Quill Radio User Guide

Version 2.1.1

Quill Radio is internet radio the way a screen reader user would design it: a small window whose favorites tree has focus the instant it opens, menus that say everything they do, spoken feedback for every action, and a tray icon so the music keeps playing while you work. It runs the exact same radio code as QUILL itself and shares its data, so nothing you set up here is ever stranded.

Installing

Two flavors, both fully bundled (ffmpeg included, nothing ever downloads):

• The installer (Quill-Radio-Setup-2.1.1.exe) -- its own folder, Start Menu entry, uninstaller. Your data lives in the shared Quill store in your Windows profile.
• The portable zip (Quill-Radio-Portable-2.1.1.zip) -- extract anywhere, even a USB stick, and run QuillRadio\QuillRadio.exe. Its data folder keeps your favorites, history, and settings inside the app folder, so the whole radio travels with you.

Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run because this release is not code-signed; choose "More info" then "Run anyway". The build is exactly what this repository's source produces.

Getting started

Launch Quill Radio from the Start Menu (or the portable folder's QuillRadio.exe). The window opens with keyboard focus on your Favorite stations tree.

• No favorites yet? Press Alt+S for the Station menu, then Browse Stations... to wander a tree of every source -- popular stations, NOAA Weather Radio, radio reading services, whole directories -- or Search Stations... to search thousands of stations by name, genre, country, or language. Either way, listen before you commit, and add the keepers to your favorites. The ACB Media submenu is also right there -- the whole ACB stream directory, playable without any setup.
• With favorites: arrow to a station and press Enter. That is the whole loop.
• Want the radio on the moment the app opens? Check Station > Resume Last Station on Launch once, and Quill Radio becomes an appliance: launch it, and your station is already playing.

Everything Quill Radio announces goes through the same announcement engine QUILL uses, so it speaks through your screen reader (JAWS, NVDA, Narrator) without stealing focus.

The main window

Tab order: the now-playing line, the favorites tree, then four buttons.

• Now playing (read-only text): what is on right now; also mirrored in the status bar and the Playback menu.
• Favorite stations (tree): the same nested folder structure you build in the Favorites Manager, right on the main page. Enter plays a station, Delete removes it (with confirmation), F2 renames a station or folder, and Shift+F10 opens the full context menu -- Play/Stop, Station Details... (a reviewable, copyable readout of the station's source, stream, format, and country -- the same view the search results give), Rename, Move to Folder, Remove, New Folder, Mark for Move, and Manage Favorites. Your custom names are used everywhere.
• Buttons: Play (it becomes Stop while connecting or playing -- one transport control, never a dead button; its reliable keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+P, which works from anywhere in the window), Add to Favorites (it becomes Remove from Favorites when the playing station is already saved -- perfect for keeping something you found in ACB Media or Recently Played), Record, and Browse Stations...
• Volume (slider): right in the Tab order after the buttons, so you can tab to it while a station is playing and use the arrow keys (or Page Up/Page Down) to turn the volume up or down. It is one of three ways to set the volume -- the others are Ctrl+Up/Ctrl+Down from anywhere in the window, and the status bar's Volume cell -- and all three stay in agreement, including with each station's remembered volume.
• Status bar (along the bottom): a row of cells that always show what is going on -- Now playing, Volume (with a note when Volume Boost is on), Recording, Sleep timer, Favorites count, and the time. Press F6 to move focus into it; a second F6, or Escape, hands focus back to the favorites tree. Arrow Left and Right to move across the cells (Home and End jump to the first and last), press Enter or Space to act on the cell you are on (Now playing opens the What's Playing window, Volume mutes or unmutes, Recording starts or stops recording, Sleep timer opens the timer dialog, Favorites jumps back to the list, Time speaks the full date and time), and press the Applications key or right-click for a context menu with more actions (play/pause, mute, volume up and down, Volume Boost, stop all recordings, and Hide Status Bar). Turn the whole bar off from View > Show Status Bar if you would rather not have it.

Windows, and moving between them

Quill Radio's bigger surfaces -- Browse Stations, Search Stations, Manage Favorites, Schedule Recording, and the Weather Center -- open as their own windows, not dialogs. Two things follow from that, both on purpose:

• The menu bar is always there. Every window carries the full menu bar, so Alt reaches your menus no matter which window you are in. (Older versions used dialogs, which cannot carry a menu bar, so opening one made the menus seem to disappear.)
• The main window stays reachable. Opening one of these windows no longer locks you out of the favorites list; you can keep several windows open at once and work across them.

A Window menu on every window lists what is open, numbered in the order you opened them. To move between windows:

• Ctrl+Tab goes to the next window, Ctrl+Shift+Tab to the previous one (it wraps around).
• Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 jump straight to the first through ninth open window.
• Or open the Window menu and pick one by name and number.

Each window opens only when you ask for it, and closing a window puts focus back on the window you came from. Quill Radio announces "Entered ..." as a window opens and "Exited ..." as it closes, and drops your focus on the window's main control so you can start straight away. (Inside QUILL itself these same surfaces open as ordinary dialogs; the multi-window model is the standalone Quill Radio experience.)

Menus

Station (Alt+S)

• Browse Stations... -- a search-free window for wandering: one tree whose top-level branches are the sources. Favorites sits first (your own folders and streams), then Popular Stations, Radio Browser (by Genre) (walk the Radio Browser directory by genre, not only search it), Weather / NOAA, ACB Media, NFB Radio, Radio Reading Services, SomaFM, TuneIn (its real folder tree), Community M3U (Music Genres), and the Xiph / Icecast Directory. Expand a branch and its stations load on the spot; Enter plays the highlighted station, and Shift+F10 (or right-click) opens Play/Stop, Add/Remove Favorite, Copy stream link, Open website, and Refresh. (TuneIn stations work out their stream only when played, so Add to Favorites on a TuneIn station resolves it on demand before saving -- it works there now just like every other source.) Two branches deserve their own words:
  • Weather / NOAA is the real NOAA Weather Radio directory, state by state. Open the branch and you get the states (each with its transmitter count); open a state and you get its actual transmitters, named with call sign, frequency, and place -- "KHB36 162.550 MHz Manassas" -- and Enter plays the best available internet re-stream. The complete directory (1,035 transmitters) is bundled inside the app, so this branch works even offline. See "Your local NOAA Weather Radio" in the Weather chapter for the one-keypress local version.
  • Radio Reading Services lists the audio information services that read newspapers, magazines, and local print aloud for people who are blind or print-disabled -- WRBH 88.3 Reading Radio, Sun Sounds of Arizona, CRIS Radio, the Connecticut Radio Information System, the KPBS and WKAR reading services, ACB Media 1-5, the NFB Radio Network, Voice Corps, and more. Twenty vetted services are bundled, so the branch is never empty; play, favorite, record, and schedule them like any other station.
  • iHeart opens into genres (Country, Pop, News/Talk, Sports, and the rest), and each genre into an A-Z sub-directory of its stations -- so you expand a genre, expand a letter, and press Enter to play. Each level loads only when you open it. (Browsing uses iHeart's own genre directory; a station's stream is ready to play with no extra step.)
• Find in this folder -- below the tree is a search box that searches only from the folder you are highlighted on, downward -- one iHeart genre, one state, one source -- so you get a short, relevant list instead of searching every directory at once. Highlight the folder you want to search within, type part of a station name, and press Enter (or the Find button); matching stations appear as a flat list under that folder. Press Clear to drop the results and put the cursor back on the folder you searched from. To search a folder, Quill Radio loads that folder's stations first, so a search from a very large branch is kept bounded (it tells you if it showed only the first results -- search a smaller folder to see the rest). For a search across every directory at once, use Search Stations... instead.
• Search Stations... -- the full station search: search across four directories at once -- RadioBrowser, SomaFM, iHeart, and TuneIn -- blended into one results list, test-play, favorite. A search that looks like weather-radio geography -- a 6-digit SAME code, a call sign like KHB36, or a "County, ST" or state name -- also brings back exact NOAA Weather Radio transmitters from the authoritative directory, and reading services match by name, tag, or state right alongside. Every result is labeled with the directory it came from ("via iHeart", "via TuneIn"). RadioBrowser shows up to 200 stations at once, most-listened first; when there are still more, a More Stations button loads the next page and puts your cursor on the first newly added station. iHeart and TuneIn add a small set of their most relevant, immediately-playable matches to each search (each iHeart/TuneIn result's real stream is looked up on demand, so they are capped per search to keep one search from becoming dozens of network requests).
  • Source -- a dropdown to narrow the search to one directory (All sources, RadioBrowser, iHeart, TuneIn, SomaFM, ACB Media, or Website) when you already know where a station lives. When the same station is carried by more than one directory (a SomaFM channel RadioBrowser also lists, say), it appears under each of those directories' filters, not just the one whose copy you happened to play.
  • Tag/genre and Country -- these are now proper dropdown lists, filled in from the directory itself, so you pick "jazz" or "United Kingdom" from a list instead of typing the exact spelling; choosing one runs the search right away.
  • Refresh -- re-fetches the iHeart station directory. iHeart's directory index is cached once per Browse Stations session (TuneIn and RadioBrowser are always live), so use Refresh if you want the very latest iHeart listing.
  • The status line tells you when more can be loaded and suggests adding a tag or country to narrow a very broad search. Search is disabled in Safe Mode.
• Update Radio Reading Services... -- refresh the Radio Reading Services list on demand from the community RadioBrowser directory, off the UI thread, announcing how many services it found. The bundled list stays as the fallback, and the command is off in Safe Mode.
• Add Custom Station... -- paste any stream URL and name it yourself.
• When a station won't play, Quill Radio tries to fix it for you. Some stations are listed in the directory but their stream address is dead -- often because the real stream is behind a player on the station's website. Instead of just failing, Quill Radio works down a short ladder: it re-resolves the address (for StreamTheWorld-style players that moved servers), refreshes the address from the directory, and -- if the setting is on -- scans the station's own website, following a "Listen Live"/"Play"/"Tune In" link into the player and recognizing 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 the count and you can open Find Streams to choose. The website step is the "Recover failed streams from the station's website" checkbox in Station > Preferences (Ctrl+,), on by default and off in Safe Mode. It only tries once per station per session.
• Find Streams from a Website... -- give it a website address; it scans that one page for stream links, with a Test button that toggles to Stop Test while a candidate plays. This now also works for many stations whose "Listen Live" button is a modern JavaScript player (Triton Digital / StreamTheWorld, including the whole player.listenlive.co network -- for example player.listenlive.co/34461). Those players build their stream address in code, so it is not written anywhere in the page for a scanner to read; Quill Radio recognizes the player, reads the station's call letters from the page, and looks the real stream up through the station provider's own public address service -- no browser, no guessing. Both the MP3 and the AAC stream are offered when a station publishes both. It also recognizes an iHeart or TuneIn station page pasted directly and resolves its real playable stream through that directory, instead of handing back a page address that will not play. If a page is not one of these players or directories, or does not name its station, the scan simply behaves as before.
• Manage Favorites... -- the favorites, made organizable. See "The Favorites Manager" below.
• New Folder... (Ctrl+Shift+E) -- create a folder right where you want it: pick the location (top level or inside any existing folder), then name it. The folder exists immediately, ready for Move to Folder.
• Import Stations from Playlist... -- import an M3U or M3U8 playlist. Choose the file, then pick where the stations go: an existing folder, or type a brand-new folder path at any depth (like News/Local, created for you). If any of the playlist's stations are already in your favorites, Quill Radio tells you how many and asks whether to skip those duplicates or import everything. Station names come from the playlist's own #EXTINF lines; a bare URL is named after its host.
• Back Up Stations and Settings... and Restore from Backup... -- save your favorites, settings, wake timer, and recording schedule (and, if you choose, your recorded audio) into one portable .qrbackup file, then bring it all back on a new device or after a reinstall. Back Up asks whether to include recordings (they can be large); Restore previews the backup and confirms before it replaces your current stations, and reloads the app so it takes effect right away.
• Play Last Station (Ctrl+L) -- resume whatever you last had on, one keystroke, no navigation.
• Recently Played (submenu) -- your last fifteen stations, newest first, playable inline.
• Favorite Stations (submenu) -- every favorite, nested by your folders, playable inline.
• ACB Media (submenu) -- ACB's whole stream directory, playable inline.
• Resume Last Station on Launch (check item) -- the appliance switch.
• Preferences... (Ctrl+,) -- Resume Last Station on Launch, automatic Check for Updates, Announce dialog transitions (off by default -- turn on for more spoken detail around every dialog), When closing the window (Ask every time / Exit / Minimize to Tray -- governs the titlebar X, Station > Exit, and by default Alt+F4 too), Alt+F4 minimizes to the system tray (off by default: turn it on and Alt+F4 alone tucks the radio into the tray, still playing, while X and Exit keep the setting above -- the reflexive close stops meaning quit), Playback engine (Automatic -- recommended -- uses the bundled mpv engine, which powers the output device choice, pausing and rewinding live radio, Volume Boost, and stations in more formats; "Windows Media (classic)" is exactly the pre-1.1 behavior if you ever want it back), and Radio output device (route just the radio to a second sound card or USB headset -- your screen reader and Quill Radio's own sounds stay on the system default device; an unplugged device is remembered, not reset, and if it can't be used the radio plays through the default and says so). Every setting takes effect the moment you save -- switching engine or device mid-song reconnects the station right where it matters: on the new engine or device. Preferences also carries Favorites sort order (Ascending A to Z, Descending Z to A, or Unsorted -- how your folders and stations are ordered in the list; Ascending/Descending re-sort when you add a station, while Unsorted keeps your hand-arranged Move Up/Down order, which is never lost) and two troubleshooting settings: Verbose logging (a debug-mode checkbox that turns on detailed logging live, no restart, for when you need to diagnose something or attach detail to a bug report) and Log folder (choose where the log is written so it's easy to find; a failed recording captures the recorder's own error output into it as well). Finally, Keep the computer awake while playing or recording (on by default) stops Windows from going to sleep while a station is playing or a recording is running, so the audio never cuts off mid-listen; your screen can still turn off, and the moment nothing is playing or recording the setting lets the computer sleep normally again. Turn it off if you would rather Quill Radio never touch your power settings. (Windows only.)
• Send to Tray (Ctrl+W) -- hide the window; playback continues from the notification area.
• Exit -- quit Quill Radio. Closing the window this way, from the titlebar X, or with Alt+F4 all ask first (unless you've told it not to, or set a fixed answer in Preferences): Exit, Minimize to Tray, or Cancel, with a "Don't ask me again" checkbox. Recording in progress is called out in the message, since exiting stops it. And if "Alt+F4 minimizes to the system tray" is on in Preferences, Alt+F4 skips all of this and simply tucks the radio into the tray, still playing.

Playback (Alt+P)

• A live (disabled) now-playing line at the top, so the menu itself tells you what is on.
• Play / Stop (Ctrl+P) -- one transport item that reads Play when idle and Stop while connecting or playing, exactly like the panel button.
• Mute/Unmute (Ctrl+M), Volume Up (Ctrl+Up), Volume Down (Ctrl+Down). Each favorite remembers the volume you set while it plays and gets it back the next time it starts -- stations are mastered wildly differently, and you should only have to fix that once per station.
• Volume Boost (Ctrl+Shift+B, check item) -- amplifies up to 50% past full volume for stations that just broadcast quiet. Your 0-100 volume scale, per-station volume memories, and mute all behave exactly as before; the boost is applied on top. Needs the mpv playback engine (the default -- see Preferences below).
• Rewind 30 Seconds (Ctrl+Shift+Left), Forward 30 Seconds (Ctrl+Shift+Right), Back to Live (Ctrl+Shift+L) -- live radio you can move around in. On the mpv playback engine (the default), Quill Radio keeps a rolling buffer of the stream (roughly 45 minutes at typical bitrates): jump back to catch a missed sentence, work your way forward, then leap straight back to live. Every move announces how far behind live you are. Needs the mpv playback engine.
  • A note on pausing. Whether Play/Stop holds your place or rejoins live depends on the engine. On the mpv engine, pausing keeps your position in the rolling buffer, so Play resumes exactly where you stopped. On the Windows Media (classic) engine there is no buffer, so pausing a live stream and pressing Play again reconnects at the current live moment -- it looks like the stream simply refreshed. If you press Play/Stop expecting to resume where you left off and instead hear live audio, open Station > Preferences (Ctrl+,) and set Playback engine to Automatic (which uses mpv); the buffer, Rewind/Forward, and Back to Live all require that engine. (A live stream also only rewinds as far back as the buffer has actually filled since you started listening.)
• What's Playing? (Ctrl+T) -- opens a reviewable Now Playing window: the current title and artist in a read-only, selectable field you can arrow through character by character to catch an exact spelling, with a Copy button. It reads the title straight from the stream's own metadata (and if no title has arrived yet, Ctrl+T speaks and fetches it, as before). When a station sends messy broadcast metadata (a string of catalog codes rather than a clean "Artist - Title"), Quill Radio finds the title and artist in it and reads just those. And when a station answers with nothing at all -- no metadata, and the playback engine's own title channel is empty too (common on HLS) -- Quill Radio takes one more step: it reads the current title from the stream server's own public "now playing" status page (the Icecast or SHOUTcast status endpoint). It only ever asks the same server you are already listening to, and it is off in Safe Mode -- so a batch of stations that used to answer with silence now report a real title. You control the wording in Station > Preferences (Ctrl+,) with a small template: {title} and {artist} tokens, [square brackets] around optional wording that disappears when a field is empty (the default {title}[ by {artist}] drops the " by" when there's no artist), and {raw} for the stream's exact original text. Leave it blank to restore the default.
• Copy What's Playing (Command Palette) -- copies the current title and artist straight to the clipboard without opening the Now Playing window (which Ctrl+T opens, above). Press What's Playing first so there's a title to copy.
• Announce Track Titles (check item) -- when on, title changes are announced as they happen. Off by default.
• Sleep Timer... -- fade out and stop after a set time, restoring your volume.
• Wake-Up Timer... -- the sleep timer's twin: pick a favorite, a time, once or every day, and the station starts playing by itself. Quill Radio must be running (the tray counts).
• Sound Enhancements... -- a three-band equalizer (Bass, Mid, Treble sliders, -12 to +12 dB each, freely adjustable), a compressor ("Even Out Volume", boosts quiet passages and tames loud ones), a Channel mode choice (Stereo, Mono, Left only, Right only) and Night mode. Channel mode routes the audio for accessibility: Mono blends both stereo channels into one, so a station that hard-pans a voice to one side never disappears with single-sided hearing or a single earbud; Left only or Right only sends the whole stereo mix (nothing is lost) to just that one ear and silences the other, so you can listen to the radio in one ear while your screen reader (or anything else) uses the other. Night mode evens loudness in real time by lifting quiet passages -- the complement to Even Out Volume taming loud ones; ideal for low-volume late-night listening. A "Quick preset" combo box (Flat, Bass Boost, Voice Clarity, Podcast, Small Speakers, Late Night) sets all three sliders at once as a starting point -- move any slider afterward and it becomes Custom. Off by default. The dialog also has a Broadcast polish (OptiLab) section: an Apply broadcast polish checkbox (a bypass that keeps your chosen mode while turned off), a Polish mode choice -- Podcast Leveler for speech, Stream Polish for music, or Smooth Limiter for clean peak control -- an Input trim in decibels (0, no change, by default), and an Auto-Adapt slider (0-100%) that leans the leveling and density more assertive as you raise it. Broadcast polish levels quiet and loud passages, adds density, and limits peaks, so a run of stations at very different loudness sits at a steadier, fuller level -- especially handy for talk streams and unattended recordings. It is adapted, with thanks and credit, from OptiLab Core by dgl1984 (https://github.com/dgl1984/optilab, Apache-2.0); it is a faithful adaptation of that plugin's three modes rather than the plugin itself.

Every control previews live. As you move a slider or change any setting -- EQ, compressor, channel mode, night mode, or broadcast polish -- you hear it on what's playing right away, without pressing OK (on the default mpv engine it applies with no interruption; on the Windows Media engine it reconnects once the change settles). OK keeps and saves the settings; Cancel (or Escape) puts everything back the way it was when you opened the dialog.

Every setting is remembered per station as well as shared. The whole dialog -- EQ, compressor, channel mode, night mode, and broadcast polish -- is saved per station when you open it while a favorite is playing (so one station can be routed to one ear, or given its own broadcast polish, and remembered); with nothing playing, or a non-favorite on, you are setting the shared default every other station follows. The per-station Reset to Default button and Preferences' Reset All Stations' Sound Enhancements both drop a station back to that shared default.

Record (Alt+R)

• Record Now / Stop Recording -- capture the station you are listening to. When a capture begins, Quill Radio announces "Recording started" with the station name, so it is always clear the command took effect. This command follows what you are listening to: if the station on now is the one recording, it stops that recording; otherwise it starts a new one. A recording of a different station running in the background is never stopped by Record Now -- stop those from the Recordings window.
• Record Station... -- record a different station for a set number of minutes while you listen to something else (or to nothing). The recorder is its own process; it never needed the player. You can start as many of these as you like -- they all record at once (see "Recording several stations at once" below).
• Stop All Recordings -- stop every recording in progress at once. (It is also in the tray/status menu, and appears as a button in the Recordings window when two or more recordings are running.)
• Schedule Recording... -- record a show later, once, daily, or weekly, even from the tray. Pick a favorite from the list and its name and stream fill in for you (both stay editable for one-off streams). Enter the time however you think of it -- "7:30 PM" or "19:30", both are understood -- and pin each entry to its own time zone (defaulting to your local time), so a show quoted in another zone records at the right moment and the list shows each entry's time with its zone. Set how long to record with the Hours (0-24) and Minutes (0-59) fields -- a three-hour show is simply "3" and "0", no arithmetic. The schedule is something you manage, not just add to:
  • Edit -- change a selected entry's station, time, duration, or repeat without deleting and re-adding it.
  • Duplicate -- copy a selected entry as a starting point for another day or a second time slot.
  • Enable / disable -- turn an entry off without losing it; a disabled entry reads "(disabled)" in the list and does not fire, and you can turn it back on any time.
  • Remove names the schedule it will delete and dims when none is selected; the Delete key and a context menu work on the list too. A schedule is due from its start time through the end of its duration, so if Quill Radio reaches a few seconds late it still starts with the remaining minutes, and on launch it catches up anything whose window is still open. (Quill Radio has to be running for a scheduled recording to fire -- the tray icon counts -- so a show whose whole window passed while Quill Radio was closed is simply missed, and the next launch tells you, naming up to three and collapsing the rest to a count.)
• Recordings... -- everything you have recorded, live. See "The Recordings list" below.
• Recording Settings... -- format (MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, or Raw stream -- see below), bitrate, destination folder, filename pattern, a maximum-length safety cap, Maximum simultaneous recordings (0 = unlimited, the default -- see "Recording several stations at once" below), the If the connection drops section (reconnect on/off, how many attempts, and how many seconds between them), and Apply Sound Enhancements to recordings -- off by default, so recordings stay an unfiltered archival copy even with Sound Enhancements on for live listening; turn it on to record the filtered (EQ/compressor) audio instead, for every recording method (Record Now, Record Station, and scheduled recordings alike).

Recording several stations at once

Quill Radio records as many stations at the same time as you want. Start a Record Station capture, then another, then another -- each records independently while you go on listening to whatever you like. Overlapping scheduled recordings all fire too: two shows booked for the same hour both record, where before only one would and the rest were dropped.

Each recording is fully self-contained -- its own connection, its own reconnect-on-a-hiccup handling (below), its own crash-resume -- so one recording dropping, finishing, or being stopped never affects the others.

If you would rather cap it (a slower machine, a metered connection), set Maximum simultaneous recordings in Recording Settings to a number; 0 means unlimited, which is the default. When the cap is reached, a scheduled recording that would exceed it is held pending and retried while its window is still open, rather than being lost.

To stop recordings: Record Now stops the recording of the station you are listening to; the Recordings window's Stop Recording button stops the one you have selected there; and Stop All Recordings (Record menu, tray/status menu, or the button that appears in the Recordings window when two or more are running) stops every one at once.

Raw stream recording (lossless capture)

The Raw stream -- exactly as sent, no re-encoding (lossless) format in Recording Settings saves a recording that is bit-for-bit identical to what the station broadcasts. The MP3/OGG/FLAC/WAV formats decode the incoming audio and re-encode it to your chosen format; the raw option skips all of that and copies the station's own audio packets straight to disk, untouched. Choose it when you want the cleanest possible source to edit or convert yourself, with no quality lost to a second encoding.

Quill Radio picks the file type for you from the stream's own format: an MP3 stream is saved as a .mp3 file, AAC as .aac, Ogg Vorbis as .ogg, Opus as .opus, FLAC as .flac. Anything unusual is saved into a Matroska .mka file, a container that holds any kind of audio losslessly and opens in players like VLC. Because nothing is being re-encoded, the Bitrate setting and Apply Sound Enhancements have no effect on a raw recording and are simply ignored. If a recording is interrupted and continues into a "(part 2)" file, that part keeps the same file type as the recording it continues.

View (Alt+V)

• Show Station Details -- shows or hides the read-only details box (source, stream, format, country) in Browse Stations and Search Stations. On by default; turn it off if you would rather not tab past it. Every station surface honors the choice, and it is remembered between sessions.
• Show Status Bar -- shows or hides the status strip along the bottom of the main window (Now playing, Volume, Recording, Sleep timer, Favorites count, and the time). On by default. Reach the bar with F6 and arrow across it; see "The main window" above for the full navigation.
• Sort Favorites -- Ascending (A to Z), Descending (Z to A), or Unsorted (your manual order). This is the same setting as the one in Preferences, put here so it is quick to reach; the current order is shown with a bullet. Choosing Unsorted reveals the hand-arranged order you built with Move Up/Down.
• Expand All Folders / Collapse All Folders -- open or close every folder in the favorites tree at once.
• Text Size -- Normal, Large, or Larger. Scales the text on the main window (the favorites list, the buttons, the now-playing line, and the status bar) up for easier reading. Remembered between sessions.

Help (Alt+H)

• Command Palette... (Ctrl+Shift+P) -- every Quill Radio command in one searchable list.
• Redeem Unlock Code... -- enter a signed code for a pre-release capability. Verified entirely on your machine; nothing is transmitted; one code counts for QUILL, Quill Radio, and QUILL Cast together.
• Check for Updates... -- compares your version with the newest release, downloads the right artifact for your flavor directly (the installer for an installed copy, the portable zip for a portable one) with spoken progress, then offers Install now or Open folder. Already up to date shows a dialog too, not just a spoken announcement. Quill Radio also runs this check quietly once a day when it launches -- silent unless it actually finds something, and Station > Preferences (Ctrl+,) turns it off if you'd rather check manually only.
• Get FFmpeg... -- a safety net: FFmpeg ships inside Quill Radio, but if it ever goes missing this downloads the official build so recording works again.
• User Guide / Release Notes / Product Requirements... -- this guide, the version history, and the product requirements document, each opened right in your browser.
• Report a Bug... -- files an issue directly from the app (no GitHub account needed), stamped "Quill Radio" with this app's own version so we know exactly what you were running; falls back to the online support form if anything goes wrong.
• About Quill Radio -- version, sync statement, project address.

The Favorites Manager

Station > Manage Favorites... is a full organizer, keyboard-first:

• Search favorites filters live across names (including your custom names), countries, languages, tags, and folder names; results flatten into one arrow-key list with each station's folder spoken in its label.
• Folders of any depth. Create one with New Folder... (Ctrl+Shift+E) -- pick its location, name it, and it exists immediately, even before a station lives in it. Or just file a station under "News/Morning" and the path springs into being. Rename a folder (F2) and its subfolders come along; delete one and its stations simply step out to the top level -- nothing is ever deleted with a folder.
• Reordering. Move Up / Move Down within a folder; for long hops, Mark for Move, select the destination, then Move Above or Move Below -- the moved station joins the destination's folder. Reordering is your hand-arranged "Unsorted" order, and the Move buttons work from any view: if the list is currently sorted Ascending or Descending, the first move switches to manual order (revealing your saved order, announced "Switched to manual order") and moves the station within it -- exactly like Alt+Shift+Up/Down on the main page. Your stored order is preserved, never overwritten by the alphabetical view, so a hand-arranged list can't be lost.
• Remove All... clears every favorite at once (your folders stay) after a confirmation that defaults to No. Because favorites keep a rolling backup, an accidental Remove All can still be recovered.
• Sort order. Preferences (Ctrl+,) sets the default order for every folder -- Ascending (A to Z), Descending (Z to A), or Unsorted. Any single folder can override that from its context menu (Sort This Folder... on the main-page tree): choose Ascending, Descending, Unsorted, or "follow the default" just for that folder's stations. Ascending/Descending re-sort automatically as you add stations.
• Rename (F2 on a station) gives it your own display name everywhere; blank restores the directory's name.
• Enter plays (the Play button reads Stop while that station is on), Delete removes (with confirmation), Shift+F10 opens every action on the selected item. The main-page tree offers the same actions, so the Manager is for the heavy lifting, not a required stop.

The Recordings list

Record > Recordings... shows the whole recording life cycle in one place. The list updates rows in place keyed by file path, so it is a no-op when nothing has changed; when something has, your selection, focus, and scroll position are preserved instead of the list rebuilding under you mid-read:

• Every recording being written right now -- each its own Recording row, its size growing as you watch, with its own live elapsed time. They are counted from the recorder itself, so a recording still being written to the temp folder is always visible here, never invisible until it lands. When several are running, each is its own row.
• Every finished file, newest first -- status Recorded, with size and date.
• Upcoming scheduled recordings -- status Scheduled, with their zone-labeled times.

The recording and scheduled counts are accurate: a schedule that is currently firing is not double-counted, and a completed one-time schedule drops out of the scheduled count rather than lingering.

Actions: Play (through the app's own player; it reads Stop while that recording is playing), Stop Recording (stops the recording selected in the list), Stop All Recordings (appears when two or more are running -- stops every one), Open in Folder, Remove (Delete key, with confirmation), Refresh. While a recording plays back, Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down change its volume right here, the same as they do for live radio. The tray tooltip carries "(recording)" -- or "(2 recording)" when several run together -- while a recording is active.

If the internet hiccups during a recording

ffmpeg first rides out short gaps itself (the reconnect settings in Recording Settings). If the connection truly dies, Quill Radio waits and resumes into a numbered part file, announcing each attempt. Two things keep that tidy:

• A continuation records only the remaining time to the original scheduled end, not a fresh full duration -- a 60-minute show that drops at minute 50 records a ~10 minute continuation, not another 60.
• A drop is classified before any reconnect attempt is spent, and only a genuinely-terminal failure gives up: your disk is full, or the server returned an HTTP 404, 410, or 451 that means the stream is truly gone. Everything else -- a network hiccup, a 5xx, or a momentary 403 Forbidden from an expiring or rotating stream token -- is transient and reconnects. (A transient error ffmpeg has already recovered from can no longer be mistaken for a fatal one when the stream later drops for an unrelated reason, so a recording is far less likely to stop short.)

Reconnect handling is per recording, so when several are recording at once each rides out its own hiccups without touching the others. And crash-resume covers all of them: if Quill Radio closes unexpectedly while several recordings were running, the next launch offers to resume every interrupted one -- a single prompt for one recording, or one batched "Resume all?" prompt when there were several.

Output filenames are never silently overwritten: a pattern that produces the same name twice gets " (2)", " (3)" appended instead of clobbering the earlier file, and part files keep the original start timestamp in their name so they group together. And on Windows, the FFmpeg child is tied to Quill Radio's lifetime through a job object, so a crashed or killed Quill Radio takes it down rather than stranding a bare recording writing to your temp folder.

If a recording was in progress when Quill Radio quit or crashed

A recording used to be lost the moment Quill Radio quit or crashed. It now remembers an in-progress recording and offers to pick it back up. On the next launch it first tidies the temp folder (any finished orphan file is moved to your recordings folder; a file still being written is left untouched), then, if a recording was in progress and is still within a 10-minute grace window, asks once in an accessible dialog:

A recording of WQXR was in progress until 9:00 AM. Resume it for the remaining 12 minute(s)?

Resume (Enter) restarts the recording for the remaining minutes only. Skip (Escape) leaves it as it is. A Don't ask me again checkbox remembers your choice -- always resume, or never ask -- changeable later in Preferences. Nothing happens when nothing was in progress, and a corrupt marker is discarded rather than driving a bogus resume.

Hardware media keys

If your keyboard has media keys, Play/Pause and Stop control Quill Radio system-wide while it runs -- even from the tray. Keys another app already owns are left alone.

The system tray

Closing the window keeps Quill Radio available in the notification area with its own icon, announced by name. Right-click (or keyboard-invoke) the tray icon for: Show, the live now-playing line, a single Play/Stop item whose label is always current, Mute/Unmute, your Favorite Stations (nested by folder) and Recently Played submenus, Record Now/Stop Recording, Schedule Recording, Recording Settings, Browse Stations, and Exit. Double-click brings the window back.

Sharing data with QUILL

Quill Radio reads and writes the same data store as QUILL and QUILL Cast (%APPDATA%\Quill): favorites (folders, custom names, and per-station volumes included), history, recordings, schedules, timers, and settings. A station you favorite here is a favorite in QUILL's radio; the wake-up timer you set in QUILL fires here. Uninstalling Quill Radio never deletes that shared data.

Dependencies, honestly stated

• Playback uses the bundled mpv engine (tools\mpv inside the install folder -- license texts and source note ship right next to it) with the Windows Media Player engine built into Windows as automatic fallback and as the "classic" choice in Preferences. Nothing to install, nothing downloads at runtime. Between the two engines, effectively every stream format in real-world use plays: MP3, AAC and HE-AAC (AAC+), Ogg Vorbis, Opus, FLAC streams, and HLS (m3u8) -- and a station one engine can't open is quietly retried on the other before you ever hear an error.
• Recording, Sound Enhancements on the classic engine, and (when "Apply Sound Enhancements to recordings" is on) recording's own filtering all use ffmpeg, which the installer bundles at tools\ffmpeg inside the install folder. Nothing downloads at runtime. On the classic engine, Sound Enhancements plays through a small local relay (ffmpeg filters the stream, a loopback-only web server on your own machine hands the filtered audio to the player) -- nothing about it is reachable off your computer; on the mpv engine the same filters run inside the player itself, no relay at all.
• Station search talks to four keyless, account-free directories, blended into one results list: the community RadioBrowser directory, the free SomaFM directory, iHeart (search reads its public station sitemap, www.iheart.com, with each chosen station's real stream resolved on demand from its own page; browsing iHeart by genre reads its free, keyless content directory, us.api.iheart.com, which already includes the stream), and TuneIn (through RadioTime's open OPML directory, opml.radiotime.com -- the same service TuneIn's own web player uses). Find Streams fetches only the one page you type (following its "Listen Live" link one level and, if it's a Triton/StreamTheWorld player or an iHeart/TuneIn page, one lookup to that provider's own public address service); stream recovery does the same lookups against a failing station's own website only when a stream won't play (and only if you leave the setting on); What's Playing reads metadata from the stream you are already playing, and as a last resort reads the current title from that same stream server's own public status page (its Icecast or SHOUTcast now-playing endpoint -- the same host, never a third party). All network features are off in Safe Mode. No other network calls exist, and every one of them is inventoried in QUILL's network-egress audit.
• NOAA Weather Radio browsing, search, and the local-transmitter lookup use the keyless WeatherIndex directory (api.wxindex.org) when online, with the complete directory also bundled inside the app as a permanent offline fallback; Radio Reading Services refreshes from the community RadioBrowser directory the station search already uses, with its own bundled list as the fallback. The Weather menu's text weather talks to the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov), Open-Meteo (extended outlook, air quality), and OpenStreetMap (location search) -- all free, keyless, and account-free; see the Weather chapter.
• The ACB Media directory is bundled -- no network needed to browse it, and the bundled Radio Reading Services and NOAA Weather Radio directories browse offline the same way.

Weather

Quill Radio includes a Weather menu that brings official U.S. weather to you as clear, screen-reader-first text: current conditions, the forecast, an extended daily outlook, and -- most importantly -- active watches, warnings, and advisories for the places you care about.

Everything comes from free, no-account, no-key sources: the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov) for observations, the forecast, and alerts; Open-Meteo for the extended daily outlook and the air-quality index; and OpenStreetMap for searching locations. Nothing is sent anywhere except your request for weather at a place you choose.

A safety note first

Quill Weather is an additional accessible weather tool. Delivery can be delayed or interrupted by network, device, or provider problems. Do not rely on it as your only source of emergency information. Keep a NOAA Weather Radio, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and local emergency instructions as your primary safety channels.

Adding a location

1. Open the Weather menu and choose Add Location... (or open Weather Now... and press the Add Location button).
2. Type a ZIP code, a city and state (Tucson, AZ), a county name, or an address, then press Search. (You can also type exact coordinates like 32.2, -110.9.)
3. A Results list appears. Because a search can match more than one place -- there are Springfields in Illinois, Missouri, and more -- you arrow to the right one and press Add Selected. Optionally give it a friendly name like Home or Mom's first.
4. The first location you add becomes your primary location. Add as many as you like and switch between them with the Location chooser in Weather Now.

Removing a location: in Weather Now, select it in the Location chooser and press Remove Location (or the Delete key).

Weather Now

Weather menu > Weather Now... (or Ctrl+Shift+W) opens the Weather Center. It reads top to bottom in priority order:

1. Active Alerts -- a list of any watches, warnings, and advisories, most severe first. Arrow through them; the full official text, including the instructions, appears in the read-only box just below (so you can read and copy it). When there are no alerts, that box is hidden, so you don't stop on an empty field.
2. Current conditions -- a complete, warm paragraph from the nearest station: temperature, feels-like, sky, humidity, dew point, wind and gusts, cloud cover, barometric pressure, visibility, chance of precipitation, sunrise, sunset, the ultraviolet index, and air quality. Every value is written out for speech, and the observation time is shown in the location's own time zone. You choose which of these details appear in Settings.
3. Forecast -- the National Weather Service period forecast ("This Afternoon", "Tonight", ...). Arrow the list; each period's full detailed text appears below, led by its day and temperature so it stands alone.
4. Daily outlook (extended) -- an at-a-glance list reaching about 10 days out (up to 16), each day a friendly line: "Monday, July 20: Clear. High 98, low 75 degrees. Sunrise 5:42 AM, sunset 7:38 PM." Arrow the list to read each day in the detail box below.
5. A status line naming the National Weather Service office and the observation station, so you always know where the data came from.

Press Refresh at any time to pull the latest. Close leaves any radio you are playing untouched.

Quick Weather

Weather menu > Quick Weather (or Ctrl+Shift+Q) speaks a one-line summary of your primary location without opening a window -- for example:

Here is the weather for Tucson, Arizona. It is 96 degrees Fahrenheit and mostly clear. It feels like 101 degrees. The wind is blowing from the west-northwest at 5 miles per hour. There is one active alert. The most urgent is an Excessive Heat Warning.

You choose what that line includes in Settings.

Active Alerts

Weather menu > Active Alerts... opens Weather Now with focus already on the alerts list, so you can review warnings with the fewest keystrokes.

Settings

Weather menu > Settings... controls:

• Units -- temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius; wind in miles per hour, kilometers per hour, knots, or meters per second.
• Forecast periods to show and Extended daily outlook (days) -- how much of the forecast and outlook Weather Now lists (0 days turns the outlook off).
• Current-conditions details to include -- a checkbox for each of feels-like, humidity, dew point, wind and gusts, cloud cover, pressure, visibility, chance of precipitation, sunrise and sunset, the ultraviolet index, and air quality. Temperature and the sky condition always show.
• Alert severity to show -- everything, or only Moderate and above, Severe and above, and so on -- plus a list of specific event names to hide (one per line).
• Refresh interval -- how often Weather Now refreshes (never faster than the NWS-recommended minimum).
• Quick Weather line -- turn feels-like temperature, wind, humidity, the active-alert count, and data age on or off.

Your local NOAA Weather Radio

NOAA Weather Radio is the National Weather Service's own broadcast voice -- continuous forecasts, conditions, and warnings from real VHF transmitters. Quill Radio carries the authoritative directory of those transmitters and their internet re-streams:

• Weather menu > Listen to your Local NOAA Weather Radio -- one keypress plays the transmitter covering your saved Weather location: your county's transmitter first, or the nearest one whose coverage includes you. If you have not set a Weather location yet, it tells you how instead of failing silently. Once playing, it is a normal station -- favorite it, record it, schedule it.
• Weather menu > Update NOAA Weather Radio Directory -- pull the newest directory on demand. It fetches off the UI thread, announces the result, and on failure leaves your existing data untouched. The complete directory ships inside the app (1,035 transmitters across every state and territory), so browsing and the local lookup work even fully offline; an update simply layers fresher data on top, and the bundled copy always remains as the floor. Off in Safe Mode.
• Browse Stations > Weather / NOAA -- the same directory as a browsable state-by-state tree; see the Station menu chapter.

The audio stream is a companion to the text weather above, not a replacement for a dedicated NOAA Weather Radio receiver with alert tones.

What's coming later

This release shows weather as text and streams NOAA Weather Radio audio. Later phases of Quill Weather add spoken weather with its own voices and interruption rules, and background alert monitoring that keeps watch while the window is closed. See the Product Requirements document (Help > Product Requirements) for the full roadmap.

Keyboard reference

These keys belong to Quill Radio's own menus and are kept separate from QUILL's keymap, so nothing here collides with editor shortcuts.

Troubleshooting

• A station will not play. Streams move. If the station came from the directory, Quill Radio automatically fetches its current address and retries once; if it still fails, search for it again in Browse Stations, or re-add it as a custom station. (Format problems are largely history as of 1.1.0: the two engines together play MP3, AAC/HE-AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, and HLS, and a stream one engine can't open is retried on the other automatically.)
• No sound but the app says playing. Check Mute (Ctrl+M), the per-station volume (Ctrl+Up), and the Windows volume mixer entry for Quill Radio.
• A recording stopped early. Check Record > Recordings... -- a dropped connection continues into "(part 2)" files when reconnect is on. The maximum-length cap in Recording Settings also ends recordings deliberately.
• The wake-up timer did not fire. Quill Radio (or QUILL) must be running at the set time -- the tray counts, a closed app does not. It also never retro-fires: opening the app hours after the set time stays silent until the next occurrence.
• The tray icon is gone. Check the taskbar overflow area, or set Quill Radio to "always show" in Windows taskbar settings.
• Rewind, Volume Boost, or the output device "needs the mpv playback engine." Preferences (Ctrl+,) > Playback engine is set to Windows Media (classic), or the bundled engine is missing. Set it back to Automatic; these features live in the mpv engine.
• Playback sounds different since 1.1.0. It shouldn't -- but if anything about the new engine bothers you, Preferences (Ctrl+,) > Playback engine > "Windows Media (classic)" is exactly the old behavior. Please report what you heard either way (Help > Report a Bug...).