The horizon becomes the dial
Planet and tuner share one circle. The dive interpolates the globe's outline on screen into the dial's circle, so the edge of the Earth literally turns into the scale.
Case study · Our own product
Meridian Radio: a night planet lit only by radio, and a horizon that turns into a dial.
Spin the globe, aim at a country and dive in: the edge of the planet bends into an analog tuner with that country’s stations laid out from west to east. 40,000+ live stations from 200+ countries, built natively for iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac and Android, plus a web player. The web player is live; the apps are in review on the App Store and Google Play.
ProductOur own product · built and run by 99 Francs
PlatformsiPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, Android, web
StatusIn review · App Store and Google Play · web player live
BuiltOctober 2026
StackSwiftUI + Metal, Kotlin + Compose, Astro + WebGL2
Languages8 in the apps and on the site
Direct answer
Our own world radio app — one catalog, five native surfaces, designed and built by 99 Francs.
Meridian Radio is a SwiftUI and Metal app for iPhone with widgets, an Apple Watch app and a Mac menu-bar app, a Kotlin and Jetpack Compose port for Android, and an Astro and WebGL2 web player. All of them read one station catalog of 40,000+ stations from 200+ countries. The web player is live; the apps are in review on the App Store and Google Play.
Why we built it
World radio, as an instrument.
Most radio apps are long lists of logos. We wanted the feeling of turning a real receiver, except that the band spans the planet — and a product of our own that pushes design, graphics and audio as far as a native app can go.
Geography is the frequency
Stations sit on the dial from west to east, or north to south in tall countries. The readout under the needle is a live latitude, and every station shows its city's local time.
A planet lit only by radio
There are no city lights on the globe. Every glowing point is a real station, drawn from one density texture, and the stations of the country under the reticle pulse.
Orbit → dive → tuner
Aim at a country. The planet becomes the radio.
The globe is ray-traced in a single fragment shader. Tap Tune in and the camera dives: the planet’s circle morphs into the dial’s circle, the scale is engraved along the horizon, static rises and the first station locks. Turn the heavy knob and stations click into place with haptic detents; between them you hear synthesized static, as on a real receiver.
- Drag the globe → the country under the reticle lights up
- Tune in → the horizon becomes the dial, west to east
- Turn the knob → detents, static, then the station
How it was built
One catalog, five surfaces.
One team did all of it: the concept and design, five native surfaces, the shared catalog and tooling, the store listings and the web player.
Concept and prototype
Orbit, dive and tuner as one continuous move, in an “Instrument” style: engraved scales, warm monochrome, one signal orange, a heavy knob with haptic detents.
The catalog
The full Radio Browser directory, geocoded against GeoNames, with brands de-duplicated and names cleaned. One stations.json feeds every app; the watch and the web get their own trimmed copies.
iPhone app
SwiftUI and a Metal globe for iOS 26, background audio, Now Playing, AlarmKit wake-up alarm, sleep timer, Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, and 8 languages switched inside the app.
Android port
Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, one to one with the iPhone: the same shader in OpenGL ES 3, the same dial physics and unit tests, Media3 playback and a home-screen widget.
Watch, Mac and web
An Apple Watch app with complications that syncs with the phone, a Mac menu-bar app, and a web player in Astro and WebGL2 on Cloudflare Pages that doubles as the landing site.
Store listings and review
Keyword research per storefront, listings in 10 locales on both stores, screenshot sets for iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac and Google Play. All of it is now in review.
Same product, native on each platform
iPhone and Android, mapped one to one.
The Android app is a port, not a rewrite of the idea: the same shader, the same physics with the same unit tests, the same names. Where the platforms differ, each gets its own native API.
| Area | iPhone · Swift | Android · Kotlin |
|---|---|---|
| Planet and dive | Metal: a ray-traced orthographic globe in one fragment shader | OpenGL ES 3 GLSurfaceView, the same shader ported to GLSL |
| Camera, dial physics, layout, switching | Swift, pure logic, unit-tested | Kotlin, a line-for-line port with the same unit tests |
| Playback | AVPlayer, background audio, Now Playing and lock screen | Media3 ExoPlayer and MediaSessionService, with notification and lock screen |
| Static between stations | An AVAudioEngine source node: filtered noise, crackle, a heterodyne whistle | AudioTrack streaming the same synthesis |
| Screens | SwiftUI: splash, orbit, tuner, sheets | Jetpack Compose: the same screens, a Canvas dial, a metal knob |
| Wake-up alarm | AlarmKit system alarm with a “Play radio” button | AlarmManager.setAlarmClock and a service that starts the station itself |
| Haptics | Core Haptics and UIImpactFeedback | VibrationEffect primitives: tick, click, heavy click |
| Glass controls | iOS 26 Liquid Glass | RenderEffect blur on Android 12+, a translucent fallback below |
| 8 languages | L10n.swift, generated from one strings.json | L10n.kt, generated from the same file |
| Data | The bundled station catalog, Natural Earth borders | The same catalog and textures, copied in at build time |
Planet and dive
iPhone · Metal: a ray-traced orthographic globe in one fragment shader
Android · OpenGL ES 3 GLSurfaceView, the same shader ported to GLSL
Camera, dial physics, layout, switching
iPhone · Swift, pure logic, unit-tested
Android · Kotlin, a line-for-line port with the same unit tests
Playback
iPhone · AVPlayer, background audio, Now Playing and lock screen
Android · Media3 ExoPlayer and MediaSessionService, with notification and lock screen
Static between stations
iPhone · An AVAudioEngine source node: filtered noise, crackle, a heterodyne whistle
Android · AudioTrack streaming the same synthesis
Screens
iPhone · SwiftUI: splash, orbit, tuner, sheets
Android · Jetpack Compose: the same screens, a Canvas dial, a metal knob
Wake-up alarm
iPhone · AlarmKit system alarm with a “Play radio” button
Android · AlarmManager.setAlarmClock and a service that starts the station itself
Haptics
iPhone · Core Haptics and UIImpactFeedback
Android · VibrationEffect primitives: tick, click, heavy click
Glass controls
iPhone · iOS 26 Liquid Glass
Android · RenderEffect blur on Android 12+, a translucent fallback below
8 languages
iPhone · L10n.swift, generated from one strings.json
Android · L10n.kt, generated from the same file
Data
iPhone · The bundled station catalog, Natural Earth borders
Android · The same catalog and textures, copied in at build time
Three receivers
The same dial, three receivers, two themes.
Instrument is engraved metal and one signal orange; Hologram is a cyan HUD; Chrome is a liquid-metal knob. Each works in the dark and light themes. Around the tuner: a filter that lights up only the stations in a language or genre, search and favourites, and a sleep timer and wake-up alarm set on mini dials.
Beyond the phone
In the menu bar, on the wrist, in the browser.
On the Mac, a small instrument panel drops from the menu bar and you tune by scrolling across the dial. The watch keeps favourites, the last station and the language in step with the iPhone, with complications on the watch face. The web player runs the same globe shader in WebGL2.
Hard parts
What a radio on a globe hides.
None of these show up in a design file. Each surfaced on a real device or a real stream, and each is now something we plan for in client apps from the start.
A needle that moves too fast
Switching stations while the dial was still spinning could leave the old station playing. The player now switches only after the needle has rested on a station for 0.18 seconds.
Dead streams
Community catalogs carry streams that no longer answer. An 8-second start watchdog skips them, and between stations the static is synthesized live, mixed by signal strength.
A globe that never idles
The planet renders every frame, so Compose's own test rule never sees the UI settle. Android UI tests run on UiAutomator instead, with the logic covered by JVM unit tests.
Browsers can't play every stream
Many stations still broadcast over plain HTTP, which a secure web page cannot play. The web catalog keeps only HTTPS streams, sharded by country; the apps carry the full list.
A widget with no app running
On Android the home-screen widget can start playback after the app process has died, from the stream it saved. On iPhone, widget buttons are playback intents wired into the app's player.
Borders are a decision
Borders come from Natural Earth's Ukrainian worldview, so Ukraine is drawn in its 1991 borders, Crimea included. No stations located in Russia or occupied territories are in the catalog.
Where it stands
Live on the web, in review on both stores.
The web player is live in 8 languages. The iPhone app with its Apple Watch companion and the Mac app share one App Store record and are in review, as is the Android app on Google Play. Free, with no account.
5
surfaces from one catalog
iPhone with widgets, Apple Watch with complications, a Mac menu-bar app, Android with a home-screen widget, and a web player.
40,000+
stations from 200+ countries
From the open Radio Browser directory, geocoded city by city and placed on each country's dial from west to east.
8
languages in the apps and on the site
English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese, with store listings in 10 locales.
Concept → native builds → store listings → web
Need an app that people remember after the first touch?
We design the product and build it natively for iPhone and Android, with GPU graphics, audio, widgets, watch and desktop companions and store listings around it — the way we build our own.
SwiftUI · Metal · Kotlin · Jetpack Compose · OpenGL ES · WebGL2
Case study FAQ
Questions about Meridian Radio.
A free world radio app. You start on a night globe lit only by radio stations, aim at a country and dive in, and the planet's horizon turns into an analog tuner dial with that country's stations laid out from west to east. It plays 40,000+ live stations from 200+ countries, with no account.
No. It is our own product. 99 Francs designed it and built the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac and Android apps, the web player, the catalog tooling and the store listings, and runs it. We build products for ourselves so we know first-hand what it takes to ship and maintain an app.
In a browser, yes: the web player at meridian-radio.pages.dev is live. The iPhone app with its Apple Watch companion and the Mac menu-bar app are in App Store review, and the Android app is in Google Play review.
Swift and SwiftUI with a Metal globe shader, AVFoundation, AlarmKit and WidgetKit on iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac, generated with XcodeGen. Kotlin and Jetpack Compose with OpenGL ES 3 and Media3 on Android. Astro and WebGL2 on Cloudflare Pages for the web player. Python tooling builds the shared station catalog, the border textures and the strings for all of them.
The product is a real-time GPU globe, a haptic knob, background audio, a system alarm, widgets, a watch and a menu bar. Each of those is a native API, so we built each platform natively and kept the shared parts, the catalog, the shader and the strings, in one place.
Yes. The same team designs the product, builds native iOS and Android apps with shaders, audio, widgets and watch or desktop companions, and prepares the store listings. See mobile app design, iOS app development and Android app development.