macOS app

AntennaHead

A macOS app for software-defined-radio streaming. It tunes an RTL-SDR USB device, demodulates the signal, and serves audio plus a full control UI to any browser on your network.

Open the interactive UI → Source & build instructions Download v0.1.0-alpha (pre-release, .zip) →

What it does

Tune & demodulate

RTL-SDR wide-band FM (mono/stereo), narrow-band FM, AM, airband, and shortwave, with tuner-gain, sample-rate and squelch controls.

Stream anywhere

An embedded server (LiveAudioServer) puts out AAC/HLS over HTTP and HTTPS — listen on a phone, tablet, laptop or smart TV.

Favorites & scanning

Save stations, group them into categories, and run high-speed scans across a category to stop on activity.

Not just the dongle

Stream a Core Audio input, bridge Gqrx's UDP output, or speak a folder of text files through the same pipeline.

Record

Capture the live AAC stream to a file and play recordings back — or fast-download them — from the Recordings screen.

Spatial audio & filler

Per-listener azimuth / distance / reverb, plus an idle "filler" loop with periodic spoken station announcements.

The web UI, live

This is the actual front end from AntennaHead/Web/, served here as a static preview: the template tokens and server endpoints are filled by a small mock layer, so navigation, the tuner keypad, category tables and settings all work, but there is no live audio. Anything that needs a real radio shows a short "preview only" note.

Try these

Radio → Tuner → Wide-band FM — tap the digits, use +/− to change frequency.
Radio → Categories — browse the sample favorite groups.
Now Playing — canned status plus the spatial-audio sliders.
Settings — AAC bitrate, colour scheme, tap-feedback toggle.
Audio Devices, Recordings, Info.

Open the demo full-screen →

Static preview · no radio connected

Screen recordings

Short captures of the UI driving a live stream in the iOS Simulator.

From the Home Screen: open the AntennaHead web app, browse to Favorites, tap KUCA 91.3, hit Listen, hear the countdown fill the silent wait, then tap Delay 1 Second four times (0:19 to 0:23) and a chirp confirms the new delay.

Scanning the Aviation category (Adams Field ATC) and reading real air-traffic-control chatter in Live Captions.

Dialing the Wide-band FM Tuner to 89.1, naming it KUAR, and hearing live NPR news in Listen and Live Captions.

Using AntennaHead with Gqrx on an iPhone (with our custom Gqrx for AntennaHead app): Listen to Gqrx, control the Gqrx receiver and SDR device remotely, then tap the NOAA Morrilton bookmark (162.475 MHz) and hear the weather forecast.

Build it

Requires macOS 14+, Xcode 15+, and (optionally) an RTL-SDR dongle. Swift Package Manager resolves everything on first build.

github.com/dsward2/AntennaHead →

Latest release: v0.1.0-alpha (pre-release) — direct download (.zip, signed & notarized)