ctrl+B. Chapters are in the Player (Ctrl+Shift+G). Adding the playing station to your favorites is Ctrl+Shift+F.

The favorites tree, step by step

  1. Press Alt+F to put your cursor in the tree.
  2. Arrow Up and Down to move. Right Arrow opens a folder and Left Arrow closes it.
  3. Press Enter on a station to play it. Press Enter on the station that is playing to stop it.
  4. Press Space on the playing station to pause or resume it, when it is something that can be paused. Live radio cannot be paused.
  5. Press F2 to rename a station or folder. Leave a station’s name blank to go back to the directory’s own name.
  6. Press Delete to remove a station. Quill Radio asks first.
  7. Press Ctrl+Up or Ctrl+Down to change the volume without leaving the tree.
  8. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, for everything you can do.

The menu on a station or a folder

On a station, the menu offers Play (or Stop), Station Details…, Rename… (F2), Move Up (Alt+Shift+Up), Move Down (Alt+Shift+Down), Move to Folder…, Remove… (Delete), New Folder… (Ctrl+Shift+E), Mark for Move, Add to Lineup…, and Manage Favorites…. Once you have marked a station, Move Marked Above and Move Marked Below join the list.

Station Details… opens a box you can read and copy, with the station’s source, stream, format and country.

On a folder, the menu offers Rename Folder… (F2), Sort This Folder…, Delete Folder…, New Folder… (Ctrl+Shift+E), and Manage Favorites….

Putting your favorites in your own order, and playing them without the list, are in Chapter 7, Keeping your favorites.

The status bar

The status bar runs along the bottom of the main window. It is a row of cells, and each one is something you can press:

  1. Play, which reads Stop while something plays.
  2. Mute, which reads Unmute while muted.
  3. Volume, with the level, and “boosted” when Volume Boost is on.
  4. Record Now, which reads Stop Recording, with the time, while a recording runs.
  5. Sleep timer, with the time left, or “Off”.
  6. Notifications, with how many you have not read, such as “3 new”, or “None new”.
  7. Time, the time of day.

To use it:

  1. Press F6. Your cursor moves into the bar. You should hear “Status bar” and the cell’s name, such as “Play (Ctrl+P)”.
  2. Press Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move from cell to cell. Home and End jump to the first and last cells.
  3. Press Enter or Space to press the cell you are on. On Volume, Enter mutes or unmutes. On Sleep timer, Enter opens the Sleep Timer. On Notifications, Enter opens the Notifications list. On Time, Enter tells you the full date and time.
  4. Press the Applications key or Shift+F10 for the cell’s own menu. Every cell’s menu starts with Activate and ends with Hide Status Bar. In between:
    • Play: Play or Stop, Pause or Resume, Mute/Unmute, Play Favorite Station…, Recently Played, Record Now, Schedule Recording…, Recording Settings…, Stop All Recordings (when two or more are running), and Browse Stations….
    • Mute and Volume: Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute/Unmute, Volume Boost, Output Device…, and Sound Enhancements….
    • Record: Record Now or Stop Recording, Stop All Recordings (when two or more are running), Schedule Recording…, Recordings…, and Recording Settings….
    • Sleep timer: Sleep Timer… and Wake-Up Timer….
  5. Press F6 again, or Escape, to go back to the favorites tree. You should hear “Returned to favorite stations.”

To hide or show the whole bar, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B (View > Show Status Bar).

What the status line is telling you

The Now playing box, the tray icon’s tooltip and the first line of the Playback menu all use the same words for what a stream is doing. Some of these are things you did, and some are just the internet being the internet, so the words are chosen to tell them apart:

What it says What is happening
Radio: stopped Nothing is playing.
Radio: connecting to WQXR... A station you just chose is being opened.
Radio: buffering WQXR... It was playing and ran short of audio. It is filling up again, and usually comes back within a few seconds.
Radio: playing WQXR Playing. “(muted)” is added when muted.
Radio: paused - WQXR You paused a recording, podcast, file or video.
Radio: Reconnecting to WQXR. Attempt 2 of 3. The stream dropped and Quill Radio is getting it back. Each try is spoken as well as shown, so a long wait never sounds like the app has frozen. It tries three times, after two, five and fifteen seconds.
Radio: could not play WQXR - ... It failed, and the reason follows.

So buffering means the stream is still there and the sound ran out for a moment, and reconnecting means the connection was lost and is being rebuilt.

Go To: one key for every place

Press Ctrl+G in the main window (View > Go To…) and a short numbered list of places opens. Press a number and you are there.

  1. Press Ctrl+G. The Go To list opens with your cursor in it.
  2. Press a number key, 1 to 9, or 0 for the tenth place. That place opens straight away.
  3. Or arrow to a row and press Enter.
  4. Press Escape to close the list. Your cursor goes back exactly where it was.

The list starts out like this:

Key Place Its own shortcut
1 Favorites (the main window) none
2 Browse Stations Ctrl+B
3 The Player Ctrl+Shift+G
4 Recordings Ctrl+Shift+R
5 Downloads Ctrl+Shift+J
6 Manage Favorites Ctrl+Shift+M
7 Song History Ctrl+Shift+H
8 Listening Statistics Ctrl+Shift+Q
9 Find Stations Ctrl+F
0 Preferences Ctrl+,

The numbers never change on their own. Recordings is 4 today and it will be 4 next year, whether or not it is open. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 work differently: they reach the windows you have open, in the order you opened them.

Each row also tells you that place’s own shortcut. Use Go To for a month and you may find you no longer need it.

More places wait to be added, such as Local Media and Lineups: see “Go To Settings, step by step”, next.

Go To Settings, step by step

Go To Settings lets you choose which places are on the list, and in what order.

  1. Press Ctrl+G to open Go To.
  2. Press Tab to the Settings… button and press Space. Go To Settings opens.
  3. The first list, In the menu (Alt+I), holds the places on the list, numbered. Arrow to one.
  4. Press Tab to Move Up or Move Down and press Space to move it. Quill Radio tells you its new number.
  5. To take a place off, select it and choose Remove (Alt+R). It moves to the second list.
  6. The second list, Not in the menu (Alt+N), holds places you can add: Scheduled Recordings, Station Catalog Status, Audio Health, Keyboard Shortcuts, and What’s Playing. Select one and choose Add (Alt+A).
  7. Choose OK to save. You should hear “Go To menu saved.”

The list holds ten places, because the number row has ten keys. If you try to add an eleventh, Quill Radio says so and suggests removing one first.

An update never renumbers your list. A place added in a later version waits in “Not in the menu” until you choose to add it.

Inside Go To, use Space, not Enter, on the Settings… and Close buttons. Enter always goes to the highlighted place.

Windows, and moving between them

Quill Radio’s bigger places open as windows of their own:

What that means for you:

Smaller windows, such as Downloads, Go To, Preferences and Sound Enhancements, are ordinary dialogs. They have no menu bar, and Escape closes them.

Move between windows, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Tab to go to the next open window, or Ctrl+Shift+Tab to go back to the previous one. It wraps around.
  2. Press Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 to jump straight to the first through ninth open window.
  3. Or press Alt+W to open the Window menu. It lists every open window, numbered in the order you opened them. Arrow to one and press Enter.

When you arrive in a window, your cursor is on the control you last used there, or on the window’s main control the first time. When you close a window, you go back to the one you came from.

If you would like to hear when windows open and close, turn on Announce dialog transitions (more spoken detail) in Preferences. Quill Radio then says “Entered …” and “Exited …”. It starts off.

What the main window shows

The middle of the main window can show one of five views. Everything around it stays the same in every view: the menu bar, the Now playing box, Mute and Volume, and the status bar.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+2 (View > Main Window Shows > Browse Stations). You should hear “Main window now shows Browse Stations”, and a sentence about it. Your cursor is in the tree.
  2. Use it just as you would the Browse Stations window.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+1 to go back to your favorites.

The five views:

Your choice works at once and is remembered. Main window shows in Preferences is the same setting. Each view remembers how you left it, so Browse is still opened up where you were when you come back. Pressing the key for the view you are already in puts your cursor back in it.

Everything is still its own window when you want it. Ctrl+B still opens Browse and Ctrl+F still opens Search. If that place is already your main view, the key takes you there rather than opening a second copy.

To leave a view, choose another one with Ctrl+Shift+1 to Ctrl+Shift+5. A view is not a window, so Escape in the Player view does not close Quill Radio.

If you used “Open Browse Stations at startup” in an older version, your main window now shows Browse instead, and nothing else opens by itself.

The menus

The main window’s menu bar, from left to right, is Station (Alt+S), Edit (Alt+E), View (Alt+V), Playback (Alt+P), Audio (Alt+A), Video (Alt+D), Record (Alt+R), Community (Alt+C), QuillVille (Alt+Q), Help (Alt+H) and Window (Alt+W).

Every menu item shows its own key, and if you change a key, the menu shows yours. This section lists every item in menu order with the key it comes with. Most of them have a walkthrough in their own chapter, so treat this as a map rather than something to learn.

Station menu (Alt+S)

Edit menu (Alt+E)

View menu (Alt+V)

Playback menu (Alt+P)

The walkthroughs are in Chapter 4, Playing and moving around, and Chapter 5, What’s playing, and how it sounds.

Audio menu (Alt+A)

The walkthroughs are in Chapter 5, What’s playing, and how it sounds.

Video menu (Alt+D)

The Video menu is always there. When there is no picture to act on, its items tell you so.

See “Video, captions and described audio” in Chapter 5.

Record menu (Alt+R)

If you turn Recording off in Customize Features, the Record menu goes away. See Chapter 8, Recording.

Community menu (Alt+C)

See Chapter 12, The ACB Media schedule and reminders, and Chapter 13, The Community menu.

QuillVille menu (Alt+Q)

This menu opens the other apps in the family. Every row has its own letter, so Alt+Q and then one letter opens an app. That is two single key presses, with nothing held down:

QUILL Transcribe is also the app behind Edit > Dictate Here (Ctrl+F11), which shows in every copy of Quill Radio from its release: see “Dictating a search” under Station > Search Stations. For example, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F10 to open QUILL Transcribe and choose a speech model the first time; after that, Ctrl+F11 in Search Stations starts it for you. If it is not on your computer yet, Quill Radio offers to download it, and nothing is downloaded until you say yes. Until 1 November 2026 there is nothing to download yet, so Quill Radio says it could not fetch it and offers to open the download page instead.

Each app will keep its letter as more of the family arrives: C for Quill Cast, A for Audio Studio. Quill Inkwell is not on Quill Radio’s menu; open it from QUILL or from the Start menu.

The long keys are only where things start. Each row is a command called QuillVille: Open and the app’s name, and you can give it any key you like in Help > Keyboard Shortcuts… (Ctrl+Alt+K). See “Keyboard access without chords” in Chapter 14.

Help menu (Alt+H)

Three commands are only in the Command Palette: Redeem Unlock Code…, Repeat Last Announcement and Announcement Self-Test…. See “Other help” in Chapter 16.

Window menu (Alt+W)

This lists every open Quill Radio window, numbered in the order you opened them, each with its key: Ctrl+1 for the first, and so on. See “Windows, and moving between them” earlier in this chapter.

The menus in other windows

Every other big window has a small menu bar of its own: one menu belonging to that window, with Close (Ctrl+W), then a Station menu and a Window menu. The Station menu has Browse Stations… (Ctrl+B), Local Media… (Ctrl+O), Lineups… (Ctrl+U), Search Stations… (Ctrl+F), Manage Favorites… (Ctrl+Shift+M), Recordings… (Ctrl+Shift+R) and Preferences… (Ctrl+,). A window never lists itself.

Alt+S is the Station menu in every window, and Alt+W is always the Window menu. Each window’s own menu has its own key:

Window Its own menu
Browse Stations Browse (Alt+B)
Search Stations (“Internet Radio”) Go (Alt+G)
Player Player (Alt+P)
Manage Favorite Stations Favorites (Alt+F)
Radio Recordings Recordings (Alt+R)
Schedule Recording Schedule (Alt+D)
Song History Songs (Alt+G)
Now Playing View (Alt+V)
Tutorials View (Alt+V)
Local Media Local Media (Alt+L)
Lineups Lineup (Alt+U)

If an Alt key lands on a control instead of a menu, press Alt on its own, then Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move along the menu bar.

The system tray

While Quill Radio runs, it keeps an icon in the notification area, the row of small icons beside the clock. From there you can control the radio without opening its window at all.

Use the tray, step by step

  1. Press Windows+B to move to the notification area.
  2. Arrow to the Quill Radio icon. If it is not there, press Enter on the “Show hidden icons” button first and look again.
  3. Press the Applications key, or Shift+F10, to open its menu.
  4. The menu offers, in this order: Show Quill Radio, a dimmed line saying what is playing, Play (or Stop), Pause (or Resume, dimmed on live radio), Mute/Unmute, Play Favorite Station…, Recently Played, Record Now (or Stop Recording), Schedule Recording…, Recording Settings…, Stop All Recordings (when two or more are running), Browse Stations…, Open QUILL, Open Quill Weather, and Exit Quill Radio.
  5. Arrow to one and press Enter.

To bring the window back, choose Show Quill Radio on this menu, or double-click the icon.

Show and hide from anywhere

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R shows or hides Quill Radio from any program. Press it while the window is showing, and Quill Radio tucks itself into the tray and says “Quill Radio hidden to the tray”. Press it again, and the window comes back with your cursor in it, and you hear “Quill Radio shown.” Playing and recording carry on either way. This key hides only the main window. Send to Tray (Ctrl+W) hides every Quill Radio window.

If another program already uses Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R, Quill Radio leaves it alone and says nothing, so use the tray icon instead. Each family app has its own key: QUILL is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q and Quill Weather is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W.

If you open Quill Radio again while it is already running, even hidden in the tray, the copy that is running comes forward. You never end up with two.

Closing Quill Radio

There are a few ways to close Quill Radio, and they behave a little differently:

When Quill Radio does ask, a window titled “Closing Quill Radio” tells you a recording is running and that exiting will stop it:

  1. Choose Exit (Enter) to close, Minimize to Tray (Alt+M) to keep it running, or Cancel (Escape).
  2. If you want your choice remembered, check Don’t ask me again (Alt+D) first.

Closing any window other than the main one never stops what is playing.

What you learned, and where to go next

You now know the six stops in the main window, how to reach the status bar with F6, how Go To takes you anywhere with one number, and how to move between windows. You have a map of every menu, and you know how to use the tray and close the app the way you prefer. Next, Chapter 4, Playing and moving around, shows you the keys that control what is playing from any window. The tutorial The player follows you is a good companion to it.

Chapter 4: Playing and moving around

This chapter is about whatever is playing right now: starting and stopping it, pausing, going back a little, speeding up, jumping between chapters, marking a moment to come back to, and picking up where you left off. Most of it works from any Quill Radio window, so you rarely have to go looking for the player.

The player follows you

The keys that control playing work in every Quill Radio window, not only the main one. That includes:

In all of them:

The main window works a little differently, because its menus have the same commands:

You can count on three things:

The Player window

The Player (Ctrl+Shift+G) is a small window with every playing control as a button, and a box telling you what is playing, where you are in it, the speed and the volume. It is on the Window menu and in the Ctrl+Tab order like any other window.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+G from any window. The Player opens, or comes to the front if it is already open. Your cursor is in the Now playing box.
  2. Arrow through the Now playing box to read it. It keeps up with anything you change elsewhere while it is open.
  3. Press Tab to move through the buttons, in this order: Play (reads Stop while playing), Pause (reads Resume while paused, and is dimmed on live radio with the reason), Skip Back, Skip Forward, Where Am I?, Previous Chapter, Next Chapter, Chapters…, Slower, Faster, Normal Speed, Skip Silence, Volume Down, Volume Up, Mute/Unmute, then Add to Favorites (reads Remove from Favorites when the playing station is already a favorite).
  4. Press Space on a button to use it. Each button does the same as its key, and the box updates.
  5. The keys work inside the Player too, and each one updates the box.
  6. To close the Player, press Escape, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+F4 or Alt+F4. You go back to the window you came from.

The Player’s menu bar has three menus: Player (Alt+P), with Close (Ctrl+W); Station (Alt+S); and Window (Alt+W).

You can also make the Player the main window’s view. See “What the main window shows” in Chapter 3.

Pausing and resuming

Pause (Ctrl+Space) holds a podcast episode, a recording, a downloaded or local file, or a finished video. Resume picks it up where you left off.

  1. With something playing that is not live, press Ctrl+Space. You should hear “Paused.”
  2. Press Ctrl+Space again. You should hear “Resumed.”

Resuming has a sound of its own: a short tape-spooling sound, different from the “playing” sound you hear when a station starts. So you can tell carrying on from starting something new before the audio comes back. It is one of Quill Radio’s own sounds, so Alt+Shift+M turns it off with the others.

Live radio cannot be paused. It is going out now, so there is nothing to hold. On a live station, Pause is dimmed and tells you that. Stop ends it. To catch something you just missed, rewind instead, as the next section shows.

In windows other than the main one, Ctrl+P also pauses and resumes anything that is not live.

Rewinding live radio, and going back to live

Missed what the newsreader just said? With the standard mpv playback engine, Quill Radio keeps the last hour of a live station, so you can go back and hear it, or pause the whole programme and come back to it. Choose how long it keeps with Time-shift buffer in Preferences: half an hour up to five hours, or “In memory only” for the old buffer of about 45 minutes.

How far one press goes depends on how you press:

Taps do not add up: three taps take you back five minutes, not five minutes and a bit. Quill Radio waits for you to stop pressing, moves once, and then says where you landed.

  1. While a live station plays, press Ctrl+Shift+Left (Playback > Rewind). Half a second later you should hear how far behind live you are, such as “12 seconds behind live.”
  2. Press it two or three times quickly to go back a minute or five minutes at once, as far as Quill Radio has kept since you started listening.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Right (Forward) to move forward again, the same way.
  4. Press Ctrl+Shift+L (Back to Live) to jump straight back to what is on now. You should hear “Back to live.”

The buffer is kept in a file in this computer’s cache folder, never in a data folder you sync to another computer. It is capped in size, it never takes more than half of the free space on the drive, and it is deleted when Quill Radio closes. Anything a crash leaves behind is cleared the next time Quill Radio starts.

The Windows Media engine keeps nothing to go back to, so on that engine these keys tell you that rewinding live radio needs the mpv playback engine. To get it back, set Playback engine to Automatic in Preferences.

Speed, position and chapters

These work on anything that is not live: a finished YouTube video, a podcast episode, a recording or a downloaded file.

On a live station, each of these tells you why it cannot help: “This is live radio, which plays at broadcast speed and has no chapters or position to move through.”

Go to Position, step by step

  1. With something playing that is not live, press Ctrl+Alt+J (Playback > Go to Position…). The Go to Position window opens.
  2. Type the time in Hours (Alt+H), Minutes (Alt+M) and Seconds (Alt+S). Or Tab to Or type a timecode and type it all at once, such as 1:23:45.
  3. Choose OK. Playing jumps there and tells you where you are now.

Chapters, step by step

The chapter list works for a video’s published chapters, the chapter marks inside a recording or a downloaded episode, and episodes that QUILL Cast has already worked through.

  1. While something with chapters plays, press Ctrl+Shift+C (Playback > Chapters…). The Chapters window opens.
  2. Its first line tells you how many chapters there are and where they came from. Your cursor is in the Chapters list (Alt+C), and the chapter playing now is marked.
  3. Arrow to a chapter. Each one reads as a sentence, such as “3. Introducing layers, starts at 5 minutes 31 seconds”.
  4. To jump there, Tab to Go To and press Space. The list stays open, so you can keep exploring.
  5. When what is playing is a file on your computer, Preview This Mark plays ten seconds either side of where the chapter starts, without moving your place. Stop Preview stops it.
  6. Press Escape to close the list.

If there are no chapters, Quill Radio tells you. It does not make chapters up for itself, because that needs a large speech engine, and QUILL Cast already does it.

Skip Silence, and a speed that sticks

Skip Silence (Ctrl+Shift+9, on the Playback menu) shortens the long pauses in a recording, a YouTube row or a podcast episode as it plays. It is lovely for a slow talk or a recording with lots of dead air, because it gets you through faster without making anyone sound rushed. It works straight away. It does nothing on live radio, and tells you so if you turn it on while a station plays.

  1. Play a recording, a podcast episode or a YouTube row.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+9. You hear that Skip Silence is on.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+9 again to turn it off.

To change the speed as well:

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Up to play faster, or Ctrl+Shift+Down to play slower. Each press tells you the new speed.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+0 to go back to normal speed.

Your speed is remembered by kind. A speed you choose while a recording plays applies to every recording. One you choose on a YouTube row applies to YouTube rows. Podcast episodes keep their own speed for each show.

Continue Listening, step by step

Continue Listening lists everything you started and did not finish: recordings, podcast episodes, audiobook chapters and anything else that is not live.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L (Playback > Continue Listening…). The window opens, and a heading tells you how many things are unfinished.
  2. Arrow through the Unfinished list (Alt+U). Each row says what it is and where you stopped.
  3. Press Enter, or choose Resume, to carry on from where you stopped.
  4. Choose Forget This One (Alt+F) to take a row off the list.
  5. Press Escape to close.

Quill Radio and QUILL Cast keep your place in an episode you follow in the same spot on your computer, so either app knows how far you got. An episode that either app has finished stays finished.

Bookmarks

Bookmark This Moment (Ctrl+Alt+A, on the Playback menu) marks where you are in whatever is playing, with one key press: a station, a recording, a saved YouTube row, or an episode of a podcast you follow. You do not need to write a note.

Use bookmarks, step by step

  1. While something plays, press Ctrl+Alt+A. You hear that the moment was bookmarked.
  2. Later, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J (Help > Bookmarks…). The Bookmarks window opens with your cursor in Everywhere you marked (Alt+E).
  3. Arrow to a bookmark and press Enter, or choose Go There (Alt+G), to go back to it.
  4. The other buttons:
    • Share (Alt+S) copies the place, the note and what it is in.
    • Edit Note… (Alt+N) adds or changes a note.
    • Delete (Alt+D) removes everything selected. Hold Shift with the arrow keys to select several. It tells you how many it removed.
    • Export… (Alt+X) writes them all to a Markdown file, grouped by what each one is in.
  5. Press Escape to close.

A live station’s bookmark is honest about what it can do. Live radio has no shared timeline, so a station bookmark keeps the station and how far into your listening you were. Go There tunes you in to what is on now. A recording, a video or a podcast episode does take you to the exact spot.

Your bookmarks are shared with QUILL Cast. A bookmark you make here is in Cast’s Bookmarks window, and the other way round. If Quill Radio cannot open one, it is still listed, with Go There dimmed and the reason.

Hardware media keys

Many keyboards and headsets have media keys: Play/Pause, Stop, Next and Previous. Quill Radio listens for two of them all the time it is running, even when another program has focus and even when Quill Radio is hidden in the tray. So you can start and stop the radio without finding its window at all.

To try it:

  1. Start Quill Radio, then switch to another program, such as your email.
  2. Press the Play/Pause media key. The radio starts, and you hear what is playing.
  3. Press it again, or press Stop, to stop the radio.

Good to know: the Next and Previous keys are not used. On Windows, media keys go to whichever program asks first. If another program, such as a music player, already has a key when Quill Radio starts, that key stays with the other program, and Quill Radio says nothing. Close the other program and restart Quill Radio to take it back. You can also give any playing command a key that works everywhere, in Help > Global Hotkeys… (Ctrl+Alt+G).

Windows also knows what you are listening to. When you press a volume key, Windows shows a small “now playing” panel, and the lock screen shows the same thing. Quill Radio fills it in with the station and, when the station sends one, the song. Your screen reader reads that panel when it appears. Quill Radio does not announce it out loud each time the song changes; it is there for when you want it.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now control what is playing from any window, open the Player, pause anything that is not live, rewind live radio and catch up again, change the speed, move by chapter, and bookmark a moment to come back to. Your keyboard’s media keys work too. Next, Chapter 5, What’s playing, and how it sounds, helps you find out what that song was and get the sound just right. The tutorials Keep a moment, and move around inside one and Pick up where you left off practise what this chapter covered.

Chapter 5: What’s playing, and how it sounds

This chapter answers two everyday questions: “what was that song?” and “can I make it sound better?” It also covers the picture and captions for video, and the timers that send you to sleep or wake you up.

What’s Playing, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+T (Playback > What’s Playing?). The Now Playing window opens, titled “Now Playing:” and the station’s name. If you press it again while the window is open, the window is refreshed and brought forward, and you hear the title and artist.
  2. Your cursor is in a box with the title and artist. Arrow through it, a letter at a time if you want the exact spelling.
  3. Tab to Copy and press Space to copy it. You should hear “Copied.”
  4. Press Escape to close.

If nothing is playing, you hear “Nothing is playing.” and no window opens. If no title has arrived yet, you hear “Checking what’s playing…” while Quill Radio finds out. A station that never sends titles opens the window with its name and “This stream doesn’t share track titles.”

Quill Radio looks for the title in three places: first in what comes with the sound itself, then in what the player can read from the stream, and last on the station server’s own public status page. It only ever asks the server you are already listening to, and not in Safe Mode. When a station sends messy text, such as catalog codes, Quill Radio picks out the title and artist for you.

To change the words What’s Playing uses, edit What’s Playing announcement in Preferences.

Copy What’s Playing, in the Command Palette, copies the title and artist straight to the clipboard with no window, and tells you what it copied.

Announce Track Titles (Ctrl+Alt+T, on the Audio menu) says each new title as the song changes. It starts off. In the Command Palette it reads “(currently On)” or “(currently Off)”.

Song History, step by step

Song History keeps what each station played while you listened: up to 200 songs for each station, kept only on your computer.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+H (Playback > Song History…). If no songs have been noted yet, you hear that, and no window opens.
  2. The Song History window opens with your cursor in the Songs list (Alt+O), newest first. Each row reads like “Your Song by Elton John, heard 10:04, played twice”.
  3. To look at another station’s list, press Alt+A for Station and choose it.
  4. With a song selected, Tab to a button and press Space:
    • Copy puts the song on the clipboard.
    • Send to Clip Library keeps it with your other saved snippets.
    • Background asks your AI provider, if you have set one up, for a short note about the song and the artist. The answer always says it was written by an AI model. It appears in the Background box (Alt+K), and your cursor moves there. Not available in Safe Mode.
    • Song Details looks the song up on MusicBrainz: which release, what year, how long. If nothing more is known, it says so.
    • Lyrics (Alt+Y) opens the words of the selected song in the Lyrics window, the same as Lyrics on the Playback menu does for the song on the air now.
    • Clear… asks whether to clear This station or All stations. Cancel is already chosen, so Enter on its own clears nothing.
  5. Press Escape, Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 to close. Song History is a window of its own, with the menus Songs (Alt+G), Station (Alt+S) and Window (Alt+W).

Good to know: Song History only fills up while a station sends song titles. Stations that send none, such as many talk stations and reading services, leave nothing to note.

If a song is still playing when Quill Radio checks again, its play count goes up rather than it being listed twice. Station names, “Live” and advert markers are left out.

Lyrics, step by step

Lyrics shows the words of the song the station is playing, as text you can arrow through and copy. The words come from LRCLIB (lrclib.net), a free community catalogue of song lyrics.

  1. While a song is playing, press Ctrl+Alt+B (Playback > Lyrics…). You hear “Looking up lyrics for” and the song.
  2. The Lyrics window opens, titled “Lyrics:” and the song, with your cursor at the top of the words. Arrow down through them a line at a time. Ctrl+C copies what you select.
  3. Press Escape, Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 to close.

To see the words of a song that played earlier, open Song History (Ctrl+Shift+H), select the song and choose Lyrics (Alt+Y).

What you might hear instead of a window:

Good to know:

Identify This Song

Some stations never say what they are playing. Playback > Identify This Song (Ctrl+K) listens to the last minute of what you are hearing and asks AcoustID, a free music-recognition service, what song it is.

Before the first time, it needs two things you set up once:

  1. An AcoustID key. AcoustID asks every app to register for a free key. Register one at acoustid.org/new-application, then open Preferences (Ctrl+,), find AcoustID key for song recognition and paste it in. Until there is a key, Identify This Song tells you exactly this and does nothing else.
  2. Chromaprint’s fpcalc program. It turns the sound into a fingerprint and does not come with Quill Radio. Download it from acoustid.org/chromaprint and put fpcalc.exe in a folder named chromaprint inside the tools folder of your Quill data folder, or anywhere on your PATH. Until it is there, Identify This Song tells you so.

Then:

  1. While a song plays, press Ctrl+K. You hear “Identifying the song…”
  2. A few seconds later you hear the answer, such as “Best guess: Blue Monday by New Order, 91 percent sure.” When AcoustID has two strong candidates, you hear the other one too.
  3. If it cannot tell, you hear that it found no match. Recognition works best on recorded music; talk, a live performance or a station’s jingle will not match. Try again a minute into the song.

Good to know:

Listening statistics

View > Listening Statistics… (Ctrl+Shift+Q) answers how much you listened, as well as to what.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Q. The Listening Statistics window opens.
  2. Period (Alt+P) chooses This week, This month, This year or All time. It starts on All time. When you change it, you hear the new total.
  3. Tab to the report and arrow through it: the total time, how many sessions, then a breakdown by station and by network. Times are read as words, such as “3 hours, 47 minutes”.
  4. Copy (Alt+C) copies the whole report. You should hear “Copied.”
  5. Save as CSV… (Alt+S) writes every session to a spreadsheet file. The suggested name is quill-radio-listening.csv.
  6. Delete My History… (Alt+D) removes every session. It asks first, and No is already chosen.
  7. Press Escape to close.

What counts as listening:

Your history stays on your computer.

Volume

Which way the slider keys go (Slider Keys)

On the Volume slider in the main window (Alt+O), and on Quill Radio’s other sliders, the arrow keys follow one choice that every Quill app shares: Preferences (Ctrl+,) > Slider Keys….

Right is more and Left is less either way. Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down, the volume keys that work from anywhere, are not changed. Each key press tells your screen reader the new value straight away. Change the choice in any Quill app and every other app follows at your next key press.

  1. Press Ctrl+, for Preferences, move to the Slider Keys… button and press Enter. A list of the two choices opens, on the one you have now.
  2. Arrow to the choice you want and press Enter. Quill Radio says which way the keys now go; if you kept the same one, it says “Slider keys unchanged.”
  3. Tab to the Volume slider in the main window and press Home. With Up is more, you should hear 100.

One volume for every station

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+V (Audio > Use One Volume for All Stations). You should hear that one volume for all stations is on, and the level.
  2. Now Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down turn everything up or down together. Turning it on keeps the level you are hearing, so nothing suddenly jumps.
  3. Press Ctrl+Alt+V again to go back. Every station returns to its own remembered level.

Forgetting every station’s own volume

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V (Audio > Forget Every Station’s Own Volume…).
  2. A question tells you how many stations have their own level. No is already chosen. Press Y to forget them.
  3. You should hear “Forgot the volume for” and how many. Your stations, folders and other settings are left exactly as they were.

Volume Boost

Some stations broadcast much more quietly than others, so even full volume is too soft. Volume Boost lets the radio go up to 50 percent past full volume.

  1. While a quiet station plays, press Ctrl+Shift+B (Audio > Volume Boost). You should hear “Volume Boost on: up to 50 percent louder.”
  2. Press Ctrl+Up to turn it up. The Volume cell in the status bar adds “boosted”.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+B again to turn it off.

Your volume steps, each station’s own level and mute all work as before. Boost can make a station that is already loud sound distorted, so turn it off when you move on.

If it does not work: Volume Boost needs the mpv playback engine. If Quill Radio says so, set Playback engine to Automatic in Preferences.

Output Device, step by step

You can send the radio to a different sound card or headset from your screen reader. Many people like to hear the radio in headphones while speech stays on the speakers, or the other way round.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+D (Audio > Output Device…). A list opens: “Send Quill Radio’s audio to which device?”
  2. The first row is System default. Arrow to a sound card or headset. A device you chose before that is not plugged in reads “(not currently available)”.
  3. Press Enter. The station moves to that device straight away, without a break in the sound. You should hear “Output device” and its name.

Quill Radio’s own sounds go with the radio, and you hear the “playing” sound on the new device as soon as it moves. Your screen reader stays where Windows puts it. This is the same setting as Radio output device in Preferences, and it works on either playback engine, mpv or Windows Media.

Windows often calls both sound cards on a laptop “Speakers”: “Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)” for the built-in ones, and “Speakers (Logi USB Headset)” for a headset. Listen past the first word for the make in brackets.

If the device cannot be opened

Sometimes Windows will not let Quill Radio use a device just then: a Bluetooth or USB headset that has gone to sleep, a device another program is holding, or one whose Windows name has changed. Quill Radio tells you, names the device, and puts the setting back to what it was, for example: “Speakers (Logi USB Headset) could not be opened, so the output device is back to System default.” The sound stays on the device it was using before, and Preferences shows the same. Wake the device or plug it in, then choose it again. If a device you saved cannot be opened when Quill Radio starts, it is handed back the same way, so you are never stuck with a setting that does nothing.

On an older copy of Windows

A few older copies of Windows do not have the modern media player that Quill Radio’s Windows Media engine uses, so Quill Radio falls back to an older, classic one. That classic player always plays on whatever device Windows gives it, and cannot be told otherwise. Quill Radio does not quietly change your engine to get round this. Instead, choosing a device tells you so in one sentence and opens Windows’ Sound settings for you. Under Volume mixer, every app has its own output device there. Find Quill Radio in that list and choose the device, and Windows remembers it from then on. A copy without the mpv engine opens that same page as soon as you press Ctrl+Shift+D. And if a device is saved in your settings while the classic player is in use, Quill Radio hands the setting back and tells you the same thing.

A second device: a background station, or a mirror

Quill Radio can play on a second sound card or headset at the same time as the main one, in one of two ways. Both are on the Audio menu, and both are off until you turn them on. Neither is remembered when you close Quill Radio. Both need the mpv playback engine, because it is the one that can choose a device; without it, Quill Radio tells you so.

Background Station on Another Device… (Alt+Shift+B) plays one of your favorites quietly on another device, underneath whatever the main player is doing. Rain sounds in the headphones while the news plays on the speakers, for example.

  1. Press Alt+Shift+B. Choose the favorite, then the device, then how loud it should be compared with the main player, such as “40 percent of the main volume”.
  2. You should hear the station’s name and the device. The background station follows two rules. When you pause the main player, it pauses too, and it comes back when you resume. When you turn the main volume up or down, it goes up or down with it. Stop, or changing station, leaves it playing.
  3. To turn it off, press Alt+Shift+B again and answer Yes.

Mirror to Another Device… (Alt+Shift+D) plays whatever the main player plays on a second device as well: a guest on headphones, or a room speaker as well as the built-in one. It follows the main player in everything: the station, pause, stop and volume. Press Alt+Shift+D again to turn it off.

The device the main player uses is not offered, and only one of the two can run at a time. Two players never stay exactly together: expect the two devices to be a fraction of a second apart.

Where Quill Radio’s own sounds play

Quill Radio makes short sounds of its own when a station connects, starts playing, stops or fails, when a recording starts and stops, and when a reminder comes due. If you broadcast, that means you can listen on your on-air card and hear “playing” and “stream error” right there with the station. You choose where they play, and you can turn them off.

After you choose, one sound plays on the new device, so you know straight away where it went.

If the device you chose is unplugged or asleep, you still hear every sound, on the system default, and Quill Radio tells you once. When the device comes back, the sounds go back to it by themselves.

This changes Quill Radio only. Your other QUILL apps keep their own choice, unless you have checked “Share these choices with my other Quill apps”, which copies a change here to the others that share. Your screen reader is never moved.

Sound Enhancements, step by step

Sound Enhancements lets you shape the sound: more bass, clearer voices, an even volume, or the sound in one ear only.

  1. Press Ctrl+E (Audio > Sound Enhancements…). The Sound Enhancements window opens on Quick preset.
  2. Quick preset (Alt+Q) sets the three tone sliders to a good starting point: Flat, Bass Boost, Voice Clarity, Podcast, Small Speakers or Late Night. If you then move a slider, the preset becomes Custom.
  3. Bass (Alt+B), Mid (Alt+M) and Treble (Alt+T) are sliders from -12 to +12 dB. Use the arrow keys.
  4. Even Out Volume (Alt+E) lifts quiet passages and calms loud ones.
  5. Channel mode (Alt+H) is Stereo, Mono, Left only or Right only. Mono blends both sides together, so a voice on one side never disappears if you use one earbud. Left only or Right only sends everything to one ear, leaving the other free for your screen reader.
  6. Night mode (even loudness) (Alt+N) keeps the loudness even as you listen, for quiet late-night listening.
  7. Apply broadcast polish (OptiLab) (Alt+A) turns on a broadcast-style sound. Polish mode (Alt+P) is Off, Podcast Leveler (speech), Stream Polish (music) or Smooth Limiter (mastering). Input (dB) (Alt+I) turns the level going in up or down. Auto-Adapt (Alt+U) is a slider from 0 to 100 percent.
  8. Exact OptiLab processing (Alt+X) is Off (where it starts), When saving (the full OptiLab sound for recordings and converted files, and the one we recommend), or When saving and while listening (the station takes longer to start, and each change needs a short reconnect). If your copy does not include the OptiLab part, this choice is dimmed and says so.
  9. You hear every change on what is playing straight away.
  10. Choose OK to keep your settings, or Cancel (Escape) to put everything back as it was.

Broadcast polish is adapted, with thanks, from OptiLab Core by Lanes Audio / dgl1984 (https://github.com/dgl1984/optilab, Apache-2.0 with the Commons Clause). While you listen, Quill Radio always uses its own built-in version, so you hear each change at once.

Recordings are kept exactly as the station sent them unless you turn on Apply Sound Enhancements to recordings in Recording Settings.

For one station, or for every station

Open Sound Enhancements while a favorite plays, and your settings are saved for that station only. Open it with nothing playing, or while a station that is not a favorite plays, and you set the shared settings that every other station follows. When a favorite’s own settings are open, Reset to Default (Alt+R) puts that station back on the shared settings. Reset All Stations’ Sound Enhancements… in Preferences does that for every station at once.

Video, captions and described audio

Quill Radio plays YouTube links and television as sound only, to begin with. You can also show the picture, read the captions, and choose a described audio track.

Show the video, step by step

  1. While a video or TV channel plays, press Ctrl+Shift+V (Video > Show Video). The “Quill Radio Video” window opens. You should hear “Video shown” and its size.
  2. The picture has a name and description for your screen reader. Tab takes you to a line telling you the title, position, chapter and audio track.
  3. Press F11 for full screen. You should hear “Full screen. Press F11 or Escape to leave.”
  4. Press Escape to leave full screen. Press Escape again, or Ctrl+Shift+V, Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4, to close the window. You should hear “Video hidden. Audio is still playing.”

Showing and hiding the picture never restarts what is playing or loses your place. The window has no buttons: every command is on the Video menu, in the Command Palette, and on a key. The playing keys work inside it too.

The rest of the Video menu:

Nothing can tell before a video plays whether it contains flashing, so Quill Radio makes getting away from the picture immediate: Ctrl+Shift+V hides it from any window.

Captions, step by step

  1. While a video plays, press Ctrl+Shift+K (Video > Captions). You should hear “Getting captions…”, then “Captions on, in the Captions window.”
  2. The “Quill Radio Captions” window opens without taking your cursor. Switch to it with Ctrl+Tab or Alt+Tab.
  3. The captions are text you can arrow through. Each new line is added after the ones already spoken, so the newest is last. The line being spoken now is marked with a greater-than sign.
  4. To read back without the text moving, turn off Follow playback (Alt+F).
  5. Press Escape to close the window. Closing it turns captions off. You should hear “Captions off.”

If the captions were made by a computer, the window tells you. A video with no captions says “This video has no captions published.”

Caption Settings, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T (Video > Caption Settings…).
  2. Set Caption size (100 to 300 percent), Text colour (Alt+T), Background colour (Alt+B), Background opacity (Alt+O, a slider) and Position (Alt+P, bottom or top).
  3. Choose Save. Quill Radio reads the new style back to you.

Captions start as solid white on solid black. That looks heavier than most players on purpose, because captions sit over whatever the picture shows, and no colour is readable against everything.

Audio and Described Audio, step by step

A described audio track is a second narration that tells you what a sighted viewer can see. Quill Radio names it and puts it first.

  1. While a video plays, press Ctrl+Shift+A (Audio > Audio and Described Audio…). The window opens. Its heading says “Described audio is available for this video.” or “No described audio was published for this video.”
  2. Your cursor is in the Audio tracks list, on the described track when there is one. Tracks in the language you use Quill Radio in come first, then the video’s original track, then the rest in alphabetical order.
  3. Press Enter, or choose Play This Track, to switch. Your place is kept.
  4. You should hear “Playing the described audio track.” or the track’s name.

Play Described Audio (Ctrl+Alt+D) switches straight to the described track, with no list. If there is none, it tells you what the video does have.

When you play a video that has a described track, Quill Radio tells you once, and tells you the key.

A YouTube video’s transcript, which you can read, search and play from, is in Chapter 11, YouTube, under “Transcript, step by step”.

Timers

Sleep Timer, step by step

Like to fall asleep to the radio? The sleep timer fades it out for you.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Z (Playback > Sleep Timer…). The Sleep Timer window opens.
  2. Choose how long in Stop Radio and Podcasts playback after: 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, or Custom…. With Custom, Tab to the minutes box and type a number from 1 to 600.
  3. Choose Start (Enter). You should hear “Sleep timer set for” and the minutes.
  4. When the time is up, the sound fades out and stops, and your volume is put back where it was. You should hear “Sleep timer: playback stopped, volume restored.”

While a timer is running, the same window shows the time left and offers Extend 5 Minutes and Cancel Sleep Timer. The Sleep timer cell in the status bar shows the minutes left; press Enter on it to open the window. The Command Palette also has Extend Sleep Timer 5 Minutes and Cancel Sleep Timer.

Wake-Up Timer, step by step

The Wake-Up Timer starts a favorite at a time you choose, once or every day.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Z (Playback > Wake-Up Timer…). The window tells you the current setting.
  2. Check Wake up with the radio (Alt+W) with Space.
  3. Choose a Station (Alt+S) from your favorites.
  4. Type a Time (Alt+T), such as 07:00 or 7:30 AM.
  5. Check Every day (not just once) (Alt+D) if you want it every day.
  6. Choose OK. You should hear your setting read back.
  7. At that time you hear “Good morning.” and the station’s name, and it starts playing.

Quill Radio must be running at that time. Running in the tray counts; a closed app does not. The Wake-Up Timer does not wake a sleeping computer. To turn it off, open it and uncheck Wake up with the radio.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now find out what is playing and look back at what played, see how much you have listened, set the volume your way, boost a quiet station, send the radio to another sound card, and shape the sound. You know how to show a video, read its captions and choose described audio, and how to use the sleep and wake-up timers. Next, Chapter 6, Finding something to listen to, opens up the whole world of stations. The tutorials What was that song?, Shape the sound, How much did I actually listen?, Sleeping, waking, and being left alone and The picture, captions and described audio go with this chapter.

Chapter 6: Finding something to listen to

There are tens of thousands of stations out there, and this chapter shows you how to find the ones you will love. You will wander through Browse Stations, search every directory at once, find a station from its web address, and add stations that no directory lists. None of it needs an account or a sign-in.

The Finding something to listen to track of the tutorials walks through all of this: Wander the browse tree, Search every directory at once, Find a station by its web address, Find stations by name, tag and country, Add a station nobody lists, The catalog on your own disk and When a station will not play.

Browse Stations

Browse Stations (Ctrl+B) is one window with one big tree. Its first row is Search All Sources…. Below that, each top-level branch is a source of things to hear. Open a branch and its contents load there and then. Enter plays the row you are on.

Open it and look around, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+B from any window. Browse Stations opens, or comes to the front if it is already open. Your screen reader reads the title, and your cursor is in the tree.
  2. Browse Stations remembers the branch you were in last time. The very first time, you are on Search All Sources….
  3. Press Down Arrow to move from branch to branch. Nothing is fetched until you open one.
  4. Press Right Arrow to open a branch. You should hear “Loading” and the branch’s name. If it takes more than three seconds, Quill Radio tells you it is still working.
  5. Press Down Arrow to move through what loaded. A folder tells you how many rows it holds, for example “France, 812 stations”.
  6. Press Enter on a station, episode or chapter to play it. Press Enter on the row that is playing to stop it.
  7. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, for everything a row offers. See “What a row offers” below.
  8. Press Tab to move past the tree. You come to a details box about the row you are on, then Radio volume, Mute, Go to Player, Add to Favorites (it reads Remove from Favorites on a row you have saved), and Refresh, which fetches the highlighted source again from the internet.
  9. Press Alt+T to jump back to the tree from anywhere in the window.
  10. Inside a branch, press Escape to go back to the row you opened it from: from a station in “Ireland” back to “Ireland”, folded, and once more back to “By Country”. Each press goes up one level. On a top-level branch, Escape closes Browse Stations, as do Ctrl+W and Ctrl+F4. The Find box keeps what you typed, and what you are listening to keeps playing.

The country rows under Podcasts (Apple) are Apple’s charts for that country, in any language: an English-language show that is popular in Germany is in Germany’s chart. Podcast Index > By Category is the index’s worldwide taxonomy, in every language. Neither is a language filter; for stations in one language, use By Language.

The details box follows the row you are on. For a station it gives the source, stream, format and country, and any note to yourself you have written about it. For a branch it says whether it answers from the catalog on your computer or asks the internet each time. If you would rather not Tab past it, turn it off with View > Show Station Details (Ctrl+D).

The window’s menu bar has Browse (Alt+B) with Close (Ctrl+W), Station (Alt+S) and Window (Alt+W).

The branches, in order

After Search All Sources…, the branches are:

  1. Favorites: your own stations and folders.
  2. Local Media: your own music, audiobooks and video, in playlists you make. See Chapter 10, Local Media, your own music and audiobooks.
  3. Popular Stations: ranked by votes over the years.
  4. Trending Now: ranked by what people are listening to today.
  5. Recently Added or Changed: new stations, and ones whose address was just repaired.
  6. By Country: then by state or region, then stations. A country with no regions takes you straight to its stations.
  7. By Language.
  8. By Genre.
  9. By Quality: by sound format.
  10. Weather / NOAA: the NOAA Weather Radio directory, state by state.
  11. ACB Media: ACB Media 1 to 10.
  12. Double Tap Live: the blind tech show’s own 24-hour channel, with talk, tech, music and the best of the Double Tap podcast, on air around the clock.
  13. NFB Radio: the NFB Radio Network.
  14. Radio Reading Services: services that read print aloud for blind and print-disabled listeners.
  15. Westwood One Sports: Westwood One’s ten live event channels. During the NCAA tournaments, the NFL and other big events, each one carries a different game.
  16. SomaFM.
  17. 181.FM: the whole 181.FM network, about eighty channels, by its own genres, with All stations first. Explicit channels say so, and the Christmas genre is marked seasonal.
  18. laut.fm: thousands of stations people run themselves, by the platform’s most-listened genres.
  19. TuneIn: TuneIn’s own folders, from continent down to city.
  20. iHeart: By City first, then genres.
  21. Networks: well-known broadcasters, grouped by type. Music includes 181.FM, Big R Radio and 1.FM, each showing only that network’s own stations.
  22. Community M3U (Music Genres).
  23. Xiph / Icecast Directory: switched off to begin with.
  24. SHOUTcast Directory: the live Top 500, then 313 genres.
  25. Live365: about 5,500 independent stations, A to Z.
  26. Quillin Sources: only when an installed Quillin adds a source.
  27. Radio Paradise: including lossless FLAC.
  28. Podcasts (Apple): your Subscriptions, then 16 national storefronts.
  29. Podcast Index.
  30. Internet Archive.
  31. LibriVox Audiobooks.
  32. Project Gutenberg Audiobooks.
  33. AudioPub (Community Audio).
  34. Audius (Independent Music).
  35. Mixcloud (Shows & DJ Sets).
  36. ccMixter (Creative Commons).
  37. My Servers: Icecast or SHOUTcast servers you add yourself.
  38. Television (iptv.org).
  39. YouTube: channels, playlists and videos you save.
  40. Explore (Wikidata): switched off to begin with.

That is 38 sources. A new installation shows 36 of them, because Xiph and Wikidata start switched off. Quillin Sources only appears when something adds to it. You can switch branches on and off with Choose Browse Sources, described later in this chapter.

More about some of the branches

How the tree behaves

What a row offers

Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, on any row.

On a station, episode, chapter or video

In this order:

On a folder

A dimmed item tells you why it is dimmed. See “Why a menu item is dimmed” in Chapter 15.

The Delete key

Delete removes the row you are on, when it is yours to remove: a saved YouTube video, playlist or channel, a server you added, or a favorite. It asks first and names the row, and No is already chosen. The question has a Don’t ask me again box. On a top-level source such as Podcasts, Delete hides the source, just like Hide This Source on the menu, and Reset Sources to Default brings it back. On a folder inside one of Quill Radio’s own sources, Delete explains that there is nothing to delete.

Removing several rows at once

Press . (period) on each row you want to remove: a saved YouTube video or playlist, a followed channel, a server you added, or a station that is one of your favorites. You hear “Marked” and how many are marked, and the row’s name gains “(marked)”. It keeps the mark if you fold its folder and open it again. Then press Delete: one question asks, for example, “Delete 4 items?”, and you hear “Deleted 4 items.” Each branch that lost a row reloads, so the rows are gone from the tree. Ctrl+Shift+Delete clears every mark.

For example, to tidy your saved YouTube videos, open YouTube, then your saved videos, press . on each one you have finished with, and press Delete once.

Things to know:

A note to yourself about any station

Note to Self… sits near the end of every row’s menu. Use it to write yourself a reminder about a station or a show, such as “the morning show is the good one”, “only worth it on Sundays”, or “the 6am repeat is the one with the interview”.

  1. Arrow to the row, press Shift+F10, and choose Note to Self….
  2. A box opens with any note you already wrote. Type whatever you like.
  3. Choose OK.

The next time you arrow onto that row, your note is read in the details box, so you never need to open anything to find it. To remove a note, empty the box and choose OK. The note stays with the station’s address rather than its name, so renaming it, sorting your favorites or refreshing the catalog never loses it or moves it to another row. In the Favorites Manager, a station’s menu has Note to Self… too.

Your own tags on a station

A note is for reading. A tag is for finding. If you know something about a station that its name does not say, such as the team it carries or the show you love on it, give it a tag, and every search will find the station by that word.

  1. Arrow to the station, press Shift+F10, and choose Edit Station Tags…. It is on the station rows here, in Search Stations, on your favorites in the main window and in the Favorites Manager.
  2. Type your tags in Your tags, with a comma between each one. For example: Detroit Tigers, MLB, baseball.
  3. Below that, Directory tags shows the tags the station directory already gave it. You cannot change those, but they are searched too.
  4. Choose OK. Escape closes the box and changes nothing.

Your tags are read in the details box and in Station Details, just after the directory’s tags. To remove them, empty the box and choose OK. A favorite keeps its tags with it, so they come along in a backup and in Export My Setup. A station that is not a favorite keeps its tags too, and they move with it if you add it to your favorites later.

To tag the station you are listening to, open the Command Palette from the Help menu and choose Edit Tags for the Playing Station.

Find in this folder, step by step

Above the tree is a search box. It searches from the folder you are on, downward.

  1. In the tree, highlight the folder you want to search, such as one iHeart genre, one state or a podcast show.
  2. Press Ctrl+F. Your cursor moves to the Find in this folder box (Alt+I), and you should hear “Find in this folder.”
  3. Type what you want and press Enter.
  4. The matches take the place of the folder’s contents, and your cursor moves to the first one. You should hear how many matched.
  5. Press Escape in the box, or clear the text, to go back to the folder you searched from.

Find picks the quickest way to search where you are standing, and tells you which it used:

If you type a web address instead of a name, Find looks on that website for its stream, wherever you are standing. See “Find a station by its web address” below.

Search All Sources, step by step

Search All Sources… at the top of the tree asks every directory at once.

  1. Press Ctrl+B, then Home to go to Search All Sources….
  2. Press Enter. A box opens: “What are you looking for? Every source is searched at once.”
  3. Type a name, a call sign or a genre and press Enter.
  4. You should hear that it is searching. After about four seconds you hear “Still searching”, and you keep hearing it until the answer arrives.
  5. The answer appears as a Search Results branch under Search All Sources, with your cursor on it. Open it and arrow through the results.
  6. To close the results, press Delete on the Search Results branch, or choose Close Search Results from its menu. Nothing is lost.

Worth knowing:

Find a station by its web address

No directory has every station. OJ 99.1 (WWOJ, Avon Park, Florida) is in neither TuneIn nor RadioBrowser, so no spelling of its name will find it. But its website has the stream on it, and that is enough.

  1. Press Ctrl+B, then Ctrl+F to reach the Find box. Search All Sources and the Search Stations window work too.
  2. Type the station’s web address as you would in a browser, such as oj991.com. You do not need https://.
  3. Press Enter. Quill Radio fetches that one page and finds the stream its player uses.
  4. You should hear that one stream was found. A Website row appears, named for the station. Play it, favorite it or open its menu like any other row.

This looks at one page; it is not a web search. If you type something that is not an address, such as “jazz”, the directories are searched as usual. An address with no stream on it gets “Nothing found on that website.”

Search Stations

Station > Search Stations… (Ctrl+F) opens a search with separate fields for name, genre and country. The window’s title is Internet Radio, and Go To calls it Find Stations.

You can say a search instead of typing it. Quill Radio does not listen to the microphone itself, and has no speech engine of its own. Edit > Dictate Here (Ctrl+F11) asks QUILL Transcribe, the QuillVille app that types what you say into any program, to start dictating into the box you are in. QUILL Transcribe does the listening and types the words; Quill Radio only asks.

  1. Press Ctrl+F. You hear “Internet Radio”, and your cursor is in Station name. Tab to another box, such as the genre, if you prefer.
  2. Press Ctrl+F11. If QUILL Transcribe is running, you hear it start, with its own “Dictation on” and start sound. Quill Radio says nothing, so you hear it once.
  3. Say what you are looking for, for example “jazz”, and pause. The word is typed into the box.
  4. Stop dictating: press QUILL Transcribe’s start and stop key (Alt+Shift+Backslash unless you changed it), or say “stop dictation”.
  5. Press Enter to search.

Ctrl+F11 works in any text box in Quill Radio, in the main window and in its other windows, such as Search Stations. Put the cursor in the box first: pressing the key does not move the focus, and QUILL Transcribe types wherever the focus is.

What happens when you press Ctrl+F11.

Which speech engine listens. Because it is QUILL Transcribe dictating, the engine is the one you chose in QUILL Transcribe, and everything you set up there applies here too: My Words and Phrases, the command word, the dictation commands, the words it must never type, and the field lock. There is nothing to set up in Quill Radio. To see or change the engine, open QUILL Transcribe (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F10 from Quill Radio) and choose Model > Choose Model… (Ctrl+M in QUILL Transcribe). Moonshine, the one it starts with, is built in, needs nothing downloaded, is the fastest and punctuates for you, in English. Whisper is built in too, a little slower, worth trying if Moonshine mishears you, and also writes Spanish. Larger models, such as NVIDIA Parakeet or Nemotron, make fewer mistakes for more work; they are free downloads from Model > Model Library… (Ctrl+L in QUILL Transcribe), and Choose Model shows which one is recommended for your computer. QUILL Transcribe’s own guide explains each one in full.

Your privacy. Quill Radio never records your voice and never sends it anywhere. With the built-in engines and the downloaded models, QUILL Transcribe keeps your speech on your computer as well. Your voice leaves the computer only if you chose OpenAI or a speech provider with your own account as the engine in QUILL Transcribe; it asks before the first time it sends anything, and No is the answer it starts on.

Limits. Ctrl+F11 in Quill Radio starts dictation but does not stop it: stop with QUILL Transcribe’s key, or say “stop dictation”. Dictate Here types into a box; Quill Radio’s own commands are still keys and menus, so saying “play” does not play a station. Dictate Here is on the Edit menu of every copy of Quill Radio from QUILL Transcribe’s release on 1 November 2026, whether or not QUILL Transcribe is installed yet. QUILL Transcribe is a separate, free download.

Search by name, tag and country, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+F. You should hear “Internet Radio”, then the Station name field (Alt+M), where your cursor is.
  2. Type a name, a frequency or a call sign, such as WQXR or 105.7.
  3. Press Enter. You should hear how many results came back, and your cursor moves to the first one.
  4. Arrow through the results. Each row names the station and the directory it came from, such as “via iHeart”.
  5. Press Enter on a result to play it. Press Enter again to stop it.
  6. To keep it, Tab to Add to Favorites and press Space.
  7. Press Escape to close the window. The station keeps playing.

To narrow things down:

After the results, Tab reaches a Station details box, the status line, Radio volume, Mute, Play (reads Stop while the selected station plays), Add to Favorites, More Stations, Add Custom Station…, Find Streams from a Website… and Refresh. In the Music Genres category, Refresh reads the genre list again. Shift+F10 on a result offers Play or Stop, Add to or Remove from Favorites, Open Website, Edit Website… and Report Bad Station….

An edited address is a local correction in this Radio profile; it does not change the directory’s station record. Choose Edit Website… again and leave the address blank to remove the correction and use the directory’s address again. The same Edit Website… action is on a station’s menu in Manage Favorite Stations. If a station has no stable identity to save against, Quill Radio says it cannot save that correction.

The window’s menus are Go (Alt+G, with Close, Ctrl+W), Station (Alt+S) and Window (Alt+W). The Genre box also uses the letter G, so if Alt+G lands on the Genre box, press Alt on its own and arrow to the Go menu.

What a search does for you

Search Sources, step by step

Search Sources decides which directories Search Stations asks. There are fourteen, all on to begin with: Radio Browser, TuneIn, iHeart, SomaFM, SHOUTcast, Live365, TV, Radio Paradise, 181.FM, laut.fm, NOAA Weather Radio, Radio Reading Service, Spotify and YouTube. “YouTube in Search Stations” in Chapter 11 says what the YouTube one finds.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U (Station > Search Sources…). The Search Sources window opens with your cursor in the Sources list.
  2. Arrow through the list. Each row says whether it is on first, such as “On. TuneIn.”
  3. To change one, Tab to Turn On or Off and press Space. You should hear the source’s name and “on” or “off”.
  4. Turn On All turns every source on. Reset to Default puts things back as they started.
  5. Press Escape or choose Close. Quill Radio tells you which sources it will search.

A source that is off is never asked by Search Stations, so searching is quicker and quieter. The libraries are not on this list.

Choosing your sources

Choose Browse Sources, step by step

If Browse Stations has branches you never use, you can tidy them away.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O (Station > Choose Browse Sources…). The Browse Sources window opens with your cursor in the Branches list.
  2. Arrow through the list. Each row says whether it is on first, such as “On. LibriVox Audiobooks. Public-domain audiobooks, by chapter.” The rows are in groups: Yours, Stations, Accessibility, Spoken word, Music, Explore.
  3. Press Enter or Space on a row to turn it on or off. You should hear the source’s name and “on” or “off”. The Turn On or Off button does the same.
  4. Turn On All turns every source on. Reset to Default goes back to what a new installation shows.
  5. Press Escape or choose Close. Your choice is already saved. If Browse Stations is open, it rebuilds at once, and you hear “Browse Stations has been updated.”

A branch that is off is not in the tree at all, and is never contacted while you browse. A source added in a later version shows up unless you hide it.

You can also tidy up from the tree itself: press Delete on a top-level branch, or press Shift+F10 on it and choose Hide This Source. Reset Sources to Default is on the same menu.

Source Options, step by step

Two sources have options of their own: Radio Paradise and the SHOUTcast Directory.

  1. In Browse Stations, arrow to the top-level Radio Paradise or SHOUTcast Directory row.
  2. Press Shift+F10 and choose Source Options….
  3. A list opens. For Radio Paradise Quality, choose which quality comes first for each channel (320 kbps to begin with). For SHOUTcast Stations to Show, choose everything the directory lists (the starting choice) or only stations someone is listening to right now.
  4. Press Enter. Quill Radio reads your choice back and reloads the branch.

My Servers, step by step

A church, school or community station that runs its own Icecast or SHOUTcast server is often in no directory at all. You can add it yourself.

  1. Press Ctrl+B, arrow to My Servers and press Right Arrow.
  2. Arrow to Add a Server… and press Enter. A box opens. If an address is on your clipboard, it is already filled in.
  3. Type or paste the server’s address, including its port number, and press Enter.
  4. Quill Radio checks it before saving. You should hear, for example, “Added http://stream.example.org:8000. It has 4 stations.” An address that answers with nothing is not saved, because that nearly always means a wrong address or a missing port number.
  5. Open the server’s folder. Every stream is there, with what is playing on it right now.

The Station Catalog

Quill Radio comes with a directory of working stations built in: more than 62,000 stations from 240 countries, plus SomaFM and the Project Gutenberg audiobook shelf. It keeps them in a catalog on your own computer. That makes a real difference:

What is stored, and what is not

The catalog holds Radio Browser’s stations and every way of browsing them, SomaFM, and the Project Gutenberg audiobook shelf. Everything else stays live and needs the internet, each for a reason: Apple Podcasts (Apple’s terms do not allow storing its charts), TuneIn (its folders may not be stored), iHeart (its terms do not allow storing its listings), the Internet Archive (far too large), LibriVox (live for now), and the music charts (out of date the moment they are stored).

In Browse Stations, the details box tells you for each branch: “Answers from your catalog, updated 2 hours ago” or “Asks the internet each time; nothing is stored.”

How it stays fresh

There are three ways, and you can switch each one off in Preferences:

If a directory is down, all you lose is a little freshness, never your stations. If a source suddenly answers with nothing, Quill Radio treats it as an outage, not as every station closing. A station that disappears is hidden straight away, but only forgotten after two weeks. Popular and Trending are always fetched live first. When the directory cannot answer, the catalog’s copy steps in, and every such row says how old it is, such as “as of 2 hours ago”.

Station Catalog Status, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (View > Station Catalog Status…). Your cursor is in the Sources and what is stored list (Alt+S).
  2. Arrow through it. Each source tells you what is stored and how fresh it is, such as “Radio Browser: 62,375 stations, updated 2 hours ago”, or why it is live only, such as “iHeart: live only; its terms do not allow storing its listings”.
  3. Choose Update Now (Alt+U) to bring it up to date now. The window closes and the update runs.
  4. Or choose Rebuild From Shipped Snapshot (Alt+R) to put back the catalog that came with Quill Radio. It does not ask first. Your favorites and your own stations are never touched.
  5. Press Escape to close.

Your favorites, your own stations, your servers and your YouTube channels are kept in their own files, and nothing to do with the catalog ever reads or changes them. If you turn the catalog off in Preferences, browsing goes back to live only, with nothing stored and nothing fetched in the background. Safe Mode never updates the catalog, though it may read it.

Station Details: find a station by its call sign, frequency or slogan

Sometimes you know a station by something other than its name: its call sign (KUOW), its frequency (94.9), its slogan (“home of the Seahawks”), or the city it broadcasts from. Station Details searches all of those at once, and tells you everything it knows about each station.

What it knows comes from a station pack: one file of station facts that the Quill Radio project builds and signs. Quill Radio checks the signature before it reads a single fact, and refuses a pack that is not signed by the project, so nobody can slip wrong details in. Today the pack is built only from information Quill Radio already ships: the Community Picks list and the station directory in your catalog. Richer facts from other sources will come once the project has agreed how it may use them.

Station Details, step by step

  1. Press Alt+Shift+I (View > Station Details…). The first line says how many stations the installed pack covers and when it was built, or that no pack is installed yet. Your cursor is in the Find stations box (Alt+F).
  2. Type what you know, such as 94.9, 98.5 FM, KIRO, Seahawks or jazz Seattle. The Results list (Alt+R) fills as you type.
  3. Press Enter to move to the results. Each row says why it matched, for example “KIRO-FM, matched slogan: Official home of the Seattle Seahawks”. If nothing matched as you typed, Enter also looks for stations whose name is spelled close to what you typed, such as Jazz24 for “Jaz24”; if there are none, Quill Radio says that nothing matches.
  4. Arrow through the results. The Details box (Alt+I) shows the highlighted station, one labelled line per fact, such as “Call sign: KUOW” and “Frequency: 94.9 FM”, then where those facts came from. You can read it line by line, or select and copy any of it.
  5. Press Escape to close.

If a station is playing when you open Station Details and the pack knows it, that station is already in the list with “playing now”, and its details are showing.

The details are read only. Nothing in this window changes your favorites or your own stations. The pack’s facts are kept on this computer beside the station catalog, and are replaced as a whole when a newer signed pack arrives with a Quill Radio update. If a pack is refused, Quill Radio says so once and keeps the details you already had.

Adding your own stations

Found a stream address on a station’s website, or been sent one by a friend? You can add any station yourself, even one no directory knows about.

Add Custom Station, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+N (Station > Add Custom Station…). Add Custom Station opens with your cursor in Station name (Alt+N).
  2. Type the name you want to hear.
  3. Tab to Stream URL (Alt+U) and paste the stream’s address.
  4. If you like, Tab to Homepage (Alt+H) and Tags (separated by commas).
  5. Tab to Test and press Space to hear the stream before you save it.
  6. Choose OK (Enter) to save. You should hear that the station was added. If you already have it, Quill Radio tells you.

If OK does nothing, something is missing or not quite right. The reason is in the text just above the buttons. It is not spoken by itself, so use your screen reader’s command to read the whole window (Insert+B in NVDA and JAWS) to hear it.

Four kinds of link get extra help:

Any other address is saved exactly as you typed it.

When a station will not play

Some stations are listed with an address that no longer works, often because the real stream is hidden behind a player on the station’s own website. Rather than just giving up, Quill Radio tries a few things in turn:

  1. It looks the address up again, in case the player moved servers.
  2. It fetches a fresh address from the directory.
  3. If Recover failed streams from the station’s website is on in Preferences (it starts on), it looks at the station’s own website, follows a “Listen Live” link, and recognises Triton players there.

If it finds one clear stream, it plays it and remembers it for that favorite. If it finds several, it tells you how many, and you can choose one in Find Streams from a Website. It tries once per station each time you run Quill Radio, and not in Safe Mode.

Find Streams from a Website, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S (Station > Find Streams from a Website…). The window opens with your cursor in Website address (Alt+W).
  2. Type or paste the address of the station’s page and press Enter. The Scan button does the same.
  3. When the scan finishes, the status line tells you how many streams it found. Press Tab to the Candidates found list. Each row gives the link and why it was picked out.
  4. Arrow to one. Tab to Test and press Space to hear it. The button reads Stop Test while it plays.
  5. When you find the right one, Tab to Use This Link… and press Space. Add Custom Station opens with the link filled in. Give it a name and choose OK.
  6. Press Escape to close the window.

Enter on the list does nothing; use the buttons.

This works for many stations whose Listen Live button is a web player. For Triton Digital and StreamTheWorld players, including the whole player.listenlive.co network, Quill Radio reads the station’s call letters and looks up the real stream through the provider’s own public service. When a station has both an MP3 and an AAC stream, you are offered both. The player’s own help article, which used to appear in the list, no longer does. It also recognises iHeart and TuneIn station pages and SecureNet players, and offers their real stream first. A web page is never offered to you as something to play.

Import Stations from Playlist, step by step

Import reads M3U, M3U8, PLS, XSPF and ASX playlists. The “Listen Live” link a station gives you is often a PLS or XSPF file, and several reading services publish ASX.

  1. Press Ctrl+I (Station > Import Stations from Playlist…). A file window opens: “Choose a playlist to import”.
  2. Find the file and choose Open.
  3. The Import Stations window tells you how many stations it found and asks which folder they go in. Your cursor is in the Folder box.
  4. Choose a folder from the list, or type a new one such as News/Local, and it is made for you. “(Top level)” means no folder.
  5. Choose OK.
  6. If some of the stations are already in your favorites, Quill Radio tells you how many and asks whether to skip those or import everything.
  7. You should hear how many stations were imported, and which folder they went into.

Station names come from the playlist itself. A bare address is named after the website it comes from. An M3U8 file that is really a live stream, not a list of stations, is recognised and politely refused. XSPF and ASX files are read safely, and a file built to grow to an enormous size is refused out loud.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now wander Browse Stations, look up what a row offers, leave yourself a note on any station, search one folder or every directory at once, and find a station from nothing more than its web address. You know how to choose your sources, add your own servers and stations, and what the catalog on your computer does for you. Next, Chapter 7, Keeping your favorites, shows you how to organise everything you have found. The tutorials in the Finding something to listen to track are a friendly way to practise this chapter.

Chapter 7: Keeping your favorites

Your favorites are the heart of Quill Radio: the short list of stations you actually listen to. This chapter shows you how to put them in folders and in your own order, play them without even opening the list, and keep them safe with a backup or take them to another computer.

The tutorials Folders, and an order of your own and Ten stations, no list at all, in the Making it yours track, practise this chapter.

Putting your favorites in your own order

  1. In the favorites tree, arrow to a station.
  2. Press Alt+Shift+Up or Alt+Shift+Down to move it one place within its folder. Quill Radio tells you where it landed, naming the station it moved past.
  3. If the list was sorted A to Z, the first move switches it to your own order and says “Switched to manual order”. Your own order is never overwritten by a sorted view.

For a longer move:

  1. Arrow to the station you want to move. Press Shift+F10 and choose Mark for Move.
  2. Arrow to the station it should sit beside, even in another folder.
  3. Press Shift+F10 and choose Move Marked Above or Move Marked Below. The station moves there and joins that folder.

View > Sort Favorites chooses the order for the whole list: Ascending (A to Z) (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F4, where it starts), Descending (Z to A) (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F5), or Unsorted (manual order) (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F6). The menu shows the one you are using as checked.

View > Expand All Folders (Ctrl+Alt+E) and View > Collapse All Folders (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) open or close every folder at once.

Playing a favorite without the list

Once you have a handful of favorites, you can start them without arrowing at all.

A key that plays a favorite from anywhere

You can give any favorite its own system-wide key. It plays that station even when another program is in front, and Quill Radio stays where it is. No favorite has one until you choose it.

  1. In the favorites tree, or in Manage Favorites, arrow to the station and press Shift+F10.
  2. Choose System-Wide Key…. Type the key, such as Ctrl+Alt+PageUp, and press Enter. Leave the box empty to take a key away.
  3. You should hear the key and the station’s name. If the key cannot be used, Quill Radio says why and nothing changes: it needs Ctrl or Alt, it must not be a key another QUILL app or another favorite already uses, and it must not be held by another program on this computer.

The keys work while Quill Radio is running, including from the tray.

The Favorites Manager

Station > Manage Favorites… (Ctrl+Shift+M) opens Manage Favorite Stations, a full organizer. The main window’s tree can do most of the same things, so think of the Manager as the place for a big tidy-up.

Organize your favorites, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+M. Manage Favorite Stations opens with your cursor in Search favorites (Alt+K).
  2. To find something, type part of a name, country, language, tag, one of your own tags, or a folder name. A team or league works too: Tigers finds the favorite that carries the Detroit Tigers. The list below shrinks as you type into one flat list. Each station tells you its folder, and why it matched when its name does not say. Clear the box to see everything again.
  3. Press Tab to the Favorites and folders tree. Arrow to a station or folder.
  4. Press Enter to play a station. Press Enter on the playing station to stop it.
  5. With your cursor in the tree, press F2 to rename, Delete to remove (it asks first), or Ctrl+Shift+E for a new folder. These three keys only work while you are in the tree.
  6. Press Tab to reach the buttons, in this order: Play (reads Stop while that station plays), Remove, Move Up, Move Down, Move to Folder…, Mark for Move, Move Above, Move Below, New Folder…, Rename…, Delete Folder… and Remove All…. Press Space on one to use it.
  7. Press Escape, Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 to close the Manager.

Some buttons in this window share an Alt letter, so Tab to the buttons rather than using Alt keys.

Removing several favorites at once

In the main window’s favorites tree, or in the Manager’s tree:

  1. Arrow to a station and press . (period, or the decimal point on the number pad). You hear “Marked” and how many are marked. The row now ends with “(marked)”, so you hear it again as you arrow past.
  2. Mark as many as you like. Press . again on a marked row to unmark it.
  3. Press Delete. One question asks, for example, “Delete 5 stations?”, with No already chosen. Choose Yes, and you hear how many were deleted. Your cursor lands on the next station that is left.

While anything is marked, Delete removes the marked stations, not the one under your cursor. Ctrl+Shift+Delete clears every mark. Shift+F10 on a station has the same three: Mark for Deleting, Remove N Marked… and Clear Marks. Folders cannot be marked: deleting a folder keeps its stations, which is a different question.

Folders

Reordering

Listening from a folder

Press Shift+F10 on a folder for Play All in Folder, Shuffle Folder, Export This Folder…, Rename Folder… and Delete Folder….

  1. Choose Play All in Folder. The folder’s first station plays, and Quill Radio remembers the rest.
  2. To move to the next station in the folder, press Ctrl+Shift+P, type next station, and choose Next Station in Folder. Previous Station in Folder goes back. These two are only in the Command Palette.
  3. At either end, Quill Radio tells you, rather than going round again.

Shuffle sets one order and sticks to it, so Previous takes you back through the same stations. A folder always includes everything inside it: playing “News” plays “News/Local” too, but never a separate folder called “Newsroom”. Export This Folder… writes just that folder to an M3U file.

On a station, the menu offers Play, Rename Station… (F2), Remove… (Delete), Move Up, Move Down, Mark for Move, Move to Folder… and Note to Self…, plus Move Above and Move Below once a station is marked.

Other things to know

Export Favorites to Playlist, step by step

Want your favorites in another media player, or to share them with a friend?

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+X (Station > Export Favorites to Playlist…). A file window opens: “Export favorites to a playlist”. The suggested name is quill-radio-favorites.m3u.
  2. Choose a folder and a name, then choose Save.
  3. You should hear, for example, “Exported 42 stations to quill-radio-favorites.m3u.”

Export writes an M3U file, which almost every media player can open. Each station is written with the name you see and its stream address, so importing the file brings the same stations back. M3U has no folders, so your folders are not carried across. To export one folder, use Export This Folder… in Manage Favorite Stations.

Backing up and restoring

A backup is a single .qrbackup file. It is worth making one now and then, and always before you reset or replace a computer.

What a backup holds

It does not hold passwords or sign-ins (private podcast feeds, server passwords, your YouTube sign-in), downloaded podcast episodes, or the music and audiobook files your Local Media list points to. You type the passwords again on the new computer.

Your favorites, settings and podcasts are never quietly left out. If one of them cannot be read, the backup is not saved, and Quill Radio tells you which one and why.

Back up, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+U (Station > Back Up Stations and Settings…).
  2. If you have recordings, Quill Radio asks whether to include them, and says how many there are, how much space they take and which folder they are in. If some are stored only in OneDrive, it says how many; Quill Radio asks Windows to download them as it backs up, so stay connected to the internet. Choose Yes or No.
  3. A file window opens: “Save Quill Radio Backup”. Choose a folder and a name, then Save.
  4. The status bar counts through the recordings as they are copied. When it finishes you hear where the backup was saved and what it holds.
  5. If anything was left out, a message says how many and asks Show what was left out, and why? Choose Yes for a list with one line per file and the reason: stored only in OneDrive and not downloaded, in use by another program, a folder path too long for Windows, or could not be read. What to do is under the list, and Copy List copies it. The same list goes into Help > Recent Problems… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P), so you can find it later.

Backup files are never copied into a backup as recordings, so it is fine to keep your backups in the same folder as your recordings.

Restore, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W (Station > Restore from Backup…).
  2. A file window opens: “Restore Quill Radio Backup”. Choose the .qrbackup file and choose Open.
  3. A question tells you what the backup holds and when it was made, and warns you: “This replaces your current stations and settings.” No is already chosen, so pressing Enter does nothing. To restore, press Y, or Tab to Yes and press Enter.
  4. Quill Radio restores the files and reloads, so you have them straight away. Recordings go into the folder named in Record > Recording Settings… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I). A recording that is already there is left alone, so restoring onto a computer that still has your OneDrive folder does not copy everything twice.

Moving to a new or reset computer

Your favorites, settings and podcasts live on this computer, in your Windows user folder, not in OneDrive. A reset removes them. Your recordings live wherever Record > Recording Settings… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I) says under Destination folder; if that is a OneDrive folder, OneDrive keeps them.

Before the reset:

  1. Make a backup: Station > Back Up Stations and Settings… (Ctrl+Shift+U). Save it into your OneDrive folder.
  2. If your recordings are already in OneDrive, you can answer No to including them; they are safe there. If they are on this computer only, answer Yes, or copy the recordings folder to OneDrive or a USB drive yourself.
  3. Check the backup is fully uploaded: in File Explorer, the backup file’s Status column should say it is available or synced, not that it is still uploading. Opening onedrive.com in a browser and finding the file there is the surest check.
  4. If you were told anything was left out, read the list and do what it says before you reset.

After the reset:

  1. Install Quill Radio and sign in to OneDrive. Wait for your OneDrive folder to appear.
  2. If your recordings are in OneDrive, right-click that folder in File Explorer and choose Always keep on this device, so they are on the computer and not only in the cloud.
  3. In Quill Radio, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W (Station > Restore from Backup…), choose your backup file and answer Yes.
  4. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I (Record > Recording Settings…) and check Destination folder (Alt+D) is your OneDrive recordings folder. The backup brings this setting back, but the path can change if your Windows user name changed; use Browse… to choose the folder again if needed.
  5. Retype any podcast or server passwords.

Moving your setup to another machine

Getting a new computer? You can take everything you have built with you in one file.

Help > Export My Setup… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X) writes one .quillsetup file with your podcast subscriptions, folders and playlists, favorite stations and saved places, settings, your Go To order, your Quick Actions order, scheduled recordings, bookmarks and any keys you changed. Help > Import My Setup… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N) puts them on the new computer.

  1. On the old computer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X. A question tells you what will be saved and that passwords are not included. Choose to carry on.
  2. Choose a folder and a name, and save. Copy the file to the new computer.
  3. On the new computer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N and choose the file.
  4. A question tells you what the file holds, and says plainly that importing replaces what is on this computer. Choose to carry on.
  5. Close Quill Radio and open it again, so everything is read in fresh.

Both Export and Import count what they did. Export My Setup is shared with QUILL Cast, so on a computer without Cast some items, such as Cast’s podcast settings, were never made and have nothing to carry; that is what “skipped” means there, and nothing is lost. When anything is left out, a message offers Show what was left out, and why?, which names every item and its reason.

The file is an ordinary ZIP with a list inside saying what it holds. Passwords are not in it. Sign-ins for private podcast feeds, server passwords and unlock codes stay on the old computer, and you type them again on the new one.

Sharing data with QUILL

An installed Quill Radio keeps its things in the same place as QUILL and QUILL Cast (%APPDATA%\Quill): your favorites (with their folders, your names for them and each station’s volume), history, recordings, schedules, timers and settings. A station you favorite here is a favorite in QUILL’s radio too. Uninstalling Quill Radio never deletes any of it.

What that means for you:

A portable copy keeps its own things in its data folder and shares nothing with the computer it runs on.

If you would like your data kept somewhere else, such as a folder that OneDrive or Dropbox keeps in step across your computers, use Data Folder… in Preferences. See “Preferences” in Chapter 14.

What you learned, and where to go next

Your favorites are now just the way you like them: in folders, in your own order, and a single key away with Alt+1 to Alt+0. You can export them, back them up, restore them, and take your whole setup to another computer. Next, Chapter 8, Recording, shows you how to keep a copy of a show, now or later. The tutorial Back it up, move it, and keep it working, in the Living with it track, goes with the second half of this chapter.

Chapter 8: Recording

Recording means you never have to miss a show. You can record what is on now, record a different station while you listen to something else, book a recording for tonight or every week, and record several stations at once. Everything you need for recording comes with Quill Radio.

The Recording track of the tutorials covers this chapter: Record what is on now, Book a show that has not started yet, Record several stations at once, Live in the Recordings list and When a recording breaks.

Record what is on now

  1. While a station plays, press Ctrl+R (Record > Record Now / Stop Recording).
  2. You should hear “Recording started” and the station’s name, over the start-recording sound.
  3. The Record cell in the status bar now reads Stop Recording, with the time so far.
  4. Press Ctrl+R again to stop. You should hear “Stopping recording”, then that it was saved, with the file’s name.

Ctrl+R follows what you are listening to. If the station you are hearing is being recorded, Ctrl+R stops that recording. If not, it starts one. A recording of a different station, running in the background, is never stopped by Ctrl+R.

Record a different station, step by step

Record Station records any favorite for as long as you choose, while you listen to something else, or to nothing at all.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+R (Record > Record Station…). The Record Station window opens.
  2. Choose the station in Station (Alt+T). Your favorites are listed, and so is the station playing now if it is not a favorite.
  3. Set Duration (minutes) (Alt+D), from 1 to 1,440. It starts at 60.
  4. Choose Start Recording (Enter). You should hear “Recording started:”, the station and the minutes.

You can start as many as you like, and they all record at once.

Recording several stations at once

You can record two shows that overlap, or record one station while you listen to another. Each recording looks after itself, with its own connection, and recovers on its own if something goes wrong. Scheduled recordings that overlap all start as planned.

To record two stations at once:

  1. Play the first station and press Ctrl+R. You should hear “Recording started” and its name.
  2. Press Ctrl+Alt+R for Record Station. Choose the second station, set the minutes, and choose Start Recording.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+R to open Radio Recordings. Both rows read Recording, and the line under the list tells you how many are running.
  4. To stop one, select its row, Tab to Stop Recording and press Space. To stop them all, press Ctrl+Alt+X.

Good to know:

Recording file names use your computer’s time zone, even if it changes while Quill Radio is running.

Schedule a recording, step by step

The one thing to remember: fill in the details first, then choose Add Schedule last.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+S (Record > Schedule Recording…). The Schedule Recording window opens. If something is playing, that station is already filled in.
  2. If you have favorites, the Favorite station list (Alt+F) is there. Its first row is “(type the details below)”. Choose a favorite, and its name and stream are filled in for you.
  3. Or type them yourself in Station name (Alt+M) and Stream URL (Alt+U).
  4. Tab to Repeats and choose Once, Daily or Weekly.
  5. For Weekly, Tab to On day (weekly only) and choose the day. For Once, type the date in Date (once only) (Alt+C), written as YYYY-MM-DD.
  6. Type the start time in Time (7:30 PM or 19:30) (Alt+T).
  7. If the show’s time is given in another time zone, choose that zone in Time zone (Alt+Z). Otherwise leave it on “(local time)”.
  8. Set the length in Duration – hours (Alt+H, 0 to 24) and and minutes (Alt+I, 0 to 59). A three-hour show is 3 and 0.
  9. Choose Add Schedule (Alt+A). You should hear “Scheduled recording added for” and the station. Your cursor moves to your new entry in the list, and the form clears, ready for the next one.

If something is missing, the status line tells you what, and nothing is added.

Your scheduled recordings

The list at the top, Scheduled recordings (Alt+G), is in the order they will next record. Each row shows the station’s server in brackets, so two similar entries are easy to tell apart. With an entry selected:

To remove several schedules at once, press . (period) on each one. You hear “Marked” and how many are marked, and the row ends with “(marked)”. Then press Delete: one question asks, for example, “Delete 4 schedules?”, with No already chosen, and you hear “Deleted 4 schedules.” Your cursor lands on the next schedule that is left. Ctrl+Shift+Delete clears every mark. A single Delete with nothing marked still removes the selected entry straight away; the question is only for several, because one schedule is quick to add again and a dozen are not.

Edit, Duplicate and Enable or Disable work on the selected entry only. If schedules are marked, the first of them you use says so once: “That used the selected row only; 2 rows are still marked for Delete.”

Close the window with Escape or Ctrl+W. Its menus are Schedule (Alt+D), Station (Alt+S) and Window (Alt+W).

Making sure it happens

Quill Radio must be running for a scheduled recording to start. Running in the tray counts. A recording is due from its start time until the end of its length, so if Quill Radio starts a few minutes late, it records the rest. A show whose whole time passed while Quill Radio was closed is missed, and the next time you open it, Quill Radio tells you, naming up to three.

To make sure the computer is awake, look at Keep the computer awake before a scheduled recording and Wake the computer for a scheduled recording in Preferences.

You can also schedule from Browse Stations: Schedule Recording… on a live station’s menu opens this window with that station filled in. The ACB Media schedule can book a programme for you too. See Chapter 12.

Recording Settings, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I (Record > Recording Settings…).
  2. Change whichever of these you want:
    • Format (Alt+F): MP3 (where it starts), OGG Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, or Raw stream – exactly as sent, no re-encoding (lossless).
    • Quality (bitrate) (Alt+Q): 96 to 320 kbps, starting at 192. It is hidden for the lossless formats.
    • Destination folder (Alt+D): where recordings go. Blank means Music\Quill Radio Recordings in your user folder, or the Recordings folder of a portable copy. Browse… lets you choose.
    • Temporary folder (while recording) (Alt+T): optional. A recording is written here and moved to the destination when it finishes, so a half-finished file never appears among your recordings. Blank records straight into the destination.
    • Filename pattern (Alt+P): it starts as {station} - {date} {time}.
    • Maximum recording length (minutes) (Alt+M): a safety limit, 180 to begin with.
    • Maximum simultaneous recordings (Alt+S): 0, meaning no limit, to begin with.
    • Under If the connection drops: Reconnect and keep recording automatically (Alt+K, on), Reconnect attempts (Alt+A, 5) and Seconds between attempts (Alt+C, 10).
    • Apply Sound Enhancements to recordings (Alt+E): off, so recordings are kept exactly as the station sent them. Turn it on to record the sound with your enhancements, for every kind of recording.
    • Split the recording at each song change (Alt+N): off to begin with. Turn it on to get one file per song instead of one long file. See “Splitting a recording into songs” below.
  3. Choose OK. You should hear “Recording settings saved”.

Raw stream saves exactly what the station sends, without changing it, so nothing at all is lost. The file type matches the stream: .mp3, .aac, .ogg, .opus or .flac, and anything unusual goes in a Matroska .mka file. Bitrate and Sound Enhancements do not apply to a raw recording.

Radio Recordings, step by step

Radio Recordings shows every recording in one list: the ones being recorded now, the finished ones, and the scheduled ones.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+R (Record > Recordings…). Radio Recordings opens with your cursor in the list, newest first.
  2. Arrow through the list. Each row gives the name and a status, Recording, Recorded or Scheduled, then the size and date. A recording being made grows as you watch. Every format is listed, including Raw stream recordings (.aac, .opus, .mka and the rest). A finished recording that could not be moved out of the temporary recording folder is listed too, with “still in the temporary recording folder”, so it is never somewhere this list cannot see.
  3. Press Enter on a finished recording to play it. Press Enter again to stop. While it plays, Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down change its volume.
  4. Tab to the buttons: Play (reads Stop while the selected recording plays), Stop Recording (on a row being recorded), Stop All Recordings (when two or more are running), Open in Folder (shows the file in File Explorer), Remove… and Refresh.
  5. Press Delete to remove a finished recording. No is already chosen; press Y to delete. Your cursor lands on the next recording. If you change your mind, Ctrl+Z in the main window brings it back.
  6. Press Escape to close. Recordings keep going.

Removing several recordings at once

The same three keys as the favorites tree (see “Removing several favorites at once” in Chapter 7):

  1. Arrow to a finished recording and press . (period, or the decimal point on the number pad). You hear “Marked. 1 marked.” and the row’s name now ends with “(marked)”, so you hear it again as you arrow past.
  2. Mark as many as you like. Press . again on a marked row to unmark it; you hear “Unmarked” and how many are still marked.
  3. Press Delete, or choose Remove…. One question asks, for example, “Delete 3 recordings?”, with No already chosen. Choose Yes and you hear “Deleted 3 recordings.” Your cursor lands on the nearest recording that is left, and one Ctrl+Z in the main window brings all three back.

Ctrl+Shift+Delete clears every mark and says how many it cleared.

For example, after a week of scheduled shows you might arrow down the list pressing . on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, then press Delete once and answer Yes: three files go, with one question instead of three.

Things to know:

The line under the list starts with what is happening, such as “Recording, 42 min left. Next: KFI at 11:00 tomorrow. 14 recorded. In D:\Music\Quill Radio Recordings.” If you have schedules but none of them will happen, it says “3 scheduled, none coming up”.

The list keeps itself up to date every couple of seconds, without losing your place. It has no Shift+F10 menu. Its menus are Recordings (Alt+R, with Close, Ctrl+W), Station and Window. To choose what each row says, see “What each row says” in Chapter 14.

Winamp keys in Radio Recordings

If Winamp’s classic keys are second nature to you, they work in the Radio Recordings list, with no Ctrl or Alt needed:

Key What it does
X Play the selected recording, or resume a paused one
C Pause or unpause
V, or Shift+V Stop
B Next recording: moves down the list and plays it
Z Previous recording
Left / Right Back or forward 5 seconds
Shift+Left / Shift+Right Back or forward 30 seconds
R Shuffle on or off
S Repeat: off, then all recordings, then this recording
Ctrl+V Stop after the current recording, once
T Say the time so far, or the time left; press again to swap
J Jump to a recording: type part of its name
Ctrl+J Jump to a time: type 90, 1:30 or 1:02:03
L Play the selected recording
Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down Volume up or down

Every key tells you what it did. Two things differ from Winamp: Ctrl+T is still What’s Playing, so the time is plain T; and Up and Down move through the list rather than changing the volume.

If you would rather type letters to jump through the list, turn the letter keys off with Winamp-style playback keys in the Recordings player in Preferences. Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down work either way.

If the internet hiccups during a recording

If the connection drops, Quill Radio waits and carries on in a numbered part file, using the reconnect settings in Recording Settings and telling you about each try. When the recording finishes, it joins the parts back into one file without a word, because the message at the end (see “When a recording ends”) already says where it is. Only a join that could not be done is said: “Kept 3 separate parts” and the reason.

When a recording ends

Every recording ends with one message, once, when it is really over. You do not hear “saved” while a recording is only between reconnects.

Every one of these messages is kept in Activity (Shift+F9) with the file name and Open Folder, and F9 says the newest one again. A recording that ended early is listed as partial, so it stands out from one that finished. A scheduled recording that could not start is kept there too, with its reason.

Cannot find a recording?

  1. Press Shift+F9 for Activity and look for the recording. Its entry has the file name and Open Folder, and says whether it ended early and why.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+R for Radio Recordings. It lists every recording, including Raw stream files and any left in the temporary recording folder.
  3. Check the Destination folder and Temporary folder (while recording) in Recording Settings, in case either was changed.
  4. A file name uses the time the recording started, not when it ended, and a recording that could not be joined is in numbered parts (“(part 2)” and so on).
  5. If none of that finds it, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 (Help > Get Help from Support…) and say which recording and when (see “Getting help from support”). Quill Radio’s log records when each recording started, every drop and reconnect, how it ended, and where each file landed.

Station adverts at the start of a recording

Many stations play an advert, or a short “you are listening to” message, to every new listener before the programme. A recording is a new listener, so it can begin with that advert instead of the programme you are hearing. And if the connection drops, the next part is a new listener too, so a second advert could land in the middle of your show.

Quill Radio takes these out by itself. There is nothing to set.

Splitting a recording into songs

Many music stations say the name of each song as it starts. With Split the recording at each song change turned on in Recording Settings (Alt+N), Quill Radio listens for those names while it records and, when the recording finishes, cuts it into one file per song, named after the song.

To try it:

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I (Record > Recording Settings…), press Alt+N to check Split the recording at each song change, and choose OK.
  2. Record as usual, with Ctrl+R, Record Station or a schedule.
  3. When the recording finishes you hear what happened, for example “Split KXYZ - 2026-10-17 20-00-00.mp3 into 12 songs, starting with KXYZ - 2026-10-17 20-00-00 - 01 Elton John - Your Song.mp3.”

Each file keeps the recording’s own name and adds a two-digit number and the song, so the songs sort in the order they played: KXYZ - 2026-10-17 20-00-00 - 02 Queen - Somebody to Love.mp3. Characters a file name cannot hold are left out, a song with no usable name is called “Untitled song”, and a name already in the folder gets “ (2)“ added.

Things to know:

If a recording was in progress when Quill Radio quit

A crash, a power cut or a forced restart can stop Quill Radio in the middle of a recording. The part already recorded is kept, and Quill Radio offers to record the rest.

The next time it starts, Quill Radio tidies its temporary folder, moving any finished file to your recordings folder. Then, if a recording was in progress and its planned end was no more than ten minutes ago, a window titled Resume Recording asks, for example:

A recording of WQXR was in progress until 2026-09-26 09:00:00. Resume it for the remaining 12 minute(s)?

  1. If the whole question was not read, use your screen reader’s command to read the window.
  2. If you want Quill Radio to remember your answer from now on, press Alt+D to check Don’t ask me again first.
  3. Choose Resume (Enter) to record the minutes that are left, or Skip (Escape) to leave it. Resume records from the same station.

If several recordings were interrupted, one window, Resume Recordings, covers them all. It lists them, asks “Resume all of them for their remaining time?”, and offers Resume All and Skip All.

To change your mind later:

  1. Press Ctrl+, to open Preferences.
  2. Tab to Interrupted recordings at launch.
  3. Choose Ask each time (where it starts), Always resume them or Never resume them.
  4. Choose OK.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now record what is on, record another station in the background, record several at once, and book a show for later, once, daily or weekly. You know where your recordings live, how to play them with ordinary or Winamp keys, and what Quill Radio does when the internet or the computer lets you down. Next, Chapter 9, Podcasts, books, video and more, goes beyond radio. If you would like a hand booking your first show, the tutorial Book a show that has not started yet walks you through it.

Chapter 9: Podcasts, books, video and more

Quill Radio is not only radio. This chapter shows you how to follow podcasts, hand an episode over to QUILL Cast, save audiobooks and episodes to keep, watch television, find your local weather radio, and try Spotify. Your own music and audiobooks have a chapter of their own, Chapter 10.

Most of the More than radio track of the tutorials belongs to this chapter: Follow a podcast, Audiobooks, archives and free music, Watch television, NOAA Weather Radio, Save a copy, and find it on disk and Spotify, honestly.

Podcasts in Browse Stations

  1. Press Ctrl+B, arrow to Podcasts (Apple) and press Right Arrow. The first folder is Subscriptions, then the storefronts.
  2. Open a storefront, then Top Podcasts, or a genre.
  3. Arrow to a show and press Right Arrow to open it. Its episodes load from the publisher’s own feed.
  4. Press Enter on an episode to play it.
  5. To follow the show, go back to the show’s row, press Shift+F10 and choose Subscribe to This Podcast. It goes into the podcast library you share with QUILL Cast, so it is there the next time you open Cast.
  6. The shows you follow appear under Subscriptions, one folder each, with their newest episodes. The Subscriptions folder shows how many you follow, such as “Subscriptions (3)”, and each show tells you how many episodes you have not heard, such as “(2 unheard)”.

Worth knowing:

Apple’s categories and the Podcast Index

Each storefront under Podcasts (Apple) has Apple’s categories, such as History, Comedy or News, and most have subcategories, such as Comedy Fiction. Open one and you get Apple’s own top shows for that category, up to 200. Since 3.2.0 these are full lists. Before, a category only held the few shows that made the storefront’s overall chart, and some held none at all.

You do not have to wait while you look around. When you arrow through a long list, such as Top Podcasts, Quill Radio does not load every show you pass. It waits until you stop on one, so the list stays quick with your screen reader, and a big folder fills in all at once.

The Podcast Index branch is another way to find shows, with Trending Now, By Category and Search the Podcast Index…. It needs a free key. Quill Radio usually comes with one. If your copy has none, the branch shows a single row:

  1. Press Ctrl+B, arrow to Podcast Index and press Right Arrow.
  2. Arrow to Add a Podcast Index Key… and press Enter. The Podcast Index Credentials window opens.
  3. If you do not have a key yet, get one free at api.podcastindex.org/signup.
  4. Type or paste the key into Key and the secret into Secret, then press Save.

A key you enter in Quill Radio works in QUILL Cast too, and the other way round.

If a Podcast Index folder cannot load, Quill Radio tells you why, instead of saying “Nothing in here”. If the Podcast Index turns your key down, you hear that the key was not accepted, so you know to check it rather than your internet connection.

Checking your subscribed podcasts

Quill Radio can ask every show you follow whether it has new episodes.

To check everything now:

  1. In Browse Stations, open Podcasts (Apple) and highlight Subscriptions, or any folder in it.
  2. Press Shift+F10 and choose Check All Feeds Now. You should hear “Checking subscribed feeds…”, then one summary at the end.

This checks paused shows too. Refresh on a single show checks just that one, whatever your settings say.

Or let Quill Radio check by itself. In Preferences, under Podcasts:

  1. Press Ctrl+, and Tab to Check subscribed podcast feeds.
  2. Choose how often: Manually only (where it starts), or anything from every 15 minutes to once a day.
  3. If you like, check Check subscribed podcast feeds at launch too.
  4. Choose OK. Quill Radio tells you what it will now do.

Both start off, so Quill Radio never uses your internet allowance on a schedule you did not choose. Quill Radio and QUILL Cast share the how-often setting, so choosing it in one sets it in both. When Quill Radio checks by itself:

If you also use QUILL Cast, the two apps share a note of when each show was last checked, so they do not both ask the same podcast.

Podcasts with http and https addresses

Most podcast addresses start with “https”, which means the feed comes to you encrypted. Some older shows still use plain “http”, and Quill Radio plays those too. It reads feeds the same way QUILL Cast does:

If a feed says its security certificate could not be verified, check that this computer’s date and time are right and run Windows Update. At work, or with security software that inspects secure connections, ask whoever looks after the network.

Handing an episode to QUILL Cast

Quill Radio finds and plays podcast episodes. QUILL Cast, its sister app, is a full podcast player, with a play queue and an inbox. When you find an episode in Quill Radio that you want to hear later in Cast, you can hand it over in one step.

On an episode of a show you follow, in Browse Stations, the menu offers three ways to hand it over:

The same menu also has Mark Episode as Played or as Unplayed, and Cast picks that up too.

  1. Press Ctrl+B for Browse Stations. Open Podcasts (Apple), then Subscriptions, then a show.
  2. Arrow to an episode and press Shift+F10.
  3. Arrow to one of the three and press Enter. You hear what will happen.
  4. The next time you open QUILL Cast, the episode is where you asked.

Good to know: these are messages to Cast, not things done there and then. Cast carries them out the next time it opens, which is why you hear “will be”. Asking twice for the same episode counts once. A message Cast has not picked up within a month is dropped. These three only appear on episodes of shows you follow, because Cast needs to know the show.

Saving episodes, books and tracks

Where a source allows it, you can keep your own copy.

  1. In Browse Stations, highlight a book chapter, an archive recording, a Creative Commons track or a podcast episode.
  2. Press Shift+F10 and choose Download…. It joins the list of downloads, and you can carry on listening.
  3. On a book’s folder, choose Download All Files… to save every chapter into one folder, in order.
  4. Press Ctrl+Shift+J to open Downloads and see how it is going.

Where saving is not offered, asking tells you why, and the reasons differ. A live station has no file to save, so use Record Station instead. Spotify is copy-protected. YouTube is left out on purpose. For Audius, it is up to the artist. A Creative Commons track is saved with its licence in a small text file beside it.

A downloaded book plays like a book. Chapters play in order (chapter 2 before chapter 10), each one starts on its own, and Quill Radio tells you where you are, such as “4 of 40”. At the end of the last chapter, it tells you so.

The Downloads window, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+J (View > Downloads…). Downloads opens with your cursor in the list. A heading above it sums up what is happening.
  2. Arrow through the list. Each row says what it is and how far it has got: waiting, downloading, saved or failed.
  3. Press Enter on a saved row to open its folder in File Explorer. The Open Containing Folder button does the same.
  4. Tab to the buttons: Cancel This One, Remove From List, Clear Finished, Clear All, and Preferences… (which opens Download Preferences). None of them deletes a file already saved on your computer.
  5. Press Escape to close Downloads. Your downloads keep going.

If you send Quill Radio to the tray with downloads still going, it either finishes them in the background or stops them, as Download Preferences says, and tells you which.

Downloads are filed neatly. A podcast goes in a folder named after its show. A book gets its own folder. Once you have more than one book by the same author, that author gets a folder too. You can change all of this in Download Preferences.

Download Preferences, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D (Station > Download Preferences…). Your cursor is in Downloads folder (blank uses the default).
  2. Leave it blank for the usual place, type a folder, or Tab to Browse… to choose one. The usual place is a Quill Radio folder inside your Downloads folder. In a portable copy, it is the Downloads folder inside the portable folder.
  3. Tab through the checkboxes and press Space to change any of them:
    • A folder per podcast show: on.
    • A folder per book: on.
    • Group books by author once an author has more than one: on.
    • Keep downloads going when the window closes to the tray: on.
    • Ask where to save each download instead of filing it automatically: off. When it is on, a book asks once, not once for every chapter.
  4. A sentence under the checkboxes always tells you what will happen to the next thing you save.
  5. Choose OK to save. Quill Radio reads your new choices back to you.

Your own music and audiobooks: Local Media

Local Media has a chapter of its own now: Chapter 10, Local Media, your own music and audiobooks.

YouTube

YouTube has a chapter of its own now: Chapter 11, YouTube.

Television

Quill Radio plays television the same way it plays everything else. Pick a channel, press Enter, and it plays, with the same captions, choice of audio track and playing keys as any stream.

Television (iptv.org) uses the iptv.org community list of TV streams that are freely available: roughly 9,300 channels that play. Channels marked as adult, channels that have closed, channels with no stream, and streams that would not work are left out.

Watch a channel, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+B, arrow to Television (iptv.org) and press Right Arrow.
  2. Choose By Country or By Category and press Right Arrow.
  3. In By Country, a country with local channels, such as the United States, opens into Nationwide and its states. A state lists its own channels and its cities’ channels, each with its city.
  4. Arrow to a channel and press Enter. It plays as sound.
  5. Press Ctrl+Shift+V to show the picture. See “Show the video, step by step” in Chapter 5.

Worth knowing:

Your own TV guide

If you put a TV guide file in the XMLTV format, named tv_guide.xml, into your Quill Radio data folder, every channel the guide covers gets an extra line in its details: “Now: … Next: …”. The file is only read from your computer, never fetched from anywhere. Replace it and it is read again. Delete it and the lines go away.

  1. Get an XMLTV file for your area from a guide service you trust. Quill Radio does not supply one.
  2. Rename it tv_guide.xml.
  3. Copy it into your Quill Radio data folder. For an installed copy, that is %APPDATA%\Quill; type that into File Explorer’s address bar to go there. For a portable copy, it is the data folder beside QuillRadio.exe.
  4. In Browse Stations, arrow to a channel the guide covers. The details box, after the tree, now has a “Now: … Next: …” line.

Weather radio

Weather has an app of its own, Quill Weather, with its own guide. Open it from the QuillVille menu (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F8). Quill Radio has no Weather menu.

What stays in Quill Radio is the radio side of weather: the Weather / NOAA branch of Browse Stations, with every NOAA Weather Radio transmitter that can be heard on the internet.

Find your local NOAA Weather Radio, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+B and arrow to Weather / NOAA. Press Right Arrow.
  2. Arrow to your state and press Right Arrow. Each transmitter reads with its call sign, frequency and place.
  3. Press Enter on one to play it.
  4. Or press Ctrl+F and type a call sign, a SAME code, or “County, ST”, such as Fairfax, VA, and press Enter.

Spotify (experimental)

Quill Radio can search Spotify, browse your library and playlists, and play through Spotify’s own player. This is experimental: it works, but it is newer and less tested than the rest of Quill Radio, and it may change. It is on to begin with, so Connect to Spotify… (Ctrl+Alt+P) and Browse Spotify… (Ctrl+Alt+O) are on the Station menu from the first time you open Quill Radio. Being visible does not mean anything is sent: nothing reaches Spotify until you choose Connect to Spotify and sign in to an account. Quill Radio has no switch of its own for it: it follows the Spotify feature in the feature settings it shares with QUILL, so turning that feature off there takes both rows away. It is also off in Safe Mode.

For example: press Alt+S for the Station menu and arrow down to Connect to Spotify…, or press Ctrl+Alt+P from anywhere in Quill Radio. The Connect to Spotify window walks you through signing in; once you are connected, Browse Spotify… (Ctrl+Alt+O) lists your library and playlists.

Does a free Spotify account work?

Yes for finding things, no for playing them inside Quill Radio.

With a free account, let Quill Radio do the finding, and play what you find in the Spotify app. Quill Radio tells you which kind of account you signed in with straight away.

Nothing from Spotify can ever be recorded or downloaded, on any account, because the sound is copy-protected.

What you need

Get your Client ID, step by step

  1. Go to the Spotify Developer Dashboard at https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard and sign in with your ordinary Spotify account. It is free.
  2. Choose Create app.
  3. Give it any App name and App description, such as “Quill Radio”.
  4. In Redirect URI, type exactly http://127.0.0.1:43217/callback and choose Add. It must match exactly, letter for letter.
  5. Under Which API/SDKs are you planning to use?, check Web API and Web Playback SDK.
  6. Accept the terms and choose Save.
  7. Open your app’s Settings and copy the Client ID. You do not need the Client secret, so do not paste it anywhere.

Connect, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+P (Station > Connect to Spotify…). A sign-in window opens.
  2. Paste your Client ID into Client ID and choose Connect.
  3. The first time, Quill Radio asks once whether it may go online.
  4. Your web browser opens Spotify’s own page asking you to approve. Approve it.
  5. Spotify sends you back to an address on your own computer (127.0.0.1) that Quill Radio listens on for just that moment. Quill Radio tells you that you are connected, and which kind of account it is.

Your sign-in is kept in the Windows credential store, never in an ordinary file or a log.

Browse and play, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+O (Station > Browse Spotify…). A search box opens with a list of results.
  2. Type what you are looking for and press Enter.
  3. Arrow to a result and press Enter to play it.

Spotify plays through a hidden Spotify player alongside Quill Radio’s own. Play and Stop, volume, the status bar, the tray and any global hotkeys all work with it.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now follow podcasts and check them for new episodes, hand episodes to QUILL Cast, save books and episodes to keep, watch television, find your local weather radio, and know just what Spotify can and cannot do here. Next, Chapter 10, Local Media, brings in the music and audiobooks on your own computer. The tutorial Follow a podcast is a good place to practise.

Chapter 10: Local Media, your own music and audiobooks

Quill Radio plays more than the internet. Local Media is where your own files live: the music on your computer, the audiobooks you bought, a folder of old radio shows, even videos. You put them in playlists, in whatever order you like, and Quill Radio plays them one after another, with the same keys you already use for the radio.

This chapter starts with an empty window and ends with playlists you have built, arranged and left playing while you get on with something else.

The tutorial Play your own files in playlists, in the More than radio track, walks you through the same ground in about eight minutes.

What Local Media is, and why you would use it

A playlist in Local Media is simply a list of files in an order you chose. Nothing is ever copied or moved. A playlist only remembers where each file is and what its tags say, such as the title, artist, album and length. Taking something out of a playlist never deletes it from your computer.

You might use it to:

Nothing in Local Media touches the internet, so it works just the same in Safe Mode and when you are offline.

Getting started

Open Local Media, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+O (Station > Local Media…). The Local Media window opens. It is a window of its own, like Radio Recordings, so it is on the Window menu and in the Ctrl+Tab order. It is also on the Go To list and in the Command Palette.
  2. The first time, there is nothing in it yet. Quill Radio says so: “Nothing in Local Media yet.” Your cursor is already on the Add Media Files… button, with Add a Folder… and New Playlist… beside it.
  3. Press Ctrl+O again, or Space on the button. A file window opens. So from anywhere in Quill Radio, Ctrl+O twice takes you straight to picking files.
  4. Pick one file, or hold Ctrl and pick several, and press Enter.
  5. You should hear “Made a playlist called”, the name of the folder the files came from, and how many items it has. A playlist of tracks from your Abbey Road folder is called Abbey Road, which is what you would have typed anyway.

If Local Media is already open, Ctrl+O from the main window brings it to the front rather than opening a second copy.

Bring in a whole folder, step by step

  1. In the empty window, press Ctrl+Alt+O (Local Media > Add a Folder…), or choose the Add a Folder… button.
  2. Choose the folder and press Enter. You hear “Looking for media in”, and the folder’s name.
  3. Every file in it comes in, and the files in the folders inside it too, in the order you would read the names: track 2 comes before track 10, and disc one comes before disc two.
  4. You hear “Made a playlist called”, the folder’s name, and how many items it has.

Once you have playlists, Add a Folder… in the window adds the folder’s files to the end of the playlist you are on. To make a brand new playlist from a folder, use Add a Folder… on the Local Media branch of Browse Stations, or Local Media: Add a Folder… in the Command Palette.

Follow the Folder

A playlist made from a folder keeps an eye on it. Copy new music into the folder later, and it joins the end of the playlist the next time you open Local Media or choose that playlist. You hear how many new files were added.

Both only work on a playlist that was made from a folder. On any other playlist, Quill Radio tells you so.

What Quill Radio can play

Quill Radio plays MP3, M4A and M4B audiobooks, AAC, Ogg, Opus, FLAC, WAV, WMA, AIFF and more, and video files such as MP4, MKV, MOV and WebM. A video plays its sound, and Ctrl+Shift+V shows the picture. When you add a folder, anything that is not music or video, such as cover pictures and text files, is left out.

Finding your way around the window

The two lists

The window has two lists side by side, and Tab moves between them.

Under the lists are the Add Media Files…, Add a Folder… and New Playlist… buttons, and a line that sums up the playlist you are on.

The row that is playing says playing after its title, or paused. A file that is not where it used to be, because a drive is unplugged or a folder was renamed, says missing. It keeps its place in the list until you decide what to do with it.

Type the first letters of a title to jump to it. To select several items, hold Shift and arrow, or press Ctrl+A (Edit > Select All) for every item in the playlist.

The menus in the window

The window has its own menu bar, and every item on it shows its key:

The Station and Window menus are there too, the same as in every Quill Radio window. You seldom need the menus, though: press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, on an item or a playlist, and everything you can do with it is right there.

Close the window with Escape or Ctrl+W (Local Media > Close) whenever you like. Whatever is playing carries on.

Building playlists

Make a new playlist, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+N (Local Media > New Playlist…).
  2. Type a name, such as Sunday Morning, and press Enter.
  3. You hear “Made Sunday Morning. It is empty”. Your cursor is on Add Media Files…, ready to fill it.
  4. Press Space and pick your files. They are added to the end of the new playlist.

If you leave the name empty, the playlist is called My Playlist. Two playlists never share a name: Quill Radio adds a number to the second one.

Add, insert and remove

QUILLBee’s tip: Delete in Local Media never deletes a file. It only takes the item out of the list, which is why it does not stop to ask. If you change your mind, Ctrl+Z puts it back in the very same place.

Playlists from other programs

Import a Playlist… (Ctrl+I) reads an M3U, M3U8 or PLS playlist that Winamp, foobar2000, VLC or another player made, and turns it into a new playlist named after the file.

  1. Press Ctrl+I (Local Media > Import a Playlist…).
  2. Choose the playlist file and press Enter.
  3. You hear “Imported”, how many items, and the new playlist’s name.

A few things to know:

Rename, duplicate and delete a playlist

These work on the playlist you are on, from the Local Media menu or from the menu on the playlist itself (Shift+F10 in the Playlists list).

Arranging a playlist

A playlist is an order you chose, and Local Media gives you every way to change it from the keyboard. After each move, Quill Radio tells you where the items landed, such as “Moved to 3 of 12”, and the moved items stay selected so you can move them again.

Move items, step by step

  1. Arrow to an item. To move several at once, hold Shift and arrow to select them.
  2. Press Alt+Shift+Up (Arrange > Move Up) or Alt+Shift+Down (Arrange > Move Down) to move them one place.
  3. Press Alt+Shift+Home (Move to Top) to send them to the start, or Alt+Shift+End (Move to Bottom) to send them to the end.
  4. At the top or the bottom, you hear “Already at the top” or “Already at the bottom”, so you know you have gone as far as you can.

Move to Position, step by step

When you know exactly where something belongs, type its new place:

  1. Select the item, or items.
  2. Press Ctrl+J (Arrange > Move to Position…).
  3. Type the number of the place it should go, from 1 to the number of items, and press Enter. You hear where it landed.

Cut and paste to move a long way

For a longer move, cut and paste is quickest.

  1. Select what you want to move and press Ctrl+X (Edit > Cut). Nothing disappears yet. You hear “Cut”, and what you cut.
  2. Arrow to where it belongs.
  3. Press Ctrl+V (Edit > Paste Before) to put it before that item, or Ctrl+Alt+V (Edit > Paste After) to put it after it.

QUILLBee wants you to know: Cutting in Local Media only marks the items. They stay in the list, playing and all, until you paste. If you never paste, nothing has changed.

Copy into another playlist

Ctrl+C (Edit > Copy) holds copies of the selected items. Arrow to another playlist, or another place in the same one, and paste with Ctrl+V or Ctrl+Alt+V. The originals stay where they were. Ctrl+C also puts the files’ paths on the clipboard as text, so you can paste them into an email or a document.

Sort Playlist, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+S (Arrange > Sort Playlist…).
  2. Choose how to sort: Title, Artist, then album, Album, then track order, File name, Folder, then file name, Length, shortest first, Date added, oldest first or Random order.
  3. Press Enter. The playlist is sorted once, and your cursor is on the first item.

A sort happens once. After that, the order is yours to change again, and Ctrl+Z puts back the order you had before.

Moving whole playlists

In the Playlists list, Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down move the playlist you are on up and down, and Alt+Shift+Home and Alt+Shift+End move it to the top or the bottom. Your playlists stay in that order here and in Browse Stations.

Undo and Undo History

Changed your mind? Ctrl+Z (Edit > Undo) takes back the last change: a move, a sort, a paste, a removal, a rename, or a deleted playlist. Press it again to go back one more step.

In the main window, Edit > Undo History (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A) lists the last ten things you can take back, Local Media changes among them, and lets you take back just one. “Taking back the last thing you did”, in Chapter 15, says more.

Playing

Play a playlist, step by step

  1. Arrow to an item and press Enter. Quill Radio plays it, then carries on down the playlist by itself. You should hear the title and where it is, such as “Playing Here Comes the Sun, 7 of 17.”
  2. Press Space on the item that is playing to pause it. Press Space again to carry on. On any other item, Space selects it, as it does in any list.
  3. Press Enter on the item that is playing to stop it.
  4. Press Ctrl+Right (Play > Next Item) for the next item and Ctrl+Left (Play > Previous Item) for the one before.
  5. When the last item ends, you hear “That was the end of”, and the playlist’s name.

The Play menu has the same verbs with keys that work from anywhere in the window: Play (Ctrl+Enter) and Pause or Resume (Ctrl+Space).

In the Playlists list, Enter plays the whole playlist you are on from the start.

Play This Playlist, and Continue Where I Left Off

Play Next and Add to Up Next

Sometimes you want to hear a particular song soon, without changing your playlist.

Either way, once they have played, the playlist carries on where it left off.

Shuffle and Shuffle Again

Repeat

Repeat (Ctrl+R) goes round three choices, and Quill Radio says the one you land on:

Each playlist remembers its own shuffle and repeat.

Stop After This Item

Stop After This Item (Ctrl+Alt+S) stops when the item that is playing ends. You hear “Will stop after this item”, and later “Stopped after that item, as you asked.” It switches itself off once it has done its job, so the next time you play, the playlist carries on as normal. It is perfect for falling asleep to one more chapter.

Next and previous from any window

You do not need the Local Media window open to move through a playlist. From any Quill Radio window, the chapter keys move through the playlist that is playing: Ctrl+Shift+. for the next item and Ctrl+Shift+, for the one before.

When a file has chapters of its own, like an audiobook, the chapter keys move by chapter first. At the last chapter, they move on to the next item.

The Command Palette has Local Media: Next Item and Local Media: Previous Item too, if you would rather move by name.

Where Am I, and Playlist Summary

Local Media in Browse Stations

Local Media is also the second branch of Browse Stations, right under Favorites. It is handy when you are already browsing and want your own music without opening another window.

Play from the tree, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+B to open Browse Stations, arrow to Local Media and press Right Arrow.
  2. Your playlists are listed, each with how many items it has and how long it plays. Under them are Add Media Files…, Add a Folder…, New Playlist… and Open the Local Media Window. While you have no playlists yet, Import a Playlist… is there too.
  3. Arrow to a playlist and press Right Arrow to open it. Each item says its artist and length, “video” for a video, and “missing” for a file that is not there.
  4. Press Enter on an item. It plays, and the rest of the playlist follows it.

In the tree, Add Media Files… and Add a Folder… always make a new playlist, named after the folder, and one made from a folder follows it.

The menu on a row

Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, on any Local Media row.

Open in Local Media Window opens the window on that very playlist and item, so you can carry on arranging there.

The Delete key works here too. On an item, it asks “Remove”, the title, “from”, the playlist, and “The file stays”, the same way Delete always asks in Browse Stations. On a playlist, it asks whether to delete the playlist.

When a file goes missing

If you move a folder, rename it, or unplug the drive a file was on, the item says missing. It keeps its place in the playlist, and when Quill Radio comes to it while playing, it skips to the next one that is there. Plug the drive back in and the item simply plays again.

Locate a missing file, step by step

  1. Arrow to the missing item.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+L (Edit > Locate Missing File…), or choose Locate File… on its menu.
  3. A file window opens, already looking for the file by name. Find it where it is now and press Enter.
  4. You hear “Found”, and its title. If the whole folder moved, the other missing files from that folder are found too, and Quill Radio tells you how many.

Pressing Ctrl+Shift+L on an item that is not missing takes you to the first one that is. If nothing in the playlist is missing, Quill Radio tells you so.

Remove Missing Items

If the files are gone for good, Remove Missing Items (Ctrl+Shift+Delete, on the Edit menu) takes every missing item out of the playlist at once. Ctrl+Z brings them back if you were too quick.

Properties and File Explorer

Exporting a playlist, step by step

Export as M3U… goes the other way from Import, so another player can open your playlist.

  1. Arrow to the playlist and press Ctrl+Shift+X (Local Media > Export as M3U…).
  2. A save window opens with the playlist’s name already filled in. Choose where to save it and press Enter.
  3. You hear “Exported”, how many items, and the file’s name.

Save it in your music folder and it keeps working when you copy the whole folder to another computer, because the files inside that folder are written relative to it. An empty playlist has nothing to export, and Quill Radio says so.

Playing files from File Explorer

You do not have to open Local Media first. If you are looking at the music on your computer or an external drive in File Explorer, you can play a song from right there, the same way you might choose VLC or Windows Media Player.

Play a song with Open with, step by step

  1. In File Explorer, move to the song you want to hear.
  2. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, to open its menu.
  3. Choose Open with. On Windows 11, if you do not see Quill Radio straight away, choose Choose another app.
  4. Choose Quill Radio and press Enter. You hear “Playing”, and the song’s name.

Quill Radio is in the Open with list for music, audiobooks, video, and M3U and PLS playlists as soon as it is installed. Nothing else changes: whatever opened your music before still opens it when you press Enter.

Make Quill Radio your media player, step by step

If you would like your music to open in Quill Radio every time you press Enter on it, you can choose that in Windows. Windows keeps this choice for you alone, and no app is allowed to make it for you, so Quill Radio takes you to the right page and you choose there.

  1. In Quill Radio, press Ctrl+, to open Preferences.
  2. Press Tab until you reach the Windows and your files group, and the Make Quill Radio My Media Player… button. Its access key is Alt+Q. Press Space.
  3. Quill Radio explains what happens next. Press Enter for OK.
  4. Windows opens Settings, on the Default apps page for Quill Radio. It is a list of file types, each with the app that opens it now.
  5. Press Tab until you reach the list, then arrow to .mp3 and press Enter. Windows asks which app should open .mp3 files.
  6. Arrow to Quill Radio, then press Tab to the Set default button and press Enter.
  7. Do the same for any other type you want Quill Radio to open, such as .m4a, .m4b for audiobooks, or .flac. Anything you leave alone stays with the app that opens it now.
  8. Press Alt+F4 to close Settings.

On Windows 10 the page is the general Default apps page. Choose Choose default apps by file type, find .mp3, and choose Quill Radio there.

You can also do it from File Explorer: on a song, choose Open with, then Choose another app, pick Quill Radio, and choose Always.

To change your mind, go back to the same Settings page and choose another app. If you use the portable copy of Quill Radio, press the button again after you move its folder, so Windows knows where it went.

Several files at once

Select several songs in File Explorer and press Enter. Hold Shift and arrow down to select a run of songs, or hold Ctrl, arrow to each song you want, and press Space to add it. They become one list in Local Media called Opened files, and the first one starts playing. Ctrl+Shift+. and Ctrl+Shift+, move to the next and previous song, just as in any playlist.

Opening a folder plays everything in it, in the same order Add a Folder uses. Opening an M3U or PLS playlist adds it to Local Media as a playlist of its own and plays it; open the same playlist again and it plays the copy you already have.

The Opened files list is a scratch list. The next time you open files from File Explorer, it is replaced with the new ones. To keep it, choose Save as Playlist… on it, in the Local Media window (Ctrl+S) or on its menu in Browse Stations, and give it a name. Then it is a playlist like any other, and the next files you open start a new Opened files list.

When Quill Radio is already open

If Quill Radio is already running, even tucked away in the system tray, the file goes to the copy that is open, and it starts playing. Quill Radio does not jump in front of File Explorer, so you can carry on choosing songs. You hear what is playing once, even when you opened several files.

If a file cannot be played, you hear one sentence saying so, such as “Quill Radio could not find song.mp3.” when a drive has been unplugged, or “Quill Radio cannot play notes.docx.” for something that is not music or video.

The right-click menu

Every song also has two items of its own on its right-click menu:

On Windows 11, press Shift+F10 to reach them. The shorter menu that the Applications key opens keeps them under Show more options.

Keys in the Local Media window

Key What it does
Enter Play the item, or stop the one playing; on a playlist, play it
Space Pause or resume the item playing
Ctrl+Enter, Ctrl+Space Play, Pause or Resume, from anywhere in the window
Ctrl+Right, Ctrl+Left Next item, previous item
Ctrl+Alt+P Play This Playlist
Ctrl+Alt+C Continue Where I Left Off
Ctrl+Shift+Enter, Ctrl+Alt+Enter Play Next, Add to Up Next
Ctrl+H, Ctrl+Shift+H Shuffle on or off, Shuffle Again
Ctrl+R Repeat: off, the whole playlist, this item
Ctrl+Alt+S Stop After This Item
Ctrl+T Playlist Summary
Ctrl+N New Playlist
Ctrl+O Add Media Files
Ctrl+Alt+O Add a Folder
Insert, Shift+Insert Insert files before or after the item
Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Shift+X Import a Playlist, Export as M3U
F2 Rename Playlist
Ctrl+S Save as Playlist, to keep the Opened files list
Ctrl+D Duplicate Playlist
Shift+Delete Delete Playlist (asks first)
Ctrl+Alt+F, F5 Follow the Folder, Check the Folder Now
Delete Remove from the playlist (the file stays)
Ctrl+Shift+Delete Remove Missing Items
Ctrl+Shift+L Locate Missing File
Alt+Shift+Up, Alt+Shift+Down Move up or down one place
Alt+Shift+Home, Alt+Shift+End Move to the top or the bottom
Ctrl+J Move to Position
Ctrl+Shift+S Sort Playlist
Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C Cut, Copy
Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Alt+V Paste Before, Paste After
Ctrl+A Select All
Ctrl+Z Undo
Alt+Enter Properties
Ctrl+Shift+U Add to Lineup (Chapter 17)
Ctrl+Shift+E Show in File Explorer
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C Choose Columns
Escape, Ctrl+W Close the window; playing carries on

From any Quill Radio window: Ctrl+O opens Local Media, Ctrl+Shift+. and Ctrl+Shift+, move to the next and previous item, and Ctrl+Shift+W says where you are.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now bring your own music, audiobooks and videos into Quill Radio, from single files, whole folders or other players’ playlists. You can build playlists, slip songs in between others, put everything in exactly the order you want, and take back any change you regret. You can play, shuffle and repeat, line up what plays next, stop after one more item, pick up where you left off, and move through a playlist from any window. When a file goes missing, you know how to find it again. And you can play a song straight from File Explorer, or make Quill Radio the app your music opens in.

The tutorial Play your own files in playlists, in the More than radio track, walks through it all with you. Next, Chapter 11, YouTube, brings in everything YouTube can do here.

Chapter 11: YouTube

YouTube is full of things worth listening to: lectures and talks, travel shows, radio programmes that only publish there, live broadcasts, and a great deal of music. Quill Radio brings it in as if it were radio. You can search it, play it, record it, follow channels, read along with captions, read what people said in the comments, and be told when a channel puts up something new. None of it needs a Google account. If you would like your own Home page and subscriptions too, you can turn on your YouTube sign-in.

The tutorial YouTube, with no account anywhere, in the More than radio track, walks you through the first steps.

A video link, a youtu.be short link or a channel’s live page plays just like a radio station. You can add one with Add YouTube Link… (below) or with Add Custom Station… (Ctrl+N). It sits in your favorites, records with Record Now, and can be scheduled. Quill Radio saves the page’s address and finds the sound fresh every time, so a recording you schedule today still works next week. Everything YouTube needs is built into Quill Radio, so nothing downloads the first time. A private, removed, blocked or not-yet-live video tells you so in plain words.

Adding YouTube to Browse Stations, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+N (Station > Add YouTube Link…). A box opens. If a YouTube link is on your clipboard, it is already filled in.
  2. Paste a link and press Enter. Quill Radio files it by what it is: an @name link follows the channel, @name/live keeps the live broadcast, a playlist link becomes a folder, and a video link becomes a row.
  3. You should hear, for example, “Following that channel. Find it under Browse Stations, YouTube.” A moment later it names what you added.
  4. Press Ctrl+B, arrow to YouTube and open it. A channel opens into Uploads, Live and the channel’s playlists. A long channel has More… at the end to see the next page.
  5. Press Enter on a video to play it. Videos play, record and can be made favorites, just like a station.

Worth knowing:

Finding things on YouTube

Search YouTube, step by step

Search YouTube finds videos, playlists and channels, and puts them in one list with each row telling you which it is.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+6 (Station > Search YouTube…). Browse Stations opens, and a box asks what you would like to find. If Browse Stations is already open, you can also press Enter on Search YouTube…, the first row under YouTube.
  2. Type what you are looking for, such as Bristol walking tour, and press Enter. You should hear “Searching YouTube for Bristol walking tour…”.
  3. When the answer arrives, you hear how many were found, once, such as “38 found for Bristol walking tour: 20 videos, 10 playlists, 8 channels.” Your cursor is on the first result, in a Search Results branch at the top of the tree.
  4. Arrow through the rows. Each one says what it is first:
    • “Bristol walking tour (video, 12 minutes, Rick Steves)”
    • “Europe Through the Back Door (playlist, Rick Steves)”
    • “Rick Steves’ Europe (channel, 1.2 million subscribers)”
  5. Press Enter on a video to play it. Press Enter (or Right Arrow) on a playlist to open its videos, or on a channel to open it.
  6. When you are done, press Escape in the Find box, or choose Close Search Results from the branch’s menu, to tidy the results away.

Worth knowing:

YouTube in Search Stations

Search Stations (Ctrl+F) asks YouTube too, and the videos it finds sit in the same list as the radio stations. To see only those, choose YouTube in Source (Alt+U). To stop Search Stations asking YouTube at all, turn it off in Station > Search Sources… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U). Search Stations finds videos only; Search YouTube, above, finds playlists and channels as well.

Search with filters, or search YouTube Music

YouTube’s own Filters menu is here too. Use it when a plain search gives you too much: only this week’s uploads, only long videos, only what is live right now, or the most-watched first.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+0 (Video > YouTube > Search YouTube with Filters…). A window opens with the cursor in Search for.
  2. Type what you are looking for.
  3. Tab through the choices and set the ones you want. Each starts at “no filter”, so you only change what matters to you:
    • Source (Alt+O): YouTube, or YouTube Music songs to find songs rather than music videos. The filters below do not apply to YouTube Music.
    • Type (Alt+T): Videos, Live now, Playlists or Channels.
    • Uploaded (Alt+U): any time, the last hour, today, this week, this month or this year.
    • Length (Alt+L): under 4 minutes, 4 to 20 minutes, or over 20 minutes.
    • Sort by (Alt+R): relevance, upload date, view count or rating.
  4. Press Enter. Browse Stations opens, and you hear something like “Searching YouTube for walking tours, videos, this week…”.
  5. The answers arrive in Search Results, just like Search YouTube’s. Every row plays on Enter and has its usual menu.

Channels

Open a channel, step by step

  1. Arrow to a channel row (from a search, from My YouTube, or one you follow) and press Right Arrow.
  2. It opens into Uploads, then Live, then Shorts, then the channel’s playlists.
  3. Open Uploads for the newest videos first. A long channel has More… at the end for the next page.
  4. Open Live for anything the channel is broadcasting right now, which comes first, followed by its past broadcasts. If the channel has never broadcast live, Live is simply empty.
  5. Open Shorts for the channel’s short videos. They play like any other video.

To read what a channel says about itself, press Shift+F10 on its row and choose About This Channel… (T). A small window shows its name, how many subscribers it has and its own description. Read it with the arrow keys, and press Escape to close it.

Follow a channel, or subscribe on YouTube

There are two ways to keep a channel, and you can use either or both.

Follow This Channel in Quill Radio keeps the channel under Browse Stations, YouTube, on this computer. No account is needed.

  1. Arrow to a channel row and press Shift+F10 (or the Applications key).
  2. Choose Follow This Channel in Quill Radio (F).
  3. You should hear “Following Rick Steves’ Europe in Quill Radio.” The channel now has its own row under YouTube. The channels you follow are listed A to Z, so typing the first letters of a name jumps to it.

To stop, press Shift+F10 on the channel and choose Stop Following This Channel (P).

Subscribe on YouTube… subscribes your YouTube account, the same as the Subscribe button on YouTube’s own website.

  1. Press Shift+F10 on a channel and choose Subscribe on YouTube… (Y).
  2. You hear “Opening Rick Steves’ Europe on YouTube in your browser. YouTube will ask you to confirm the subscription there.” Your web browser opens on YouTube’s own page for that channel.
  3. Confirm the subscription in your browser, where you are signed in to YouTube.

Quill Radio never subscribes for you; YouTube always asks you to confirm. YouTube’s own notification bell for the channel is on that same page in your browser. If you use your YouTube sign-in in Quill Radio (see below), the new subscription shows up in My YouTube > Subscriptions.

Get told about new videos, step by step

Quill Radio can tell you when a channel you follow puts up a new video. This is Quill Radio’s own bell, separate from YouTube’s.

  1. In Browse Stations, open YouTube and arrow to a channel you follow.
  2. Press Shift+F10 and choose Notify Me About New Videos (N).
  3. You should hear that new videos will notify you.

From then on, whenever Quill Radio checks your podcasts for new episodes, it also looks at that channel’s newest few videos. Each new one goes into Help > Notifications as “New on Rick Steves’ Europe: Bristol walking tour”, with a desktop notice and a sound, the same as a new podcast episode. Press Enter on it in Notifications to play the video.

Worth knowing:

Playlists and your subscriptions

Add from a YouTube playlist, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Y (Station > Add from YouTube Playlist…). A box opens. A playlist link on your clipboard is already filled in.
  2. Paste a playlist link (youtube.com/playlist?list=...) and press Enter. You should hear “Listing that playlist…”, then how many videos it has.
  3. A window titled “Add from YouTube Playlist” opens, with the playlist’s own name at the top. Your cursor is in the Videos list, in the order the uploader chose. Each row reads like “3. Introducing layers, 5 minutes 31 seconds, 3Blue1Brown”.
  4. Select what you want. Hold Shift or Ctrl with the arrow keys to select several.
  5. Choose Add Selected (Alt+S), or Add All (Alt+A) for the lot.
  6. You should hear how many were added, and how many were already in your favorites.
  7. Press Escape to close the window.

Each video becomes an ordinary favorite you can play, record and schedule. This brings the videos in once; it does not follow the playlist. Videos added to the playlist later are not picked up, and when one video ends, the next does not start. To collect new videos, run it again on the same link, and the ones you already have are skipped. A watch link that happens to have list= in it is treated as just that one video.

Import YouTube Subscriptions, step by step

This follows every channel you subscribe to on YouTube, using a file you download from Google. No account, sign-in or password is involved, and nothing is sent anywhere.

  1. In a web browser, go to takeout.google.com. Choose YouTube and YouTube Music, narrow it down to subscriptions, and download the file.
  2. Unzip it. The file you need is YouTube and YouTube Music\subscriptions\subscriptions.csv.
  3. In Quill Radio, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y (Station > Import YouTube Subscriptions…). An explanation opens. Choose OK.
  4. A file window opens: “Choose your subscriptions.csv”. Find the file and choose Open.
  5. You should hear how it went, such as “Imported 24 channels; 3 you already followed”. The channels appear under YouTube in Browse Stations.

This brings your channels in once. Channels you subscribe to later appear when you download and import the file again. Channels you already follow are skipped, and any row that is not a channel is skipped too, rather than spoiling the import.

Even with your YouTube sign-in turned on, YouTube Premium’s extras do not carry over: YouTube’s terms do not allow another app to play in the background or keep copies for offline listening. No app other than YouTube’s own can bring your watch history across.

Watching and reading along

Moving around a finished video

A finished YouTube video works like a recording: it has a beginning and an end. So everything in “Speed, position and chapters” in Chapter 4 works on it. Play Faster (Ctrl+Shift+Up), Play Slower (Ctrl+Shift+Down) and Normal Speed (Ctrl+Shift+0) change the speed, and the speed you choose on a YouTube video is kept for YouTube videos. Rewind and Forward (Ctrl+Shift+Left and Right) move you along, further for each quick tap, Where Am I? (Ctrl+Shift+W) tells you how far in you are, and Go to Position… (Ctrl+Alt+J) jumps to a time you type. When the video’s maker published chapters, Chapters… (Ctrl+Shift+C), Next Chapter (Ctrl+Shift+.) and Previous Chapter (Ctrl+Shift+,) step through them. Quill Radio remembers where you stopped, so a long video carries on from there next time. A live broadcast has none of this, and each of these keys tells you so.

Captions, the picture and described audio

YouTube plays as sound only to begin with. Captions (Ctrl+Shift+K) opens the captions in a window you can read with your screen reader or braille display, Show Video (Ctrl+Shift+V) shows the picture, and Audio and Described Audio… (Ctrl+Shift+A) lists the video’s sound tracks, including a described one when the video has it. “Video, captions and described audio” in Chapter 5 walks through each one.

Transcript, step by step

  1. While a YouTube video plays, press Ctrl+Shift+T (Playback > Transcript…). You should hear “Fetching transcript…”, then a window titled “Transcript:” and the video’s title opens.
  2. Your cursor is in the transcript, an ordinary box you can read but not change. Arrow through it, select text, or use your screen reader’s review cursor.
  3. Press Enter on any line to play from the moment that line was spoken. The Play from Here button does the same.
  4. Press Ctrl+F (or Find…) to search. Each match tells you where it is, such as “Found at 12 minutes 8 seconds”.
  5. The other buttons are Copy, Links… (Ctrl+Shift+L, every web address in the transcript), Save As… (plain text, WebVTT or SubRip), and Open in QUILL.
  6. Press Escape to close.

If the captions were made automatically, the heading says so. A live stream has no transcript and tells you so, and so does a video with no captions. For a podcast episode whose feed publishes a transcript, use View Transcript… on the episode’s menu in Browse Stations.

Read a video’s comments, step by step

  1. Do one of these:
    • While a YouTube video is playing, press Ctrl+Shift+7 (Video > Read Comments…).
    • In Browse Stations, arrow to a YouTube video, press Shift+F10 and choose Read Comments… (O).
  2. A window titled “YouTube Comments” opens. You hear “Fetching comments…”, then how many arrived, such as “100 comments.”
  3. Press Tab to reach the Comments list, and arrow through it. Each row reads like “Alice: The bridge at sunset is the best bit. … (1,203 likes, 2 years ago)”. A reply comes right after the comment it answers and reads like “Ben, reply to Alice: Agreed!”. Emoji are read as their names, such as “(face with tears of joy)”, and a web address as “link to example.com”. Loading more comments adds rows at the end and never moves you.
  4. Press Tab to reach Full text and read the selected comment whole, with the arrow keys.
  5. To look for something, press Alt+M for Search comments and type. The list narrows as you type, and when you pause you hear how many match, such as “12 of 100 comments match.” Clear the box to see them all again.
  6. To change the order, press Alt+B for Sort by and choose Newest first or Top comments. Quill Radio asks YouTube again.
  7. Press Alt+L for Load More to fetch the next hundred, up to a thousand. The comments you already have stay where they are.
  8. Press Alt+P for Copy Comment to put the selected comment, with who wrote it, on the clipboard.
  9. Press Escape to close the window. You are back where you were.

If the comments cannot be fetched, you hear why in one sentence, such as “Comments are turned off for that video.”, and it is listed in Recent Problems (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P).

The YouTube Video window, step by step

This window gathers everything about one video apart from playing it: what the uploader wrote, the moments they listed, and, for a premiere or a scheduled stream, how long until it starts.

  1. Do one of these:
    • While a YouTube video is playing, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+8 (Video > YouTube > YouTube Video…).
    • In Browse Stations, arrow to a YouTube video, press Shift+F10 and choose YouTube Video… (Y).
  2. A window titled “YouTube Video” opens. When the details arrive you hear what the video is right now, such as “Live now.”, “A video, 42 minutes long.” or “Starts in 2 hours 5 minutes.”, and how many moments its description lists.
  3. Press Alt+D for the Description and read it with the arrow keys.
  4. Press Alt+M for Moments in the description. These are the lines of the description that give a time, like a running order or a track list. Each reads like “The interview, 12:40”. If this video is the one playing, press Enter on a moment to jump straight there.
  5. For a premiere or a stream that has not started yet, Remind Me When It Goes Live… (Alt+G) sets one of Quill Radio’s own reminders, so you are told when to come back.
  6. Save Audio… (Alt+S) adds the video’s sound to your downloads, the same as Download… on its row. Live Chat… (Alt+H) opens its chat.
  7. Press Escape to close the window.

For the words the video speaks, use Transcript (Ctrl+Shift+T), described above. It already lets you search, jump to a line and save the whole transcript to a file.

Skip sponsor segments, step by step

Many videos stop for a sponsor’s message, a plug for merchandise or a reminder to like and subscribe. SponsorBlock is a list, kept by volunteers, of where those parts are. Quill Radio can jump over them for you. It is off until you turn it on.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+9 (Video > YouTube > Skip Sponsor Segments…).
  2. Read the short explanation at the top. To look a video up, Quill Radio sends SponsorBlock only the first four characters of a scrambled form of the video’s id. It never sends the video’s address or anything about you, so SponsorBlock cannot tell what you are watching.
  3. Check Skip marked segments in YouTube videos (Alt+S).
  4. Check the kinds you want skipped. Sponsor reads, self-promotion and reminders to like or subscribe are checked to start with. You can add intros, end credits, previews, talking in music videos and off-topic tangents.
  5. Choose OK. You hear, for example, “Skipping 3 kinds of segment in YouTube videos.”

From then on, when a video reaches a marked part, Quill Radio jumps to the end of it and says so once, such as “Skipped a sponsor segment.” If you go back into that part on purpose, it lets you listen. Many videos have nothing marked, and then nothing happens. Live streams are never skipped.

Live chat

A live stream’s chat is where people talk while it is on. Quill Radio shows it as a plain list you can read at your own pace, and it never pulls you away from what you are reading. A finished stream’s chat replay works too, where YouTube kept one.

Open a live chat, step by step

  1. Do one of these:
    • While a YouTube live stream is playing, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+7 (Video > YouTube > Live Chat…).
    • In Browse Stations, arrow to a YouTube video, press Shift+F10 and choose Live Chat… (H).
  2. A window titled “YouTube Live Chat” opens and connects. Messages start to arrive at the bottom of the Messages list (Alt+G).
  3. Arrow through the list. Each row reads who wrote it, then what they said, then anything special about it, such as “Sam: great show, moderator” or “Ann: thank you!, paid $5.00”. A paid message, a member, a moderator and the channel’s owner are all named.
  4. Press Alt+X for Full text to read the selected message whole, with when it was sent. Web addresses are written out in full here.
  5. To see only some messages, press Alt+I for Filter messages and type words. New messages that match keep arriving.
  6. Press Alt+Y for Copy Message to copy the selected message with its author.
  7. Press Escape to close the window. The chat stops, and you are back where you were.

For a finished stream’s replay, if that same video is playing, the messages appear as playback reaches the moment each was written, so the chat keeps in step with what you hear.

If the chat cannot be read, you hear why once, such as “Chat is turned off for this video.” or “This video has no chat replay.”, and it is listed in Recent Problems (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P). If the connection drops, Quill Radio quietly tries again a few times before telling you.

Using Live Chat with a screen reader

The window is built so a busy chat never fights your screen reader:

Keys in the Live Chat window:

Action Key
First or newest message in the list Home / End
Previous or next message from the same person Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down
Jump to the newest message Ctrl+J
Read the newest message without moving Ctrl+L
When the selected message was sent Ctrl+T
Pause or resume the list Space (on the list)
Speak new messages on or off Ctrl+S
Move between the list, Full text and the filter F6 / Shift+F6
Close Escape, Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4

Your own YouTube

Use your YouTube sign-in (My YouTube)

Everything above works without signing in to anything. If you also want your own YouTube, such as your Home page, your subscriptions, Watch Later, Liked videos and your playlists, Quill Radio can borrow the sign-in your web browser already has. It is off until you turn it on.

When this is on, Quill Radio reads your browser’s YouTube sign-in each time it asks YouTube for something. It never copies, saves or logs your sign-in: it only remembers which browser (or which cookies.txt file) to read, and YouTube sees the same account it sees when you use that browser. Anyone who can use your Windows account can already do this, so it opens nothing new. Turn it off any time and Quill Radio goes back to asking YouTube as a guest.

  1. Make sure you are signed in to YouTube in your web browser.
  2. In Quill Radio, press Ctrl+, to open Preferences, and Tab to the YouTube group.
  3. Check Use my YouTube sign-in from my web browser (Alt+N).
  4. In Read the YouTube sign-in from (Alt+H), choose your browser: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi. Firefox is the most dependable choice; see the next section.
  5. Choose OK. You should hear that My YouTube is under Browse Stations, YouTube.
  6. Press Ctrl+B, open YouTube, and open My YouTube. It has:
    • Home: what YouTube recommends for you.
    • Subscriptions: New from Your Subscriptions (the newest videos from every channel you subscribe to) and Your Channels (the channels themselves, A to Z: type the first letters of a name to jump to it).
    • Watch Later.
    • Liked Videos. Videos that are for members only, or that YouTube keeps for grown-ups, play too when your account is allowed to see them.
    • Your Playlists.
    • History: what you watched, newest first.

Every video plays on Enter, and every channel and playlist opens, just like the rest of Browse Stations. The channels under Your Channels offer Follow This Channel in Quill Radio too.

To use a cookies.txt file instead of a browser, export one with a browser extension. Then, in Preferences, choose Choose a cookies.txt File… (Alt+X) and pick the file, set Read the YouTube sign-in from to A cookies.txt file I choose, and choose OK. Quill Radio reads the file each time and never changes it.

To turn it off, uncheck Use my YouTube sign-in from my web browser and choose OK. My YouTube disappears from the tree.

When the YouTube sign-in does not work

If something under My YouTube will not open, Quill Radio tells you why in one sentence. The usual reasons:

Repair YouTube Support

This is for emergencies. YouTube support is built in, but YouTube changes how it sends its sound more often than Quill Radio has new releases.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Y (Station > Repair YouTube Support…).
  2. You should hear “Updating YouTube support…”.
  3. A message tells you the new version, such as “YouTube support is now version …”, or that the built-in version is already the newest, or that it could not be updated. Press Enter to close it.

It asks before it goes online, and it is off in Safe Mode. A repaired helper is only used while it is newer than the one built in, so a later Quill Radio update never ends up using an older copy. You should not need this unless YouTube links stop playing.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now play and keep YouTube links, search YouTube for videos, playlists and channels, open a channel’s uploads and live broadcasts, follow channels here or subscribe on YouTube, be told about new videos, bring in playlists and your subscriptions, move around a video, read along with its captions and transcript, read its comments, follow a live chat, skip sponsor segments, search with YouTube’s own filters or YouTube Music, and, if you like, use your own YouTube sign-in. Next, Chapter 12, The ACB Media schedule and reminders, helps you catch the programmes you care about.

Chapter 12: The ACB Media schedule and reminders

ACB Media runs ten channels made with blind listeners in mind. This chapter shows you how to see what is on and what is coming up, tune in, record a programme, and have Quill Radio remind you before it starts. It finishes with Upcoming, which brings all your plans together, and Notifications, which remembers everything you have been told.

The tutorial The ACB Media schedule, in the More than radio track, walks through it with you.

The ACB Media schedule

Community > ACB Media Schedule… (Ctrl+Shift+N) lists everything ACB has published for its ten channels, in one list, earliest first. Each row gives the date, the start and end times, the programme and the channel, such as “Tuesday 4 August, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM, Herbie’s Community Cooking Corner, ACB Media 5”. It opens on the next programme still to come, and the programme on air now ends with “on now”.

Browse the schedule, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+N. The ACB Media Schedule window opens. It reads the schedule from ACB every time it opens.
  2. The first thing in the window is a summary you can read. It tells you how many programmes are listed, how far ahead the schedule goes, when this copy came from ACB (such as “Pulled from ACB just now, at 9:47 AM”), and whose clock the times are on. Arrow through it.
  3. Tab to the filters:
    • Search: every word must appear somewhere, so “blues tuesday” finds the Tuesday blues show.
    • Date (Alt+D): one date. Only dates with programmes are offered, each with how many.
    • Channel (Alt+H): one of the ten channels. Clearing a filter brings the whole schedule back.
  4. Tab to the list of programmes and arrow through it.
  5. Press Enter to tune in to the programme’s channel. The button tells you what it will do: Play Now, Play This Channel Now, or Stop when that channel is already playing.
  6. Press Shift+F10 for everything else you can do with a programme. The list’s menu also has Refresh the Schedule, even when nothing is selected.
  7. Press Escape to close.

What the buttons do

The buttons below the list, in order, are Play, Record…, Remind Me… (reads Remove Reminder once one is set), Add to Queue, Copy Details, Show Notes…, Next Programme, Refresh and Export…. The Search box and the Show Notes button share a letter, so Tab to reach them.

Anything that cannot be done is dimmed and tells you why. For example, a programme that finished this morning cannot be recorded.

Why the list can look short. ACB publishes two weeks of listings at a time and then stops. So for part of every month, nothing is listed for today. The summary tells you plainly, such as “Nothing is published for today or later – ACB last posted a schedule through 15 August.” Nothing is broken. Press Refresh once ACB posts more.

Times are shown on your own clock. ACB publishes in US Central time, and Quill Radio changes every programme to your time. When the two differ, the summary tells you, such as “Times are shown in US Mountain Standard Time. ACB publishes in US Central time.”

ACB sometimes lists the same programme twice. Quill Radio shows it once.

What Is On Now, and Refresh the Schedule

These two answer without opening a window.

What Is On Now tells you, in one sentence, what is on across all ten ACB Media channels.

  1. In the main window, press Ctrl+Alt+H (Community > What Is On Now).
  2. You hear what is on now, channel by channel. Nothing opens and your cursor does not move.
  3. To tune in to one, press Ctrl+Shift+N for the schedule, where the programme on now ends with “on now”, and press Enter on it.

It answers from the schedule already on your computer, so it is instant and works without the internet.

Refresh the Schedule fetches the newest listings from ACB.

  1. In the main window, press F5 (Community > Refresh the Schedule). In the schedule window itself, use its Refresh button.
  2. If the schedule window is open, the list reloads where it is. If it is closed, the schedule is fetched quietly and you hear the result.

Good to know: these keys belong to the main window’s Community menu. In another Quill Radio window, press Ctrl+Tab until you are back in the main window first. In Browse Stations, the Refresh button reloads a source, not the schedule.

Working offline

The schedule is kept on your computer. With no internet, the window opens with what it has and tells you how old it is. If the schedule cannot be read at all, you get an empty list and a sentence saying so, and the reason goes into Recent Problems. On the first of a month, before ACB has posted the new one, the window shows the previous month’s listings, and the summary tells you how far they go.

Reminders

Any programme in the ACB Media schedule, and any station, recording or saved row in Browse Stations, can have a reminder.

Set a reminder, step by step

  1. Highlight the row and press Shift+F10. Choose Set a Reminder… (in the schedule, it is Remind Me…). The Set a Reminder window opens: “Remind me about” and the title.
  2. When (Alt+W): for a programme, how much warning you want, from “When it starts” to “1 day before”. For a station or recording, when to remind you, counting from now: In 15 minutes, In 30 minutes, In an hour, In 3 hours, or Tomorrow, at this time.
  3. Note (optional) (Alt+N): anything you want said with the reminder. It never leaves your computer.
  4. Priority (Alt+P): Normal or High. A High reminder is the only kind that comes through quiet hours on its own. It is not louder, sooner or repeated.
  5. Choose OK. You should hear “Reminder set for”, the title and when.

Once a row has a reminder, the same place on its menu reads Remove Reminder.

When a reminder comes due, Quill Radio plays the reminder sound (three rising bell tones), tells you what it is and when it starts, and shows a notification with a Go There button. If a reminder came due while Quill Radio was closed, you still hear it when you next open it, as long as that is within a couple of hours. Quiet hours can hold a reminder back; you hear it when the quiet time ends.

A station reminder also reads the note you keep on that station (Note to Self… on its menu), after the reminder’s own note: for example, “Reminder: Morning Show is starting now. Your note: Only the first hour is worth it.” A note that says the same as the reminder’s own is not read twice.

In Preferences, New reminders start at sets how much warning you usually want, and Play a sound when a reminder comes due turns the sound off. You still hear the reminder spoken either way.

Upcoming, step by step

Community > Upcoming… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F) lists everything Quill Radio has planned: your reminders and your scheduled recordings, together, soonest first. Each row starts with what kind it is, “Reminder:” or “Recording:”.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F. Upcoming opens. A summary is at the top, and your cursor is in What is coming up (Alt+W).
  2. Arrow through the list.
  3. Press Enter, or choose Go There (Alt+G), to open what the row is about. A recording opens Schedule Recording. A programme opens the ACB Media Schedule. A station reminder tunes in. Then Upcoming closes.
  4. On a reminder, Snooze… (Alt+S) puts it off by 5, 10 or 30 minutes from now. Dismiss (Alt+D) forgets it.
  5. Press Escape to close.

Snooze and Dismiss only work on reminders. To change or cancel a scheduled recording, use Schedule Recording, where Delete removes it straight away.

Notifications

A notification pops up, says its piece and goes away, and if your screen reader was in the middle of a sentence, you might never have heard it. So Quill Radio keeps a list of everything it has told you this way, such as new podcast episodes and reminders, and you can read it whenever you like.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F3 (Help > Notifications…). The Notifications window opens with your cursor in the list, newest first.
  2. Arrow through it. Each row is one line: the word “New” if you have not read it yet, which app said it, what it said, and how long ago.
  3. Press Enter, or choose Open, to go to what the notification was about, such as the podcast it names or the station a reminder was set on. If there is nothing to open, Quill Radio tells you.
  4. Mark All as Read takes the word “New” off every row. Nothing is removed.
  5. Clear List empties the list. It only removes the record of being told, never the episodes or stations themselves.
  6. Press Escape to close.

QUILL Cast shares the same list, so whichever app you have open can show you what the other one found.

What’s New, in one key

Community > What’s New (Alt+Shift+N) tells you, in one sentence, what arrived since you last looked, without opening anything: for example, “Since you last looked: 4 new episodes in The Tech Show, Main Menu. 1 new video from Blind Abilities. 1 reminder went off.” If nothing has arrived, you hear “Nothing new since you last looked.”

What it read out counts as read, so pressing it again says “Nothing new”. The entries stay in Notifications for the detail. It only reads out what Quill Radio found, not other apps’ notifications.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now browse the ACB Media schedule, tune in, record a programme with a couple of key presses, and set reminders so you never miss the ones you love. Upcoming shows you everything you have planned, and Notifications keeps everything you have been told. Next, Chapter 13, The Community menu, has the rest of what is on that menu, including Ask QUILL Radio. The tutorial Sleeping, waking, and being left alone touches on reminders and quiet hours too.

Chapter 13: The Community menu

The Community menu (Alt+C) is where Quill Radio connects you with other listeners and with a helpful assistant. This chapter covers Ask QUILL Radio, signing in with your ChatGPT plan, ACB Media’s podcasts, Community Picks, and how to suggest a station or podcast for everyone to enjoy. The ACB Media schedule, which is on this menu too, has Chapter 12 to itself.

The tutorial Community Picks, and suggesting one, in the More than radio track, goes with this chapter.

Ask QUILL Radio: a conversation that knows what is playing

Ask QUILL Radio is the radio’s own assistant. It runs on the ChatGPT plan you already pay for, so there is no key to paste and no charge per question. And it knows one thing ChatGPT on the web does not: what you are listening to. The station and the title the stream is announcing go with every message, so you can ask about them without typing any names:

It is a conversation, so you can follow up with “and where can I hear more of them?” and it knows what you mean. Nothing you ask changes what is playing.

It works from words, not from sound. Ask QUILL Radio never listens to the stream, records anything or turns speech into text. It only knows what Quill Radio already knows in words: the station’s name, and the title the stream sends, when it sends one. If a station sends no titles, the assistant knows the station but not the song, and tells you so. If you ask about something a presenter just said, the answer comes from what the assistant knows about the programme, not from hearing it.

Before your first question, sign in. Ask QUILL Radio only works with your own ChatGPT plan: Plus, Pro, Team or Enterprise. See “Use My ChatGPT Subscription, step by step” below. If you have not signed in, Ctrl+Shift+8 tells you so and opens that window instead.

Ask QUILL Radio, step by step

  1. Play something if you like. It answers either way; it just knows more with a station on.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+8 (Community > Ask QUILL Radio…). The Ask QUILL Radio window opens with your cursor in Your message. It is a window of its own, on the Window menu and one Ctrl+Tab away, and the playing keys still work in it.
  3. What it knows, one Shift+Tab back, tells you what is on right now, which model will answer, and whether web search is allowed. It is worth reading once.
  4. Type a question and press Enter. You hear “Working.”, then the reply is read aloud as it arrives. It is also added to Conversation, the box above, where you can read it again word by word.
  5. Or press Ask About What’s Playing (Alt+P) without typing anything. It asks about the song and the station for you, and each press asks the next suggested question.
  6. New Conversation (Alt+N) starts again. Copy Last Reply (Alt+L) puts the latest answer on the clipboard. ChatGPT Account (Alt+G) opens the sign-in window. Escape, Ctrl+W or Close closes the window.

Quick questions

Above Your message is a Quick questions list (Alt+Q). Arrow through it as much as you like; nothing happens until you press Enter on the one you want, or choose Use This Question (Alt+T). The question is then put in the message box for you to send as it is or change, your cursor moves there, and the Status line tells you what else, if anything, will go with it. Six of them ask about what is playing and send nothing more:

Three of them ask about you, and each one tells you, before you send it, exactly what it will attach and how much:

Nothing about you is sent unless you choose one of those three, and nothing is sent at all until you press Enter. Each question is one request on your plan, made when you ask and never on a timer.

Good to know: Ask QUILL Radio needs the internet, and it is off in Safe Mode. What you ask counts towards your ChatGPT plan’s own limits, which OpenAI sets. If you reach a limit, the window tells you in words, and Open ChatGPT Usage in the account window shows when it resets.

Use My ChatGPT Subscription, step by step

  1. Press Alt+F5 (Community > Use My ChatGPT Subscription…). The window opens on About this, which tells you where your questions go and what it costs. Read it once.
  2. Tab to Continue with ChatGPT and press it. Your browser opens on OpenAI’s own sign-in page.
  3. Sign in to ChatGPT there. When the page asks whether QUILL Radio may use your plan, allow it. That is the name you will see under Apps in ChatGPT’s settings from now on.
  4. Come back to Quill Radio. The window says “Signed in with ChatGPT as” and your email address, and your cursor is on Model, a list of every model your plan offers, read from your account. The first one is chosen for you; arrow to another and it is saved as soon as you land on it. Refresh Models reads the list again.
  5. Allow web search (Alt+W) starts off. Press Alt+W, then Space, and you hear “Web search is allowed.” With it on, the assistant may look things up on the web through OpenAI, such as a station’s schedule, a news story a presenter mentioned, or a new album, and tell you what it found. It is saved as soon as you change it, and Space again turns it off.
  6. Open ChatGPT Usage (Alt+U) opens your plan’s usage page in your browser. Sign Out (Alt+O, press it twice) asks OpenAI to cancel Quill Radio’s sign-in and forgets it here. Forget on This Computer (Alt+F) only forgets it here, which is handy on a computer with no internet or for a sign-in you already removed in ChatGPT’s settings. Both only appear while you are signed in.
  7. Press Escape to close.

If the browser did not open, the window tells you and offers Copy the Sign-In Address. Paste it into any browser on this computer and finish there. Stop Waiting gives up without changing anything.

Good to know: Quill Radio never sees your ChatGPT password. It only keeps a sign-in pass from OpenAI, in the Windows credential store, under Quill Radio’s own name. Each QUILL app signs in as itself, so Quill Radio, QUILL Lite and QUILL each appear under Apps in ChatGPT’s settings, and signing one out leaves the others alone. There is no free QUILL AI service behind Ask QUILL Radio and no key to paste: it is your plan or nothing, and the window tells you so.

ACB Media Podcasts, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+I (Community > ACB Media Podcasts…). Quill Radio fetches ACB’s list of podcasts, then the window opens.
  2. Your cursor is in the Available list. Arrow through it. The Description box below tells you what the highlighted show is about.
  3. Press Enter or Space to add the highlighted show to What you are adding. Add All adds every one.
  4. In What you are adding, Move Up, Move Down, Remove and Sort A to Z arrange your choices. Enter or Space on one of your choices removes it.
  5. Choose Add These (Alt+T). The shows are followed or added to your favorites, and Quill Radio tells you what it did.
  6. Press Escape to close without adding anything.

Community Picks, step by step

Community > Community Picks… (Ctrl+Alt+0) is a list of stations and podcasts that listeners have suggested and Community Access has checked. Use it when you would like a few good places to start, chosen by people rather than by a directory’s ranking.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+0. You hear “Reading the Community Picks list…”, then the Community Picks window opens.
  2. Your cursor is in the Available list. Arrow through it. The Description box, the next Tab stop, tells you what the highlighted pick is.
  3. Press Enter or Space to put the highlighted pick in What you are adding, or Tab to the Add button. You hear “Added” and the name. Add All adds every one.
  4. In What you are adding, use Move Up, Move Down, Remove and Sort A to Z to arrange your choices.
  5. Press Alt+T for Add These, or Tab to it and press Space. Stations go into your favorites and podcasts are followed. Quill Radio tells you what it did.
  6. Press Escape, or choose Close, to leave without adding anything.

Good to know: the list is fetched fresh each time, and checked to make sure it really came from Community Access. If it cannot be fetched, or the check fails, Quill Radio uses the copy that came with it instead, and notes why in Recent Problems. Anything already in your library tells you so, rather than being added twice.

Suggest a Station or Podcast, step by step

Know a station or podcast other listeners should hear? Suggest it for the Community Picks list. Your suggestion goes by email to support@community-access.org, where a person at Community Access reads it. You do not need an account of any kind, and nothing is posted on a website.

What the window asks

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+9 (Community > Suggest a Station or Podcast…). The Suggest a Station or Podcast window opens. At the top, it tells you where the suggestion goes, and that nothing is sent until you press Send in your email program.
  2. What is it (Alt+W): choose A radio station or A podcast with the Up and Down Arrow keys. It starts on Choose one, and nothing is sent until you have chosen, so a podcast is never filed as a station by mistake.
  3. Name (Alt+N): what it should be called in the list, such as “Radio Nowhere”. You must fill this in, and it can be up to 120 characters.
  4. Address (Alt+A): the stream address for a station, or the feed address for a podcast. You must fill this in, and it must start with https:// or http://. The easy way to get it: in Quill Radio, press Shift+F10 on the station and choose Copy Stream Link, or on a podcast show choose Copy Feed Address, then paste it here with Ctrl+V.
  5. Description (Alt+D): a sentence or two saying what it is, for someone who has never heard it. Optional, up to 600 characters. Press Tab to leave this box, because Enter starts a new line.
  6. Language (Alt+L): such as en or en-US. Optional.
  7. Why it belongs (Alt+H): anything that would help Community Access decide. Optional. Only the people who read your suggestion see it.

Sending it

  1. Press Alt+S for Send Suggestion, or Tab to it and press Space.
  2. Quill Radio checks what you typed first. If something needs fixing, it tells you the first problem and shows the whole list in a message. Press Enter to close the message, fix the field, and press Alt+S again. It catches a missing name or address, an address that does not start with https:// or http://, an address with a space in it (usually something that did not paste in full), and a station or podcast that is already in the Community Picks list.
  3. When everything is in order, your own email program opens with a new email already written, and you hear “Your mail program has opened with your suggestion written. Press Send there.” The Suggest window closes.
  4. In your email program, the email is addressed to support@community-access.org, with a subject such as “[Quill Radio 3.0.3] Suggestion: Radio Nowhere”. Read it over if you like, add anything you want to say, and press Send there. Nothing leaves your computer until you do.

If you have no email program

Some computers have no email program set up, only webmail such as Gmail or Outlook.com in a browser. Then nothing can open, and Quill Radio tells you: “No mail program answered. Write to support@community-access.org.” The whole suggestion, with the address and the subject at the top, is put on your clipboard. Open your webmail, start a new email to support@community-access.org, and paste it in with Ctrl+V. The Suggest window stays open, so what you typed is still there.

If a suggestion is too long for an email program to accept (usually a very long “Why it belongs”), it is shortened in the email, with a line saying so, and the full text is put on your clipboard. Quill Radio tells you when this happens; select the email’s text and paste the full version over it with Ctrl+V.

What is included, and what is not

What happens next

A person at Community Access reads every suggestion. If it fits the list, they add it, and it appears in Community Picks for everybody the next time the list is fetched, with no update needed. They may write back to ask a question or to let you know it was added.

Closing without sending

Press Escape, or choose Close (Alt+O). Nothing is written or sent.

Suggest a Station or Podcast is off in Safe Mode, and tells you “Safe Mode is on, so nothing is sent anywhere.”

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now ask Quill Radio’s assistant about whatever is playing, sign in with your ChatGPT plan and choose a model, add ACB Media’s podcasts, pick up stations other listeners recommend, and suggest your own favorites for everyone. Next, Chapter 14, Making Quill Radio yours, shows you how to change settings and keys so the app fits you like a glove.

Chapter 14: Making Quill Radio yours

Quill Radio works well straight away, but it is happiest when it fits the way you listen. This chapter walks through Preferences, the one setting most people never touch but might like to, the order of your menus and lists, your keys, the Command Palette, quiet hours, and Quillins.

The tutorials in the Making it yours track go with this chapter, especially The settings actually worth changing, Make the keys yours, Decide what a row says, and what its menu offers first and Quillins: extensions in a radio.

Preferences

Station > Preferences… (Ctrl+,) opens Quill Radio Preferences, one page of settings. Every setting takes effect the moment you choose OK. If you change the playback engine or the output device while something is playing, it reconnects straight away.

Change a setting, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+,. Quill Radio Preferences opens on its first setting.
  2. Press Tab to move through the settings. Each one’s name tells you what it does, and F1 on any of them tells you more.
  3. For a drop-down list, press Alt+Down Arrow to open it, or just arrow through the choices where you are.
  4. For a checkbox, press Space.
  5. Choose OK (Enter) to save. You should hear “Preferences saved.” Escape cancels.

The drop-down lists

These come first:

The checkboxes

Each one is listed with how it starts:

Text boxes, buttons and groups

Three text boxes:

Two buttons:

Three groups:

Finding a setting by typing

Preferences has a Find a setting box, so you don’t have to hunt for a checkbox. Type a word from a setting’s name or its help, press Down Arrow to go through the matching settings, then Enter to go to one. Ctrl+F takes you back to the search, and Escape clears the search before it closes the window. It only finds settings; it does not change them. OK still saves, Cancel still cancels, and the values you have chosen are not searched. Settings that are dimmed stay dimmed.

Customize Features, step by step

If you never record, you can switch the Record menu off so there is less to arrow past.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+C (View > Customize Features…). The window “Customize Quill Radio Features” opens.
  2. Search features filters the list. There is one area: Enable Recording, which covers the Record menu.
  3. Press Space to uncheck it, then choose Save.
  4. You should hear “Feature settings saved. Menu changes take effect the next time you open Quill Radio.”

Nothing is deleted, and checking it again brings the menu back. The tray and status bar menus still offer Record Now, Schedule Recording and Recording Settings either way.

Quick Actions

Station > Quick Actions… (Ctrl+Alt+Q) sets the order of the actions on the Browse Stations Shift+F10 menu, so the ones you use most are at the top. Enter on a row still does what it always did.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Q. The Quick Actions window opens.
  2. Actions for (Alt+F) chooses which list: Station actions (rows you play) or Browse folder actions (folders).
  3. Tab to Order (first is at the top of the menu) (Alt+O). Arrow to an action. The line below tells you what it does and where it is.
  4. Press Alt+Up or Alt+Down to move it, or Tab to Move Up (Alt+U), Move Down (Alt+D) or Move to Top (Alt+T). Quill Radio tells you its new number.
  5. Reset This List (Alt+R) puts the chosen list back the way it came. The other list is left alone.
  6. Choose OK (Enter). You should hear “Quick Actions saved.” Escape cancels.

It only changes the order of what a row already offers; it never adds anything. A station already in your favorites still offers Remove, not Add, and a live stream still offers no Download.

What each row says

Your screen reader reads a list one column at a time, so the columns are the sentence you hear on every row. View > Choose Columns… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C) lets you decide that sentence for the Find Stations results and the Radio Recordings list.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C. The Choose Columns window opens.
  2. Columns for (Alt+F) chooses the list: Find Stations or Recordings.
  3. Tab to Shown, in the order they are read (Alt+S). Arrow to a column.
  4. Press Alt+Up or Alt+Down to move it, or use Move Up (Alt+U) and Move Down (Alt+D).
  5. Hide (Alt+I) takes a column out of the row altogether. It moves to Hidden (not read out at all) (Alt+H). Select one there and choose Show (Alt+W) to put it back in its proper place.
  6. A row will read (Alt+A) spells out the sentence one row will say with your choices, so you can hear the difference before you save.
  7. Reset This List (Alt+R) puts the chosen list back the way it came.
  8. Choose OK. You should hear “Columns saved.”

One column in each list always stays, the station’s name or the recording’s name, because a row with nothing to say what it is cannot be used. If you try to hide it, Quill Radio tells you why not.

Some columns are there but start switched off. Find Stations can also show Language, Genres, Popularity and Bitrate. Recordings can also show Length, which is blank when the only number known is the safety limit.

If the Find Stations window is already open, close it and open it again to see your new columns.

Your keys, your way

Keyboard access without chords

You can reach every command in Quill Radio without holding several keys down at once. That matters on a braille notetaker such as the BrailleNote Evolve, and for anyone who finds a three- or four-key combination hard.

Change a key, step by step

Help > Keyboard Shortcuts… (Ctrl+Alt+K) opens the Keymap Editor, a list of every command and its key that you can search.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+K. The Keymap Editor opens with your cursor in Search (Alt+S).
  2. Type part of a command’s name, such as record. Or type a key, such as Ctrl+B, to see what it does. Record Keys… (Alt+R) lets you press the key instead of typing its name.
  3. Tab to the Keyboard shortcuts list and arrow to the command.
  4. Choose Edit Keybinding… (Alt+E). A box opens with the current key.
  5. Type the new key, such as Ctrl+Shift+K, and choose OK.
  6. If that key is already used, or is a risky one such as a plain letter, Quill Radio warns you and tells you which command has it.
  7. Choose OK to close the editor. The menus show your new key straight away.

Your keys are shared with QUILL and QUILL Cast, so a key you change here changes there too. A few keys, such as Preferences on Ctrl+, and the playing keys, keep their old key until you next open Quill Radio. Quill Radio’s own keys are set up so they never clash with QUILL’s editor keys.

The Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet, step by step

Help > Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) lists every key Quill Radio answers to, and you can filter it.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K. Your cursor is in Filter (a key, or what you want to do) (Alt+F). You should hear how many shortcuts are listed.
  2. Type what you want to do, such as record, or a key you cannot place, such as Ctrl+B. The list gets shorter as you type.
  3. Press Enter to move into the list, and arrow through it. Each row tells you the key, what it does and where it works.
  4. Copy All (Alt+C) copies the list as it is filtered. Change Shortcuts… (Alt+S) closes the sheet and opens the Keymap Editor.
  5. Press Escape to close.

The sheet is made from the menus you actually have, so it shows your keys. Keys that have no menu item, such as F6 into the status bar, the Winamp letters in Radio Recordings and Shift+F10 on a row, are listed too.

Global Hotkeys, step by step

A global hotkey works even while another program has focus.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+G (Help > Global Hotkeys…). A list of commands opens, each with its global key, or none.
  2. Arrow to a command, such as Radio: Play/Pause, Radio: Stop, Radio: Mute/Unmute, Radio: Volume Up or Radio: Volume Down.
  3. Choose Assign… (Alt+A) and give it a key. The first time, Quill Radio reminds you that a key that works everywhere may take over the same key in another program.
  4. Clear (Alt+L) removes a global key.
  5. Choose Save to keep your changes, or Cancel.

None are set up to begin with. The list is shared with QUILL, so it also shows rows such as New Sticky Note and Podcasts: Play/Pause, which do nothing in Quill Radio. Its first row, “Show/Hide QUILL to the tray”, shows or hides Quill Radio when you set it here. Only safe playing and window commands can have a global key. A key another program already uses is left alone.

Quill Radio’s own show-and-hide key, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R, is always on and is not in this list. See “The system tray” in Chapter 3.

The Command Palette

Ctrl+Shift+P opens the Command Palette from any Quill Radio window. It lists every command by name, so it is the answer whenever you cannot remember a key or a menu.

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P. Your cursor is in the search box, and you hear how many commands there are.
  2. Type a few letters of what you want.
  3. Arrow to a command. Each one tells you its key.
  4. Press Enter to run it. Escape closes the palette.

A command that cannot run right now tells you why. A setting you can switch on and off tells you how it is set, such as “Announce Track Titles (currently On)”. Some commands are only here: Copy What’s Playing, Next Station in Folder, Previous Station in Folder, Extend Sleep Timer 5 Minutes, Cancel Sleep Timer, Quiet Hours On/Off, Repeat Last Announcement, Announcement Self-Test… and Redeem Unlock Code….

Quiet hours

Help > Quiet Hours… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z) sets a stretch of time, 22:00 to 07:00 to begin with, when Quill Radio stops speaking up on its own. It is perfect for a radio by the bed.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z. The Quiet Hours window opens.
  2. Check Quiet hours on (Alt+Q) with Space.
  3. Choose From (Alt+F) and To (Alt+T), in half hours. The time can go past midnight.
  4. Check Let reminders through anyway (Alt+R) if you want every reminder to speak during quiet hours.
  5. A line below tells you what your setting will do. Choose OK.

What it means, exactly:

Quiet hours are shared with the other Quill listening apps, so you only set them once. Quiet Hours On/Off in the Command Palette switches them quickly.

Quillins in Quill Radio

Quillins are small add-ons for QUILL that are kept safely apart from the rest of the app. Each Quillin says which apps it is for, so only the ones made for Quill Radio load here. They load and add things in this release, for example the Radio Community Directory that comes with Quill Radio, which adds a directory to Find Stations and a branch to Browse Stations.

The Quillins menu itself is not in this release, so there is nothing to install or set up from Quill Radio. What a bundled Quillin adds simply appears where it belongs. Quillins are off in Safe Mode, which is one way to tell whether a problem comes from one.

Quillin station sources

A Quillin can add a whole source of stations. When one is installed and switched on, a Quillin Sources branch appears in Browse Stations, with one folder for each source. Its stations play, become favorites and can be searched like any others. When there is none, the branch is not there.

What you learned, and where to go next

You have been through every setting in Preferences, switched off what you do not need, put the actions and columns you use most first, and learned how to change any key, see them all on one sheet, and reach any command by name. You also know how quiet hours give you peace when you want it. Next, Chapter 15, Safety nets, shows you the ways Quill Radio catches you when something goes wrong. The tutorial Make the keys yours is a friendly way to practise changing a key.

Chapter 15: Safety nets

Everybody presses the wrong thing sometimes, or misses something Quill Radio said. This chapter shows you how to take back what you did, why an item is dimmed, where to find a failure you missed, how to hear the last result again, and exactly what Quill Radio connects to. Knowing these are here makes it much easier to explore without worrying.

The tutorial Getting unstuck, in the Your first hour track, and The help that comes with it, in the Living with it track, cover much of this chapter.

Taking back the last thing you did

Removed something by mistake? Press Ctrl+Z in the main window (Edit > Undo Last Action) and the last thing you removed or cleared comes back: a podcast you stopped following, a Remove All Downloads, a Mark All as Played, or a deleted recording. Quill Radio tells you what it brought back, such as “Undid Unfollow. Brought back The Daily, with 412 episodes and 3 downloaded files.”

  1. Do something you regret, such as deleting a recording in Radio Recordings. What Quill Radio says ends with “Ctrl+Z undoes this”.
  2. Press Escape or Ctrl+Tab until you are back in the main window.
  3. Press Ctrl+Z. You hear what came back.
  4. If there is nothing to take back, you hear “Nothing to undo”.

Good to know:

Anything you can take back ends what Quill Radio says with “Ctrl+Z undoes this”. Ctrl+Z works in the main window, so if you are in Browse Stations, press Escape or Ctrl+Tab to get to the main window first.

Why a menu item is dimmed

A dimmed menu item always carries its reason. Screen readers that read menu help say it, and the status bar shows it. For example:

To hear the reason for a dimmed item:

  1. Arrow to the dimmed item in the menu.
  2. If your screen reader reads menu help, you hear the reason after the item’s name.
  3. If it does not, press Escape to close the menu, then press Ctrl+Shift+P, type the command’s name, and arrow to it. The Command Palette reads the reason in the list.

The Command Palette works the same way: a command that cannot run reads its reason instead of a bare “(unavailable)”. Items are dimmed rather than hidden, so you can always hear that a command exists.

Recent Problems

Help > Recent Problems… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P) lists what has gone wrong lately, such as podcasts that could not be read, downloads that failed and stations that dropped, each with the reason and the time. If you missed something Quill Radio said about a failure, this is where it waits for you.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P. Your cursor is in What has failed recently (Alt+W), newest first. If there is nothing, you hear “No recent problems”.
  2. Arrow through the list.
  3. Retry (Alt+R) tries the highlighted problem again, such as playing a station or downloading something again.
  4. Copy All (Alt+C) copies the list as text, for a message to support. It includes addresses and error messages, never passwords.
  5. Clear List (Alt+L) empties it. It does not fix anything.
  6. Press Escape to close.

Nothing in the list leaves your computer.

When closing could not finish saving

When Quill Radio closes, it notes the time, which is how it later finds recordings it missed while it was closed. It also clears its note that a recording was running. If it cannot save either of these, it still closes, but the next time it starts it tells you once, and a Closing row appears in Recent Problems. Retry on that row saves both again now. While you are recording, the recording note is left alone, because that note is how Quill Radio tells a crash from a normal close.

Activity and Repeat Last Result

Help > Activity… (Shift+F9) lists everything Quill Radio reported this session, good news or bad, newest first, one sentence to a row: whether it worked, what it was, and when. For example, a settings file that could not be saved, a save that worked after an earlier failure, or something that finished in the background after you closed the window that started it. Recent Problems keeps failures from one day to the next; Activity keeps this session’s results together with what you can do about them.

  1. Press Shift+F9. Your cursor is in What happened (Alt+W), newest first. If there is nothing yet, the summary says so.
  2. Arrow through the list. Details (Alt+D) below has the full sentence, the reason, the time and what you can do.
  3. Retry (Alt+R) does the selected thing again, the same way. For the settings file, that means trying the save again.
  4. Open Folder (Alt+F) opens the folder in File Explorer with the file selected, so you can see for yourself if a disk is full or a folder is read-only.
  5. Copy Details (Alt+C) copies the selected result as text, for a message to support. Clear List (Alt+L) empties the list for this session.
  6. Press Escape to close.

Finished recordings are in the list too, with the file name, how long they are, and Open Folder to find the file. A recording that ended early is listed as partial with its reason, and a scheduled recording that could not start is listed with why. So are exports: the calendar, a playlist, and your listening statistics.

Help > Repeat Last Result (F9) says the newest result that mattered again. That is the last thing Quill Radio itself told you, not the last thing your screen reader read, and it also tells you what Activity offers for it.

Nothing in the list leaves your computer. These two keys do the same in QUILL, QUILL Lite and QUILL Cast.

What Quill Radio connects to

It is fair to want to know what an app does on the internet. Here it all is, plainly.

What you learned, and where to go next

You now know that Ctrl+Z and Undo History can take back what you removed, that a dimmed item always tells you why, and that Recent Problems, Activity and F9 keep anything you might have missed. You also know exactly what Quill Radio does on the internet, and what it never does. The last chapter, Chapter 16, When you need a hand, shows you every way to get help.

Chapter 16: When you need a hand

Help is never far away in Quill Radio. This chapter covers the guided tutorials, F1 help on any control, keeping Quill Radio up to date, checking that playing and recording will work, getting in touch with a real person, and answers to the problems people run into most.

The tutorial The help that comes with it, in the Living with it track, walks you through the help you have here.

Tutorials

Help > Tutorials… (Ctrl+Alt+F1) opens 44 guided lessons, 298 steps in all, in six tracks: Your first hour, Finding something to listen to, Making it yours, Recording, More than radio, and Living with it. They are not a copy of this guide:

Take a tutorial, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1. The Quill Radio Tutorials window opens with your cursor in Find a tutorial (or type ‘here’ for this window) (Alt+F).
  2. Type words to narrow the list. Every word must appear somewhere in a lesson, so “record tuesday” finds the lesson about booking a recording. Type here to list the lessons about the window you came from. Press Enter to move into the list.
  3. The tree lists lessons by track. Each row tells you how many steps, roughly how long, and whether you have finished it. Arrow to one.
  4. Press Enter, or choose Start (Alt+A). The lesson opens with the first step in a box you can read.
  5. Read the step. Choose Try it (Alt+T) to have Quill Radio do it for you, or do it yourself.
  6. Check Follow me (Alt+M) if you want the lesson to notice when you have done each step.
  7. Choose Next (Alt+N) to move on, Back (Alt+B) to go back, or Say it again (Alt+G) to hear the step again.
  8. Choose Contents (Alt+C) to go back to the list.
  9. Press Escape to close the window. Your place is kept.

The Tutorials window is a window of its own. Leave it open, press Ctrl+Tab to go to the part of the app the step is about, do the step there, and hear the lesson move on behind you. The playing keys work inside it too.

On the contents page, Read it all (Alt+R) shows a whole lesson as one page of text. The whole book as a document (Alt+D) opens every lesson as one document. Forget my progress (Alt+P) clears which lessons you finished and where you were, after asking you.

The same lessons are also in tutorials.md beside this guide, with the keys Quill Radio comes with.

Context help (F1), step by step

  1. On any control, in any window, press F1.
  2. A help window opens. It tells you what the window you are in is for, then what the control you are on does and how to use it.
  3. Arrow through the text. You can copy it if you like.
  4. Press Escape. You are back exactly where you were.

Check for Updates, step by step

Help > About shows your version with a build number, such as 3.2.0 (build 4). The build number tells you which build of a version you have: when a fix comes out without a new version number, it is a newer build, and Check for Updates offers it.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+U (Help > Check for Updates…). You should hear “Checking for updates”.
  2. If there is nothing new, a message says “You are up to date”, with your version. Press Enter to close it.
  3. If there is an update, the Update Available window opens. Your cursor is in What’s new (Alt+N), a box with the release notes. Arrow through them.
  4. Choose Update (Enter) to download it, and you hear how it is getting on. Or choose Close (Escape) to leave it for now.
  5. When the download finishes, the Update downloaded window gives you three choices:
    • Install and restart now (Enter): Quill Radio closes, the update is installed, and Quill Radio opens again, up to date.
    • Install when I close (Alt+C): carry on listening. The update is installed the next time you close Quill Radio, and the time after that you open it, it is the new version. It does not reopen by itself.
    • Open folder, to find the downloaded file yourself, or Close (Escape) to leave it.

Quill Radio offers the download that matches your copy: the portable zip for a portable copy, and the installer for everyone else. A portable copy updates itself where it is: the new version takes the old folder’s place, and the data folder, with your favorites, settings, history and recordings, moves across untouched. The old version is kept beside it, in a folder ending in .previous, until the new one has started three times or for a week, so a failed update can put it back. The installer updates quietly and doesn’t ask for administrator permission, because Quill Radio is installed for you alone.

Quill Radio also checks quietly once a day when it opens. It only speaks when it finds something. Turn it off with Check for updates automatically on launch in Preferences.

Updating from an older version by hand

A few older versions need a hand to update once. After that, every update installs itself.

Release channels: Stable, Beta and Dev

Quill Radio comes in three flavours, and you choose which one your copy follows. They are called release channels.

  1. Open the Help menu, then choose Release Channel… (press Alt+H, then N). You can also open it from Preferences, with the Change Release Channel button.
  2. Arrow through Stable, Beta and Dev. The box below tells you what each one means and what choosing it would do. Nothing changes yet.
  3. Press Switch to move, or Close (Escape) to leave things as they are.
  4. For Beta or Dev, a short warning comes first: what could go wrong, how your favorites are protected, and how to come back. Read it, check the I understand box, and choose Move to Beta (or Move to Dev). Stay on Stable, or Escape, changes nothing.

Beta and Dev versions aren’t signed, so when you install one, Windows SmartScreen may warn that it comes from an unknown publisher; that’s expected, and choosing More info, then Run anyway, installs it.

Before it moves, Quill Radio saves a copy of your favorites, history and settings. If it cannot, it stays where it is and tells you why. Your recordings are not copied, and updates do not change them. Then it checks for updates on the new channel straight away and offers you the newest version there, if there is one. Nothing is installed unless you say so.

When QUILL Lite or QUILL Cast is installed too. These apps run on one shared engine on your computer. When an app moves to Beta or Dev, it gets its own copy of that engine, so the apps you leave on Stable are never touched. You can still move several at once: check them under “Also move my other QuillVille apps on this computer” and choose Switch.

A note about disk space. That second copy of the engine takes about 335 MB. It goes away by itself when your last app comes back to Stable. A portable copy carries its own engine, so it needs no extra space.

Updates on Beta and Dev. On Beta and Dev, Quill Radio downloads a new version quietly when its daily check finds one, so it is ready when you are. It never installs anything without asking: when the download is done, it says so and shows you what’s new, and you choose when to install. It waits instead of downloading on a metered connection, during Quiet Hours, and while you are recording. Update History tells you why it waited. On Stable nothing changes: Quill Radio tells you about a new version and downloads it only when you ask.

If an update doesn’t start. After an update, Quill Radio checks that the new version really opens. If it doesn’t open within two minutes, the update undoes itself and puts back the version you had, and the next time Quill Radio starts it tells you so. If the new version is still running but stuck, it is closed first. Nothing of yours is changed, and Update History has the details. If the installer itself doesn’t finish, nothing is changed at all: Quill Radio opens again straight away as the version you had and tells you the update could not be installed. To make this possible, Quill Radio keeps a copy of the installer for the version you have: on Beta and Dev for as long as you have that version, and on Stable for a week or three starts after each update. That copy takes about 200 MB of disk space, which Stable gives back once the week or the three starts are up. After an update, the previous installer is kept until the new version has started three times, or for a week, and then it is deleted.

Coming back to Stable. Open Release Channel again and choose Stable.

The Update History button in the same window shows what the updater has done for Quill Radio. Switching sends nothing about you: the only thing Quill Radio ever sends when it checks for updates is a request for the list of versions.

Audio Health, step by step

Audio Health answers “is this going to work?” in one list. It does not test anything: no sound is played, no device opened, no file written. So it is safe to open even during a recording.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M (View > Audio Health…). A headline sums it up, and your cursor is in What the radio is using right now (Alt+W).
  2. Arrow through the list. It tells you which playback engine is really in use (and whether Automatic has fallen back to Windows Media because mpv is missing), whether mpv and ffmpeg are there and what you lose without them, where the sound is going, what Sound Enhancements are doing, whether the full OptiLab is included, and whether a recording could be saved to your recordings folder right now.
  3. Check Again (Alt+C) looks at everything again, for example after you plug in a headset, and tells you the headline.
  4. Repair FFmpeg… (Alt+R) and Repair mpv… (Alt+M) are only available when that tool is missing.
  5. Press Escape to close.

Repair a missing tool

Both mpv and ffmpeg come inside every copy of Quill Radio. If one goes missing, the usual cause is an antivirus program taking it away, or an update that did not finish. Quill Radio tells you once when it opens: which tool is gone, what you lose, and what to do.

To repair:

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F (Help > Repair FFmpeg…) or Ctrl+Alt+M (**Help

    Repair mpv Playback Engine…**).

  2. Agree to the download. Quill Radio fetches the official version and tells you when it is ready.

Installing Quill Radio again also puts both back. If everything is fine, Quill Radio says nothing about any of this.

Other help

Getting help from support

Support is run by Community Access. Write to support@community-access.org with questions, problems, ideas or suggestions. A person reads every message, and you get your reply by email.

Every kind of message from Quill Radio goes to that one address: Get Help from Support, Report Bad Station and Suggest a Station or Podcast. None of them is posted on GitHub or any other public website.

What the window asks

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 (Help > Get Help from Support…). The Get Help from Support window opens. At the top it tells you the message goes to support@community-access.org, and that nothing is sent until you send it from your email program.
  2. What kind of message (Alt+W) is a list: Something is broken, A question, An accessibility problem, or An idea or request. Use the Up and Down Arrow keys. It only helps your message reach the right person; say anything you like below.
  3. Subject (Alt+U): a short line saying what it is about, like an email subject, such as “Recording stops after an hour”. You must fill this in.
  4. What happened (Alt+H): tell us in as much or as little detail as you like. This is the part a person reads first. You must fill this in. Enter starts a new line, so press Tab to move on.
  5. What you expected (Alt+X): what you thought would happen instead. Optional.
  6. Steps to reproduce (Alt+R): how someone else could make it happen, such as “Play BBC Radio 4, press Ctrl+R, wait an hour”. Optional, but worth more than anything else when you can give it.
  7. Your email address (Alt+E): where support should reply. Optional. The message comes from your own email account, so support can reply to that anyway; only fill this in if you want the answer to go somewhere else.
  8. Screen reader (Alt+A): which one you use, if any. It is filled in from the screen reader that is running, so you can usually leave it.
  9. Under the fields, a line tells you what else is included, such as “Also included: Quill Radio 3.0.3, and your Windows version.”

Sending it

  1. Press Enter, or Tab to Send and press Space.
  2. If the subject or What happened is empty, or the email address does not look right, you hear the first problem and see the whole list. Press Enter to close it, fix the field, and send again.
  3. Otherwise your own email program opens with the whole message written, addressed to support@community-access.org, with a subject such as “[Quill Radio 3.0.3] Recording stops after an hour”. You hear “Your mail program is opening with the message ready. Nothing is sent until you send it there.” The Get Help window closes.
  4. Press Send in your email program. Nothing leaves your computer until you do.

If you have no email program

On a computer with only webmail, nothing can open, and Quill Radio says “No mail program answered. Write to support@community-access.org.” The whole message, with the address and subject at the top, is on your clipboard. Start a new email to support@community-access.org in your webmail and paste it in with Ctrl+V. The Get Help window stays open with what you typed.

A very long message is shortened in the email, with a line saying so, and the full text goes on your clipboard. Quill Radio tells you when this happens; paste the full text over the shortened one with Ctrl+V.

What is included, and what is not

What happens next

A person at Community Access reads it and replies by email, usually to the address you sent from. To close the window without writing anything, press Escape or choose Cancel.

Report Bad Station (Shift+F10 on a station in Browse Stations or Search Stations) opens this same window with the station’s name, stream, source and country already filled in. It never includes your name, email or file paths.

Writing to support@community-access.org yourself, from any email account, works just as well.

Troubleshooting

Here are the problems people run into most often, and what to do about each.

Quill Radio’s sounds play on the wrong sound card, or not at all

Open Preferences (Ctrl+,) and choose App Sounds Play On….

The sound card does not switch

Choose the device in Audio > Output Device… (Ctrl+Shift+D) and listen to what Quill Radio says.

Check the row you chose, too. Windows calls both a laptop’s built-in sound card and a USB headset “Speakers”, and only the make in brackets tells them apart.

If Quill Radio does not start

Since 3.0.4, QuillRadio.exe always tells you when something goes wrong. If the app cannot start, or stops with an error, a plain message opens that your screen reader reads by itself. It says “Quill Radio did not start” (or “stopped unexpectedly”, if it had been running a while), gives the reason in words, names the file with the details, and gives the support address.

The launch log holds what happened the last time Quill Radio started. A portable copy keeps it at data\logs\launch.log beside QuillRadio.exe; an installed copy keeps it at %APPDATA%\Quill\logs\QuillRadio-launch.log, next to quill.log. Each start replaces it, so send it before you try again. It contains file locations from your computer and nothing else personal.

“The site’s security certificate could not be verified”

Quill Radio trusts the same security certificates Windows trusts, for station lists, podcasts, YouTube sign-in, downloads and Check for Updates. A site that opens in your web browser should open here too. When one will not:

  1. Check that this computer’s date and time are right. A clock that is off, even by a day, is the most common cause.
  2. Run Windows Update. It keeps the list of certificates Windows trusts up to date.
  3. If your antivirus scans secure web pages, or you are on a work or school network, Windows has to trust that software’s certificate for Quill Radio to trust it. Ask whoever looks after your computer or network.

Quill Radio does not skip the check to get past the message, because a certificate that cannot be verified can mean someone is between you and the site.

Everything else

What you learned, and where to go next

You know where to turn when you need help: the tutorials for learning by doing, F1 for whatever you are on, Audio Health for the sound, and a real person at support@community-access.org for anything else. You can keep Quill Radio up to date and sort out the most common problems yourself. One chapter is left: Chapter 17, QUILL Lineups, gathers everything you have met so far into lists that keep themselves up to date. The Keyboard reference after it is worth keeping handy for your first few weeks. Thank you for listening with Quill Radio. Enjoy it.

Chapter 17: QUILL Lineups

A Lineup is a list of things to listen to or watch, in an order you chose, that keeps itself up to date. One Lineup can hold any mix of radio stations, saved places from Browse Stations, podcasts and their episodes, YouTube videos, playlists and channels, your Local Media files and your recordings.

Things come into a Lineup two ways. You can add them yourself, from almost any list in Quill Radio. And you can give a Lineup rules: “every unplayed episode from my News folder published since yesterday”, or “the stations in my Morning folder”. Each rule also says when its items go: once you have heard them, after some days, when they stop matching, or never. And whatever the rules say, your hands win. What you add stays, what you keep stays, and what you remove never comes back.

A morning might look like this: arrow to Morning, press Enter, and the two news stations you always start with play first, then today’s episodes, with yesterday’s already gone because you heard them.

Your Lineups are shared with QUILL Cast. Make one in Quill Radio and it is there when Cast opens, and you can edit it in either app, even with both open.

The tutorial Build a lineup that fills itself, in the More than radio track, walks you through this chapter in about nine minutes.

Open Lineups

Press Ctrl+U (Playback > Lineups…). The Lineups window opens. It is a window of its own, like Local Media, so it is on the Window menu and in the Ctrl+Tab order, and it has its own menu bar.

You can also reach it from:

If the window is already open, Ctrl+U brings it to the front rather than opening a second one. Close it with Escape or Ctrl+W (Lineup > Close). Whatever is playing carries on.

Finding your way around the window

When you have no Lineups yet

The first time, the window says “You have no lineups yet”, and your cursor is on the New Lineup… button. Beside it is Start from an Example…, which gives you a ready-made Lineup with rules.

The two lists

Once you have a Lineup, the window has two lists. Tab moves from the Lineups list to the Show filter and then to the Items list.

Each item reads as one sentence, always in the same order: the name, the kind of thing, the length, where it comes from, and, only when there is something to say, its state. For example:

The name comes first, so typing the first letter of a name jumps to it. The states you may hear are:

State What it means
kept You chose Keep This Item, so it stays whatever the rules say.
played Its owner says you have heard or watched it to the end.
live It never ends by itself, like a radio station or a live stream.
missing It no longer exists, for example a podcast you stopped following.
unavailable Quill Radio could not check it just now. It stays as it was, and is checked again later.

Above the Items list, Show (Alt+O) narrows the list to one kind: All kinds, Episodes and podcasts, Stations and places, YouTube, or Local media and recordings. Moving items while some kinds are hidden moves them among the items you can see.

The status bar

The status bar sums up the Lineup you are on: how many items, how long they play, and when the rules last ran, such as “Morning: 14 items, 1 hour 50 minutes. Updated 06:02.” In NVDA press NVDA+End, and in JAWS press Insert+Page Down, to read it. Lineup Summary (Ctrl+T, Play > Lineup Summary) says the same thing and then reads you each rule.

The menus in the window

Every item on the menu bar shows its key:

The Station and Window menus are there too, as in every Quill Radio window. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, on an item or a Lineup, and everything you can do with it is right there.

Make your first Lineup

Start from an example, step by step

The quickest way to see a Lineup working is to start from one of the examples. Each one shows a different way of choosing how long things stay.

  1. In the Lineups window, press Ctrl+Alt+N (Lineup > New from an Example…), or choose the Start from an Example… button.
  2. Arrow through the examples. Each one says what it does.
  3. Choose Morning and press Enter.
  4. You hear “Made Morning. Its rules are running now.” A moment later, its items arrive.

The examples are:

Example What it brings in, and how long it stays
Morning The stations in your Favorites folder called Morning, always; then unplayed episodes from your News podcast folder published in the last day, newest first, each one gone once finished or after 2 days.
New This Week Unplayed episodes from the last 7 days, newest first, at most 20, each gone once finished or after 7 days.
Latest From Each The newest unplayed episode of each podcast you follow, gone as soon as it stops matching.
Commute Unplayed episodes of 40 minutes or less, oldest first, up to 45 minutes in all, each gone once finished.
Saved YouTube The YouTube videos you saved, each kept for 14 days.
Live News Stations with a news tag, yours or the directory’s, and saved YouTube streams that are live, while they match.
Finish These Episodes you started and have not finished, gone once finished.

The example becomes yours, a copy you can change however you like. If an example names a folder you do not have, such as News, its rule finds nothing and its sentence says so: ‘in folder “News”, which does not exist’. Rename the folder in the rule to one of yours (see “Write a rule” below).

Make an empty Lineup, step by step

  1. Press Ctrl+N (Lineup > New Lineup…), or choose the New Lineup… button.
  2. Type a name, such as Sunday, and press Enter.
  3. You hear “Made. Add to Lineup in any list fills it; Edit Rules, Ctrl+Alt+R, gives it rules.”

Two Lineups never share a name, whatever the capitals: a second Sunday is called “Sunday (2)”.

Rename, duplicate, delete and arrange Lineups

These work on the Lineup selected in the Lineups list:

Add things by hand

Anything you add yourself stays in the Lineup until you remove it, whatever the rules say.

Add to Lineup, step by step

  1. Go to the thing you want, in any of these places:
    • a station, episode, YouTube row or saved place in Browse Stations;
    • a favorite in the main window’s favorites tree;
    • a result in Search Stations;
    • one or more items in Local Media.
  2. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, and choose Add to Lineup…. In Local Media you can also press Ctrl+Shift+U (Edit > Add to Lineup…).
  3. A short list of your Lineups opens, with New Lineup… at the end. Choose a Lineup and press Enter, or choose New Lineup… and type a name.
  4. You hear “Added to Morning”, followed by “Ctrl+Z undoes this”.

If the Lineups window is open, the new item appears in it straight away. Adding something the Lineup already holds makes it stay until you remove it, and adding something you removed earlier takes it off Removed Items.

Arrange the items

Moving an item changes the order, never how long it stays. And the rules never move anything: when they run, items they bring in arrive, items they let go leave, and everything else stays exactly where you put it.

Write a rule

A rule says what to look for, where to look, which ones, in what order, how many, and how long they stay. A Lineup can have as many rules as you like: anything any rule finds is in the Lineup.

The Rules window, step by step

  1. In the Lineups list, arrow to a Lineup and press Alt+Enter, or press Ctrl+Alt+R (Lineup > Edit Rules…) from anywhere in the window.
  2. The Rules window opens on the list Rules for Morning. Each rule is one sentence, including how long its items stay and how many it finds now: ‘Podcast episodes in folder “News”, where Played is no and Age is at most 1 days, newest first. They go once finished, or after 2 days. Finds 3 now.’
  3. Use the buttons beside the list: Add Rule…, Edit Rule…, Remove Rule, Move Up and Move Down. Moving a rule changes where its new items go, not what it finds.
  4. Below the list, in This lineup, are three settings for the whole Lineup:
    • New items go: With the other items from the same rule (the usual choice, so each rule’s items stay together), At the top, or At the bottom.
    • Play-through budget in minutes: playing the Lineup through stops adding rule items once this many minutes are used. 0 means no budget.
    • Skip live items when playing through, the same as Play > Skip Live Items (Ctrl+Alt+K).
  5. Press Enter for OK, or Escape to change nothing.

Nothing changes until you choose OK. Two questions may come first, so that a rule change never takes something away silently:

Edit Rule, step by step

Edit Rule is laid out in the order the rule’s sentence reads, in labelled groups.

  1. What it looks for. Look for (Alt+L) chooses one kind: Radio stations, Saved places, Podcasts I follow, Podcast episodes, YouTube videos, YouTube playlists, YouTube channels, Local media, or Recordings. A change applies when you leave the box, or press OK, and asks first if it would clear the rule’s tests, because tests for one kind do not fit another.
  2. Where to look. Narrow by (Alt+N) chooses what to look in, such as Folder, Podcast, Label or Channel. Leave it on “Choose what to narrow by” to look everywhere. Then Values (Alt+V) lists every one you have: press Space on each one to look in, and any selected one counts. Filter values (Alt+F) shortens a long list as you type. Switching Narrow by to another field keeps the values you already chose.
  3. Tests. The Tests list (Alt+E) holds what an item must be. Add Test… (Alt+A) asks for a field, a test and a value, such as “Length”, “is at most”, “40”. Match (Alt+M) chooses whether an item must pass All of the tests or Any of the tests. With no tests, everything in the places you chose is found.
  4. Order and amount. Order (Alt+O): as the source orders them, newest first, oldest first, shortest first, longest first, by name, or most listened first. Then three limits, each 0 for none: Count limit, Per group limit (at most this many from each podcast, channel, album or Favorites folder) and Up to minutes in all.
  5. When they go. Keep (Alt+K), and the boxes it needs; see “Choose how long things stay” below. Rule switched on (Alt+S) turns the rule off without deleting it: off, it finds nothing new and lets nothing go.
  6. Try it. Press Try It (Alt+T). Your cursor moves to the Matches list, and its label says how many the rule finds, such as “Matches, 7 items”, so you hear the count as you arrive. Nothing is saved by trying.
  7. Press Enter for OK.

What a test can ask

A text test can be: contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, is, is not, fits the wildcard, matches the regular expression, or does not match the regular expression. Capitals must match makes it exact. A number test can be: is at least, is at most, is, or is not, and the box says the unit, such as “In minutes.” A yes-or-no test is yes or no.

A number test never matches something that does not say. A podcast that publishes no length is never “at most 10 minutes”, so a short-episodes rule never fills up with episodes of unknown length.

What each kind can be tested on:

Kind Fields
Podcast episodes Title, Podcast, Folder, Label, Age (days), Length (minutes), Played, Started but not finished, Percent heard, Downloaded, Season, Episode number, Episode type, Days since last played
Podcasts I follow Title, Folder, Label, Favorite, Paused, Language, Category, Unplayed episodes, Newest episode age (days)
Radio stations Name, Favorites folder, In Favorites, My tag, Directory tag, Country, Language, Codec, Bitrate, Source, Time listened (minutes), In recently played
Saved places Name, Source, Favorites folder
YouTube videos Title, Channel, Length, Live, Saved by me
YouTube playlists Title, Channel, Number of videos
YouTube channels Name, New-video alerts on
Local media Title, Artist, Album, Playlist, Length, Days since added, Is a video
Recordings Name, Length, Age, Status

Rules only read what is already on your computer. A rule over Radio stations sees your favorites, the stations you have tagged and the stations you played recently, not every station in the world. Podcast rules see what QUILL Cast knows about the podcasts you follow.

Choose how long things stay

Tests decide what comes in. The rule’s Keep choice decides when it goes. The same episode can come in because it is new and leave because you have heard it, and the rule’s sentence always says both.

Keep An item goes when Good for
While it matches It stops passing the rule’s tests. Things that should mirror a fact exactly, such as stations tagged news.
Until finished You have heard or watched it to the end, or past the percentage you set (95 percent unless you change it). Episodes, videos and recordings you mean to hear.
For a number of days It has been in the Lineup that many days, 1 to 365, whether it still matches or not. Lists that should roll forward by themselves.
Until finished, or a number of days Whichever comes first. The usual podcast case: hear it this week or let it go.
Always Never, unless you remove it. The stations you always start with.

A few things worth knowing:

Your hands outrank the rules

QUILLBee’s tip: Delete never asks, because it never loses anything. Removed Items keeps the list, and Ctrl+Z puts the item back in the very same place.

Why Is This Here

Press Alt+Enter on an item (Edit > Why Is This Here…). A short window says why the item is in the Lineup and how long it will stay. Read it with the arrow keys, and press Escape to close it.

Alt+Enter means “tell me about this” everywhere in Windows, which is why it is the reason on an item and the rules on a Lineup.

Removed Items and Recently Left

Nothing leaves a Lineup without trace. Two lists, both on the Lineup menu, remember what went:

In either one, select one or more items and choose Bring Back (Alt+B). They come back at the end of the Lineup as items you keep, so the rules do not let them straight go again. Clear the List (Alt+L) empties the list, after asking, because it cannot be undone. Clearing Removed Items also means a rule could bring those items back.

When the rules run

The rules run:

The rules run while the Lineups window is open, and each time it opens. They do not run in the background with the window closed. Opening the window always brings every Lineup up to date first.

What you hear:

Some promises the rules keep, whatever happens:

Play a Lineup

Play it through, step by step

  1. In the Lineups list, arrow to a Lineup and press Enter, or press Ctrl+Alt+P (Play > Play This Lineup) from anywhere in the window.
  2. The first item plays, and you hear its name. When it ends, the next one starts by itself, whatever kind it is: a station, an episode, a video, a file of your own.
  3. To start from a particular item, arrow to it in the Items list and press Enter, or Ctrl+Enter (Play > Play). It plays, and then the rest of the Lineup carries on after it.
  4. When the last item ends by itself, you hear “End of Morning.”

While a Lineup plays:

A Lineup’s play-through budget, and Skip Live Items, apply when the Lineup plays through. They never leave out an item you kept, added or moved, and the item you chose to start from always plays.

Saved places and YouTube channels

A saved place from Browse Stations, such as a genre or a country, and a YouTube channel are somewhere to browse rather than something to play. Enter on one opens Browse Stations, and if you saved it in Favorites, it is under Favorites there. Browse Stations opens at the top of its tree; it cannot yet open on that exact place. A play-through skips them.

Start Here: open Quill Radio in a Lineup

You can choose one Lineup to open every time Quill Radio starts.

  1. In the Lineups list, arrow to the Lineup, such as Morning.
  2. Press Ctrl+Alt+H (Lineup > Start Here).
  3. You hear “Morning opens when Quill Radio starts.” The menu item is checked, and the Lineup’s row says “start lineup”.

Next time Quill Radio starts, the Lineups window opens in front of the main window, on that Lineup, and its rules run as it opens. The main window is still there behind it, showing what it always shows. Close the Lineups window and you are back in it.

QUILL Cast has its own Start Here, so each app can start in a different Lineup, or neither.

Sharing Lineups with QUILL Cast

Quill Radio and QUILL Cast keep their Lineups in one file, lineups.json in the shared data folder. The same Lineups, rules and order appear in both apps, and the Lineups window has the same menus and keys in each, Ctrl+U included.

Share a Lineup’s rules

Export Rules… (Ctrl+Shift+X) saves a Lineup’s rules and settings, not its items, to a small file you can send to a friend or take to another computer. Import Rules… (Ctrl+I) makes a new Lineup from such a file, whose rules then find the same kinds of thing in your own favorites and podcasts.

What Lineups cannot do yet

Keys in the Lineups window

Key What it does
Enter On an item, play from here and carry on; on a Lineup, play the Lineup
Ctrl+Enter Play the selected item, then carry on
Ctrl+Space Pause or resume, except in the Items list, where it selects or deselects one item
Ctrl+Right, Ctrl+Left Next item, previous item
Ctrl+Shift+., Ctrl+Shift+, Next item, previous item, from any window (chapters first)
Ctrl+Alt+P Play This Lineup, from the top
Ctrl+Shift+Enter, Ctrl+Alt+Enter Play Next, Add to Up Next
Ctrl+Alt+S Stop After This Item
Ctrl+Alt+K Skip Live Items, on or off
Ctrl+T Lineup Summary
Ctrl+N New Lineup
Ctrl+Alt+N New from an Example
Ctrl+D Duplicate Lineup
F2 Rename Lineup
Shift+Delete Delete Lineup (asks first); Delete does the same in the Lineups list
Ctrl+Alt+R Edit Rules; Alt+Enter does the same in the Lineups list
Ctrl+Alt+H Start Here, on or off
Ctrl+Alt+Z Removed Items
Ctrl+Alt+L Recently Left
Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Shift+X Import Rules, Export Rules
Ctrl+K Keep This Item, on or off
Delete Remove from Lineup
Ctrl+Shift+Delete Remove Missing Items
Alt+Enter Why Is This Here, on an item
F5 Refresh Now
Alt+Shift+Up, Alt+Shift+Down Move up or down one place
Alt+Shift+Home, Alt+Shift+End Move to the top or the bottom
Ctrl+J Move to Position
Ctrl+X Cut
Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Alt+V Paste Before, Paste After
Ctrl+A Select All
Ctrl+Z Undo
Escape, Ctrl+W Close the window; playing carries on

From any Quill Radio window, Ctrl+U opens Lineups, and in Local Media Ctrl+Shift+U adds the selected items to a Lineup.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now make Lineups from examples or from nothing, fill them by hand from almost any list, and write rules that bring things in and let them go when you choose. You know that your own hands outrank the rules, how to ask why something is there, and how to bring back anything that left. You can play a Lineup straight through, open Quill Radio in one, and share them with QUILL Cast.

The tutorial Build a lineup that fills itself, in the More than radio track, walks through it with you. The Keyboard reference below has the keys for the whole of Quill Radio.

Licences and notices

Quill Radio is free and released under the MIT License. It also includes software, data and sounds from other projects, each under its own licence.

To read them, open the Help menu, choose About Quill Radio, and then choose the Licences and Notices button. The list opens as a plain text file, with one heading for each component: what it is, its licence, who holds the copyright and what the licence asks of us. The full licence texts are at the end.

The same file, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt, and Quill Radio’s own licence, LICENSE.txt, are also in the folder where Quill Radio is installed or unpacked, so you can open them without starting the app.

Keyboard reference

Every menu item shows its own key, and if you changed a key, it shows yours. To see every key at once, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K for the Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet. The tables below are the keys most worth knowing, grouped by what you want to do. Each table is short, so you can arrow through it a row at a time.

In every other window, Alt+S is the Station menu and Alt+W is the Window menu. See “The menus in other windows” in Chapter 3.

Playing

Action Key
Play the selected favorite, or stop Enter (in the list), or Ctrl+P
Website Alt+B (on the main window)
Pause or resume something with a timeline Ctrl+Space
Stop outright Ctrl+.
Play favorites 1 to 10 Alt+1 to Alt+0
Play Favorite Station (a list of all of them) Alt+Shift+F
Play Last Station Ctrl+L
Recently Played, newest (inside the menu) Alt+Shift+1
Add or remove the playing station as a favorite Ctrl+Shift+F
Rewind or forward (one tap 12 seconds, two a minute, three five minutes) Ctrl+Shift+Left / Ctrl+Shift+Right
Identify This Song Ctrl+K
Back to Live Ctrl+Shift+L
Continue Listening Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L
Chapters Ctrl+Shift+C
Next or previous chapter Ctrl+Shift+. / Ctrl+Shift+,
Play faster, slower, normal speed Ctrl+Shift+Up / Ctrl+Shift+Down / Ctrl+Shift+0
Skip Silence Ctrl+Shift+9
Where Am I? Ctrl+Shift+W
Go to Position Ctrl+Alt+J
Go to Player Ctrl+Shift+G
What’s Playing? Ctrl+T
Song History Ctrl+Shift+H
Lyrics Ctrl+Alt+B
Bookmark This Moment Ctrl+Alt+A
Sleep Timer Ctrl+Shift+Z
Wake-Up Timer Ctrl+Alt+Z

Volume and sound

Action Key
Volume up or down, in steps of 10 Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down
Mute or unmute Ctrl+M in the main window; Ctrl+Shift+O in every window
Volume Boost Ctrl+Shift+B
Output Device Ctrl+Shift+D
Use One Volume for All Stations Ctrl+Alt+V
Forget Every Station’s Own Volume Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V
Announce Track Titles Ctrl+Alt+T
Sound Enhancements Ctrl+E
Background Station on Another Device Alt+Shift+B
Mirror to Another Device Alt+Shift+D

Video

Action Key
Show or hide the video Ctrl+Shift+V
Captions on or off Ctrl+Shift+K
Caption Settings Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T
Video Information Ctrl+Shift+I
Take a Snapshot Ctrl+Shift+Alt+H
Full screen F11
Video Size: Fit, 50%, 100%, 200% Ctrl+Alt+4 / 5 / 6 / 7
Audio and Described Audio Ctrl+Shift+A
Play Described Audio Ctrl+Alt+D
Transcript Ctrl+Shift+T

Finding stations

Action Key
Browse Stations Ctrl+B
Search Stations Ctrl+F
Find in this folder (inside Browse Stations) Ctrl+F
Add Custom Station Ctrl+N
Find Streams from a Website Ctrl+Alt+S
Search Sources Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U
Choose Browse Sources Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O
Update Station Catalog Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G
Update Radio Reading Services Ctrl+Alt+F10
Station Catalog Status Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S
Station Details Alt+Shift+I

YouTube

Action Key
Search YouTube Ctrl+Shift+6
Add YouTube Link Ctrl+Alt+N
Add from YouTube Playlist Ctrl+Shift+Y
Import YouTube Subscriptions Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y
Read Comments on the video that is playing Ctrl+Shift+7
Live Chat of the video that is playing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+7
YouTube Video window (description, moments, like, playlists) Ctrl+Alt+Shift+8
Skip Sponsor Segments Ctrl+Alt+Shift+9
Search YouTube with Filters (and YouTube Music) Ctrl+Alt+Shift+0
Transcript of the video that is playing Ctrl+Shift+T
Repair YouTube Support Ctrl+Alt+Y
A row’s menu: Follow, Subscribe on YouTube, Notify Me, Read Comments, Live Chat, YouTube Video, About This Channel Shift+F10

Favorites

Action Key
Manage Favorites Ctrl+Shift+M
New Folder Ctrl+Shift+E
Rename (in a tree) F2
Remove (in a tree or list) Delete
Mark or unmark a row for deleting (favorites, Recordings, Browse, Schedule Recording) . (period)
Remove every marked row (one question) Delete
Clear every mark Ctrl+Shift+Delete
Move the selected favorite up or down Alt+Shift+Up / Alt+Shift+Down
Sort: A to Z, Z to A, manual Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F4 / F5 / F6
Expand or collapse all folders Ctrl+Alt+E / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E
Quick Actions Ctrl+Alt+Q
Import Stations from Playlist Ctrl+I
Export Favorites to Playlist Ctrl+Shift+X
Back Up Stations and Settings Ctrl+Shift+U
Restore from Backup Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W

Recording

Action Key
Record Now or Stop Recording Ctrl+R
Record Station Ctrl+Alt+R
Stop All Recordings Ctrl+Alt+X
Schedule Recording Ctrl+Shift+S
Recordings Ctrl+Shift+R
Recording Settings Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I
Downloads Ctrl+Shift+J

Community

Action Key
Ask QUILL Radio Ctrl+Shift+8
Use My ChatGPT Subscription Alt+F5
ACB Media Schedule Ctrl+Shift+N
What Is On Now Ctrl+Alt+H
What’s New (since you last looked) Alt+Shift+N
Upcoming Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F
Refresh the Schedule F5
ACB Media Podcasts Ctrl+Alt+I
Community Picks Ctrl+Alt+0
Suggest a Station or Podcast Ctrl+Alt+9

Windows and views

Action Key
Go To (a numbered list of places) Ctrl+G
Local Media (your own files, in playlists) Ctrl+O
Lineups (QUILL Lineups, shared with QUILL Cast) Ctrl+U
Next or previous window Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab
Jump to open window 1 to 9 Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9
Close the window you are in Escape, Ctrl+W, or Ctrl+F4
Main window shows: favorites, Browse, Search, Recordings, Player Ctrl+Shift+1 to Ctrl+Shift+5
Into or out of the status bar F6
Show or hide the status bar Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B
Show Station Details Ctrl+D
Text Size: Normal, Large, Larger Ctrl+Alt+1 / 2 / 3
Listening Statistics Ctrl+Shift+Q
Choose Columns Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C
Audio Health Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M
Customize Features Ctrl+Alt+C
Send to Tray Ctrl+W
Show or hide from any program Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R
Preferences Ctrl+,
Download Preferences Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D
Resume Last Station on Launch Ctrl+Alt+L
Start Quill Radio with Windows Ctrl+Alt+W
Exit Ctrl+Q

Help and tools

Action Key
What Is This? (context help) F1
User Guide Ctrl+F1
Release Notes Shift+F1
What’s New (the changelog) Ctrl+Shift+F1
Product Requirements Alt+Shift+F1
About Quill Radio Alt+F1
Tutorials Ctrl+Alt+F1
Command Palette Ctrl+Shift+P
Keyboard Shortcuts (Keymap Editor) Ctrl+Alt+K
Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K
Global Hotkeys Ctrl+Alt+G
Undo Last Action Ctrl+Z
Undo History Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A
Dictate Here (Edit menu, with QUILL Transcribe) Ctrl+F11
Recent Problems Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P
Notifications Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F3
Quiet Hours Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z
Bookmarks Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J
Export My Setup / Import My Setup Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N
Get Help from Support Ctrl+Alt+F2
Repair FFmpeg Ctrl+Alt+F
Repair mpv Playback Engine Ctrl+Alt+M
Check for Updates Ctrl+Alt+U

Nothing here uses Ctrl+Alt with an arrow key. JAWS and NVDA use those keys to move around tables, so Quill Radio leaves them alone. In 3.0, speed moved to Ctrl+Shift+Up and Ctrl+Shift+Down, and chapters to Ctrl+Shift+comma and Ctrl+Shift+period. If you have notes from an earlier version, those are the keys that changed.

Where to go next

Keep this reference nearby for your first few weeks, and you will soon find you only need it now and then. When you forget a key, the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and the Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) will always find it for you, and the tutorial Make the keys yours shows you how to change any key you do not like.