Internet radio for Mac, tuned like iTunes.

Airliner is a free, native internet radio player for Mac. It lets you search tens of thousands of live radio stations from around the world, play them in a classic iTunes-style window with a sage-green LCD display, and keep your own favorites, folders and listening history. It is built for macOS 14 Sonoma or newer and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Yes. You can download and use Airliner without a payment, account, subscription, ads or trial period. If you enjoy it, you can support development by buying the developer a coffee. Tips are entirely optional and do not unlock anything. There is also a coffee-cup button in the app's toolbar and the Airliner menu.

Airliner uses Radio Browser, a community-maintained, open directory of internet radio stations. Search by station name, country, language and genre. Results show up to 200 healthy stations ordered by popularity and are cached for five minutes. Because the directory is community-run, a few entries may be out of date, and each broadcaster controls its own stream, branding and availability.

Airliner uses macOS's built-in playback engine, so MP3, AAC and HLS streams work. Simple M3U and PLS playlist links are resolved automatically. Some unusual codecs, protected streams and website-only players cannot be played, and Ogg streams may not work.

Yes. Choose File → Add Station (Shift-Command-N), enter a name and a direct HTTP or HTTPS stream URL, an M3U or PLS link, or an HLS playlist. Manual stations are saved in My Stations and can be favorited, filed into folders and played like any other.

When a station broadcasts song information, the LCD shows the cleaned artist and title, and the sidebar can show album artwork. Airliner ignores unrelated metadata such as notices and URLs, keeps international names intact, and never invents a track: if a station supplies no song information, you see the station details instead.

Airliner includes five full-window visualizers: Aurora (luminous ribbons), Spectrum (reflected audio bars), Orbit (glowing tilted rings and satellites), Prism (mirrored kaleidoscope petals) and Cipher Rain (falling geometric glyphs with emerald trails). Click the sparkle button in the bottom toolbar or press Command-T to show one, choose a style from the picker, and press Control-Command-F for full screen. They follow the radio's measured audio level, respect Reduce Motion, and run entirely on your Mac.

Yes. The AirPlay button in the bottom toolbar opens the native macOS output picker, so you can send the live stream to AirPlay speakers and receivers without restarting playback.

The sage-green LCD at the top of the window shows a miniature eight-bar audio meter. Click the LCD to switch to a full-width, 24-band segmented spectrum, and click again to return. The bars measure Airliner's own playback audio, locally, and do not change the sound. With Reduce Motion enabled, the bars still follow measured audio.

On macOS 14.2 through 26, Airliner measures only its own playback with a private audio tap to animate the spectrum. That audio stays on your Mac, is never saved to disk and is never transmitted. If you decline, playback still works; only the animated meter stays idle. macOS 27 uses a different method that doesn't need the permission.

No. Airliner is a listening app. It does not record, save or redistribute streams.

No accounts, no analytics, no telemetry and no location permission. Your favorites, history, folders and manual stations are stored locally on your Mac. Airliner connects to the Radio Browser directory to find stations (and, only if you enable song previews, makes occasional metadata checks to stations in view), reports a listen click to the directory after playback starts, and connects directly to broadcasters' servers to play audio and load station artwork. See the privacy page for details.

Folders appear in the sidebar so you can organize stations your way: Rock, Morning, Jazz, Road Trip. Create one with the + beside Folders or File → New Folder (Option-Command-N), then drag stations onto it or right-click a station and choose Move to Folder. Removing a folder never deletes its stations.

Smart Folders are folders that fill themselves from rules. Choose File → New Smart Folder and set a genre (matched against genre tags or station names), country, minimum bitrate, minimum star rating, minimum play count, and a not-played-in-the-last-N-days rule, with an option to show the Most Played first. Stations must match all rules. Smart Folders combine up to 200 directory results with your saved and rated stations, never move stations out of regular folders, and can be edited or removed from their right-click menu.

Click the five-star rating beside any station, or use its right-click Rating menu. Click the current rating again to clear it. Ratings are stored only on your Mac and can be used as a rule in Smart Folders. Favorites use the heart button and are separate from ratings.

Only on your own Mac. Since version 1.6.1, Airliner keeps local play counts and last-played dates so station rows can show how often you've played them and Smart Folders can use them. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account. Play counts start from the update onward.

Yes. The menu-bar player shows the current station, song and playback state, with Play/Stop, Shuffle Station and Sleep Timer controls. Show Airliner brings the browser window back. Playback continues while the window is hidden or closed; choose Quit Airliner to end the app. The Next Track media key shuffles to a random station.

An optional setting. When enabled, Airliner makes short HTTPS metadata checks for the visible station rows while the browser is active, so rows can show the current song. Checks run one at a time and at most six start per minute, snapshots expire after two minutes, and unavailable feeds wait ten minutes before another attempt. They use a little extra data and may briefly count as a listener at the broadcaster. Station metadata can be inaccurate, and rows without usable metadata say no song information is available.

The Mini Player turns Airliner into a small floating window with play/stop, volume, song information and the EQ meter. It shares the same live stream, so playback never restarts when you switch, and an expand button takes you back to the full window.

Yes. When a station supplies artist and title, the Find on Spotify button in the bottom bar opens a Spotify search for that song so you can save it. Airliner does not connect to your Spotify account.

Yes. Choose 15, 30, 60 or 90 minutes from the bottom bar or the Playback menu. The remaining time appears beside the moon button, in the Mini Player and in the menu-bar sleep menu, and the timer keeps running if you change stations.

Airliner is signed with an Apple Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updates itself through the Sparkle framework, which verifies signatures before installing anything. You can turn automatic checking and downloading on or off in Settings, or choose Airliner → Check for Updates.

macOS 14 Sonoma or newer, on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, as a universal app. It follows the system light or dark appearance, and you can override it in Settings.

Airliner waits up to 22 seconds and retries twice automatically. If it still fails, the station's URL may have changed, it may restrict listening by region, or its format may be unsupported. Try another station, or add the broadcaster's updated stream URL as a manual station.