Bølge — Norwegian radio and podcasts, in one place

An iOS app for live Norwegian radio and podcasts, with companion apps for tvOS and watchOS.

Bølge (“wave,” in Norwegian) is an app for live Norwegian radio and podcasts — every NRK channel (all the P1 regions, P2, P3, mP3, Classical, Jazz, Folk Music, Sápmi, and more), the big commercial stations, more than 20 local and regional channels from across the country, and a couple of international ones for good measure.

Why this, specifically

Norwegian radio is scattered across a handful of apps that each cover their own corner of it. I wanted one app that actually knows what’s playing. Now-playing metadata comes from whichever source fits the channel — NRK’s own API, P4’s channel catalogue, RadioPlay/Bauer’s now-playing feed, Radio Paradise’s API — with ShazamKit as a fallback for channels that don’t publish track data themselves. NRK channels also show what’s on now and next, and the weather for wherever you are, via WeatherKit.

The podcast side is simpler in concept but not in execution: search, follow a show, queue, download for offline listening, automatic downloads of new episodes — all persisted with SwiftData.

Three platforms, one app

• iOS — the main app.
• tvOS — its own app with a Top Shelf extension, for radio on the TV.
• watchOS — a companion with its own local playback and complication, synced to the iPhone over WatchConnectivity, so the radio follows you even when your phone doesn’t.

Five targets in one Xcode project, sharing services and models across all of them — the same craft as everything else I build: make the boring work invisible, so the person on the other end just gets something that works. See also why a whole country can share one mood — this is a bit of the same instinct, just channeled into an app.

Privacy

Radio streams and metadata come straight from each broadcaster’s own sources. Location is used only for the weather forecast and goes nowhere else.