Last Updated on April 29, 2026
In Operation
Start up the software with the command $ radion.sh and we’re presented with the following:
It looks rather snazzy wouldn’t you agree?
By default the software uses read as its selector. But we can also use fzf, rofi, or dmenu.
As you can see, all musical tastes are catered for. We can either listen to a station direct, or a music genre. We’ve chosen the tag ’11 Classical’.
We can listen to Classic FM UK via mpv just by pressing the 3 key.
Playback is controlled with the mpv defined keybindings (the preference file lets you show these keybindings if needed, which we’re showing below.
We can edit and add new stations by pressing the E key which lets us edit the $HOME/.config/radion/stations.txt file.
The easiest way to find new stations is to go back to the main menu and press D. This opens up our web browser at radio-browser.info which lets us find the url for stations. radio-browser is a site which collates internet radio and TV stations (with links to streams).
The project also provides a separate bash script called record-toggle.sh which uses sox to record the default output to mp3.
Summary
We love TUI programs as they are extremely frugal on system resources. radion is a lovely TUI app. It looks great with the hyper terminal emulator too.
We’d prefer better recording integration as having a separate script to record is a clunky solution. And it annoyingly records other sounds such as system sounds too.
At the time of publication, there are 770 stations present in the program’s config file. It’s easy to add additional stations courtesy of assistance from radio-browser.info. More integration would be an improvement in this area.
The developer also offers a Python version of the project which we’ve not tested.
Website: gitlab.com/christosangel/radion
Support:
Developer: Christos Angelopoulos
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Looking for other terminal-based internet radio clients? Read our roundup of terminal-based internet radio clients. Prefer graphical clients? We have also compiled our favourite graphical internet radio clients.
radion is written in Bash. Learn Bash with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Internet Radio Apps | |
|---|---|
| PyRadio | Cross-platform curses based with support for Radio Browser |
| radio-active | Command-line tool to listen to more than 30,000 radio stations |
| SonicRadio | Stylish TUI radio player |
| RadioGoGo | Surf global radio waves |
| tera | Play radio stations, CRUD your favorite lists, and explore stations |
| radion | TUI client written in Bash |
| cTune | ncurses tool with good search functionality |
| rig.fm | Fast, focused, keyboard-friendly, and free of clutter |
| Radio Recorder | Internet radio player and recorder |
| PMRP-NG | Ground-up rewrite of PMRP |
| goradion | TUI internet radio player that uses mpv |
| Radiotrope | AI agent-enabled internet radio player |
| Radioboat | Terminal web radio client, built with simplicity in mind |
| PMRP | Poor Man's Radio Player |
| radio-cli | Simple radio CLI written in Rust |
| TuneIn CLI | Basic internet radio with TuneIn Radio and Radio Browser as providers |
| tmuzika | Music player and internet radio player |
| Curseradio | Very simple application for navigating and playing radio streams |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |