Frequently asked questions

Yes, Ridio keeps playing even with the screen off. You can pause, resume, or change station directly from the Lock Screen or Control Center, without needing to reopen the app.

It depends on the station's stream quality. Roughly:

• Low quality (64 kbps) — about 28 MB per hour
• Standard quality (128 kbps) — about 57 MB per hour
• High quality (192 kbps) — about 86 MB per hour
• Maximum quality (320 kbps) — about 140 MB per hour

Ridio doesn't alter the stream quality: you hear the radio exactly as the station broadcasts it.

The sleep timer automatically stops playback after the time you choose, from 1 minute to 2 hours. You set it from the icon in the top right of the "Now Playing" screen, where you can also pause it, cancel it, or change its duration while it's running without having to reset it.

While the timer is running, a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island shows the countdown along with the song on air, and lets you pause or cancel it without reopening the app. Useful for listening to the radio before falling asleep.

Go to the Search tab and tap "Add by URL". Enter the address of the station's direct stream (you can also paste it from the clipboard) and tap "Find Station": Ridio automatically detects the station, plays it so you can hear if it works, lets you give it a name and add it to favorites.

The direct stream is what radio stations use to broadcast online. You can often find it on the station's official website, in the "Listen online" or "Streaming" section. Ridio supports MP3, AAC, Icecast, Shoutcast, and HLS formats.

Manually added stations can be spotted in favorites by the blue "CUSTOM" badge. To rename them, swipe left and tap Rename.

Yes, Ridio supports CarPlay. Once you connect your phone to the car, you'll find Ridio among the apps available on the display. You can browse your favorite stations and control playback directly from the touch screen or steering wheel controls.

You can't search for new stations from CarPlay: no searching while driving, no distractions — choose at home, listen in the car.

Open Control Center, press and hold on an empty area to enter edit mode, tap "Add a Control" at the bottom, and search for Ridio. Once added, you can start playback of your last listened station with a single tap, without opening the app.

When it's on, iCloud Sync keeps your favorites, recent searches and settings up to date across all your Apple devices. The following are synced:

• The list of your favorite stations
• Your recent searches
• The settings

You can turn it on or off at any time from iOS Settings, where you'll see Ridio in the list of apps.

Ridio can automatically identify the song playing even when the station doesn't broadcast the title, the artist, or the album art.

Manual recognition. Tap the Shazam button on the "Now Playing" screen. Ridio listens for a few seconds and shows the recognized song in a banner that stays visible for 30 seconds. Tapping the banner opens a summary with album art, title, artist, and a link to open the song in Apple Music. Manual recognition does not change the information shown on the "Now Playing" screen.

Automatic recognition. When the station broadcasts incomplete information (for example only the title without the artist, or no album art), or broadcasts nothing at all, Ridio automatically starts a brief listen in the background to identify the song and fill in the missing information on the "Now Playing" screen. On stations with no data, recognition repeats periodically to follow song changes.

You can turn off automatic recognition at any time from Settings, without affecting manual recognition — it remains always available.

Everything happens on your iPhone. Recognition uses Apple's ShazamKit and runs entirely locally: audio is analyzed on the device and is never transmitted to external servers, neither Ridio's nor third parties'.

When automatic recognition doesn't activate or fails to identify the song, Ridio shows a notice for ten seconds below "Now Playing" on the "Now Playing" screen of the app. There are two possible messages:

"Automatic recognition disabled" — means you've turned off automatic recognition in Settings.

"Song not recognized" — means Shazam couldn't identify the song at that moment. This can happen when the radio is broadcasting niche or independent music not in the database, or when it's playing ads, jingles, or talk shows. The app will try again automatically with the next song.

In all cases, the manual Shazam button remains always available.

The orange indicator is an iOS transparency feature: Apple shows it whenever an app uses the microphone, regardless of the reason.

In Ridio it appears when automatic song recognition activates through ShazamKit. The microphone is never constantly active: it turns on for a few seconds when needed to fill in missing information about the song on air. For stations that broadcast complete information, it does not activate.

If you'd rather not see the indicator, you can turn off automatic recognition in Settings.

For more details on how it works and on privacy, see "How does song recognition work?".

Song info on air is broadcast by the radio stations themselves, not by Ridio. Often stations don't accurately signal when a song ends, so the previous song's metadata stays visible even when the DJ is talking or when a new track starts, until the next song's info arrives.

Ridio faithfully shows what the radio broadcasts. To correct these situations automatically you can turn on automatic recognition in Settings: it identifies the song from the audio in the background and updates the "Now Playing" screen with the correct information.

The Shazam button, on the other hand, is meant to quickly identify the song on air and open it in Apple Music: it shows the result in a banner for 30 seconds and doesn't change the "Now Playing" screen information.

Ridio shows a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island when you set the sleep timer, with the countdown and information about the song on air.

If you change station from the Lock Screen controls (next/previous), the Live Activity updates immediately.

If instead your phone is in your pocket and the radio broadcasts a new song, the track info stays the same until you reopen the app. To update the Live Activity while the app is in the background, iOS requires push notifications sent from a server. Ridio is designed to run entirely on your iPhone, without relying on external servers: this is the choice that ensures nobody (not even us) can know what you listen to. As soon as you reopen the app, the information updates.

Some radio servers (especially smaller stations or those with older infrastructure) are configured to automatically close the connection after a certain period. It's a choice made by the station's administrator, not a standard setting.

Cellular networks (4G/5G) can also interrupt long-running streams due to cell handovers, temporary signal loss, or network transitions.

Ridio detects the disconnection and automatically reconnects within a few seconds. It's a characteristic of the broadcasting service or the network, independent of the app you use.