Release notes

Showing what's new in the stable version.

Stable 2024-04-28

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Fixed an issue where the wrong device was selected during startup which caused playback errors
  • Fixed issue with restoring window position on alternate monitors
  • Restored ability to follow playlist redirects from secure https to insecure http
  • Resolved issue with redirect logic not handling relative redirects correctly
  • Capped the maximum redirects Screamer Radio follows to 7 because the default in .NET is 50 which is a lot
  • Improved connection cancellation, which should now often be instant when stop is pressed

Stable 2024-04-24

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Fixed crash bug that happened when double clicking top track or station title
  • Attempted to fix issues with resuming playback on startup, which can be affected by slow sound card initialization
  • Press E on keyboard to edit selected station in station list, only applies to editable stations
  • Station list now tries to restore selection and keyboard focus when reactivated like after saving changes to a station
  • Fixed issue where pressing Alt+F to open the File menu while the station list was in focus also toggled favorites
  • You can now press Del on a user editable station in the list to trigger the delete banner (but it won't get focused for now)
  • You can also press Esc while in the station list to clear the selection
  • The right click context menu in the station list now contains keyboard shortcut information to ease discovery
  • The about page also lists the new shortcuts

Stable 2024-04-21

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Fixed station listen count and health reporting (it wasn't reporting anything at all)
  • Added improved error logging for a particular error I can't figure out without more info

Stable 2024-04-15

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Fixed so window no longer disappears after minimizing or closing to tray
  • Restore window in center of screen on startup if coordinates are more than half the window off screen
  • Some minor internal improvements
  • Fixed issue where Screamer always thought there was a new version available due to incorrect timestamps

Stable 2024-04-14

Welcome to the brand new Screamer Radio!

Announcement post

Summary of big changes

  • Brand new user interface with light and dark themes
  • Station listings have been redesigned to allow for more stations
  • New logo to celebrate the new user interface
  • Faster native binary written in .NET 8
  • Screamer Radio Plus subscription service to support the project

Design and functional changes in more detail

  • Refreshed design and new logo
  • Light and dark themes, default switches based on system theme
  • Updated icons with Bootstrap Icons
  • Separated favorites and search results into separate tabs
  • Moved tag information to a fixed side panel
  • Selection of a radio station displays details in the side panel
  • Play, stop and edit buttons in rows where the tags used to be (visible on hover or when active or selected)
  • Added navigation buttons for browsing stations
  • Added a 'clear selection' button for stations
  • Added a 'select random station' button for stations
  • Improved settings view with organized tabs and cleaner form
  • Added context menu options for links
  • Added informative tooltips on various elements
  • Added more options to the context menu for radio stations
  • Pressing F1 highlights the radio station list for easier keyboard navigation
  • Added a new option to prevent search from being focused at startup
  • Added close buttons on tabs for discoverability and accessibility
  • Changed "What's new" link to "Release notes" in upgrade notifications
  • Added a post-upgrade notification to release notes

Support more stream types

  • Support HLS streams
  • Support Opus streams
  • Support FLAC streams

Technical changes

  • .NET Framework is no more, Screamer is now using modern .NET 8
  • The new UI is written using Avalonia instead of WPF
  • Binary size has increased, but performance has improved due to use of native code
  • Implemented SQLite for storing radio stations and favorites

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Improved tray icon resolution on high-DPI displays
  • Corrected memory usage display in the 'About' view
  • Fixed issue where pressing Ctrl+O did not refocus the open URL input when deselected
  • Improved settings file handling by temporarily writing to a scratch file before moving it into place, reducing the risk of data loss during writing

Stable 2024-04-13

This release is primarily focused on preparing for the next major update that introduces a brand new UI based on Avalonia and leave the old .NET Framework behind in favor of .NET 8. I have also made some other important changes and bug fixes.

New features

  • Added support for media hot keys, allowing you to control playback using keyboard shortcuts.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where the open URL notification would not enable the open button.
  • Matched the AppUserModelID of the Squirrel-generated shortcuts to ensure that pinned taskbar shortcuts work as expected.

Other changes

  • Switched to a different tray icon library for compatibility with .NET 8.
  • Used a new code signing certificate from SSL.com
  • Moved Squirrel out of process instead of in .NET to allow for upgrade to .NET 8
  • Made a large number of other internal changes to prepare for the next big release

Please note that due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to renew the current code signing certificate and had to purchase a new one. As a result, you may see Windows SmartScreen warnings initially.

Stable 2022-07-26

Bug fixes:

  • Fix URL not being updated when changing stream

Other changes:

  • The optional Google Analytics tracking has been completely removed
  • The list of licenses has been updated

Stable 2022-07-19

With this release .NET dll-files are no longer bundled into the exe using the old unsupported tool LibZ because it unfortunately caused TLS issues. As a bonus Screamer Radio should now start a lot faster too.

Bug fixes:

  • TLS connections should work again

Improvements:

  • Startup performance is greatly increased

Stable 2022-07-17

This release does not include many new features but lots of code was improved over several months of hard work.

New features:

  • Show album art provided by Shoutcast stream (try Soma FM for instance)
  • Added setting to always show station list on startup
  • Added option to copy album image URL

Improvements:

  • Improved how Screamer connects to stations, AAC+ streams connect faster
  • Improved keyboard navigation using tab, should be much more usable
  • Improved stream log making it more consistent
  • Improved add/edit station dialog, now using proper input validation
  • Now using high quality album art scaling which looks better on high DPI screens
  • Small album art images are cached in settings and restored when restarting to avoid a network request
  • Improved perceived performance when interacting with search results and clicking tags
  • Improved startup performance by loading more settings asynchronously
  • Improved performance in various other ways
  • Added 256x256 icon sizes

Other changes:

  • Updated to .NET Framework v4.7.2
  • Updated to BASS v2.4.16.1
  • Replaced BASS.NET with ManagedBass
  • Replaced Caliburn Micro with MVVM Toolkit
  • Removed last traces of Windows Forms, now using WPF for everything, even system tray icon
  • Code signing certificate is replaced, the old one expired
  • Modernized code base in many ways
  • Massive internal refactorings to make the code more well structured

Bug fixes from preview channel:

  • Fix failures to connect to streams because of duplicate header values
  • Tray notification did not handle empty titles
  • Copying text to clipboard using WPF API requires retries
  • Connecting to stations could block the UI thread

Stable 2019-11-22

New features:

  • Add "Center window" menu option to system tray menu
  • Automatically center the window if it starts up off screen
  • Added always on top toggle to view menu
  • Added output device selection to audio menu
  • Added visualization frequency setting, can now also be turned off
  • Prevent computer from sleeping while playing (can be changed in settings)

Changes:

  • Better grouping of settings in settings tab
  • Moved settings to view menu
  • Moved view menu next to help menu
  • Show warning for users with old .NET Framework versions, upcoming releases will require .NET Framework 4.7.2 or newer

Improvements:

  • Restore volume on restart even if the last played station can not be loaded
  • More detailed error messages when sound subsystem fails
  • Change of output device no longer requires stopping playback
  • Default output device will automatically switch when the system device setting changes
  • Window centering should now work on high DPI screens
  • Improve how browsers are launched when clicking links
  • Improved scroll bars, they now behave like normal scroll bars
  • Level visualization rewritten from scratch, should use much less processing power
  • Better looking drop down boxes

Bug fixes:

  • Fix race condition when closing
  • Fix internal exception when reading stream metadata
  • Fix crash bug in about tab
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the program to crash when clicking the tabs
  • Fixed bug affecting notifications in application
  • Fixed bugs when importing stations with no website URLs

Other:

  • Internal component updates and code improvements
  • Upgrade BASS to version 2.4.14
  • Removed 32-bit restriction, will run as a 64-bit process on 64-bit systems
  • Some minor performance improvements
  • Added more internal error handling to prevent crashes
  • Some internal improvements
  • WIll now automatically check for upgrades at most once per day, not every startup

Stable 2018-09-23

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed a few internal bugs caused by race conditions
  • Playback was not stopped when desktop was locked
  • Connect to random crashed when station list was empty
  • Fixed issue when loading history on startup
  • Fixed startup deadlock issue

Other:

  • Refactored file I/O with improved locking mechanism
  • Some other internal refactorings
  • Removed some legacy ClickOnce code
  • Remove .NET assembly signing, code signing is enough
  • Upgraded dependencies
  • Will no longer wait forever to read/write files

Stable 2018-08-26

Changes since stable 2018-05-29

New features:

  • New setting to allow only one running instance
  • Output device selection
  • Stereo separation filter (can do mono)
  • Ctrl + scroll to adjust volume in smaller steps

Minor tweaks:

  • Add close current tab to menu
  • Add link to release notes in about menu and in update notification
  • Moved audio filters to menu instead of in options
  • Compressor and stereo separation filter should fade in

Bug fixes:

  • Could crash on certain streams
  • Fixed a heap corruption crash that could occur in certain situations
  • Fixed a few bugs in station export/import
  • Stations opened via "Open URL" was not always restored on restart
  • Fixed some internal resource leaks

Other:

  • Screamer now parses MPEG and Ogg streams to extract metadata like bitrate and frequency, this was done in preparation to be able to implement recording
  • Upgrade BASS to latest version which is now using WASAPI instead of DirectSound
  • The manual NSIS installer is now also digitally signed
  • Performance improvements in UI
  • More exception handling in sensitive places
  • Massive internal refactorings to make the code more maintainable