Pladio 1.4 is Here — Premium Features, More Free Features & Smarter Station Database
Pladio 1.4 is Here
This is the biggest release since Pladio launched — and the most important one.
Pladio 1.4 introduces the app's first Premium features, a whole new wave of free features, and a fundamental shift in how the radio station database works behind the scenes. It is the moment Pladio grows from a great free app into something you can rely on for the long haul.
Here is what matters most before anything else: every feature that was free in Pladio 1.3 is still free in 1.4. Forever. No paywalls have been moved, no features have been taken away, no ads have been added. Premium is what grew on top.
Let's dive in.
The First Premium Features
From day one, Pladio has been completely free and ad‑free. That is not changing. What is new is an optional Premium tier — for people who want more, on more devices, with more control.
Here is what Premium brings to Pladio 1.4:
Apple TV App
Pladio now runs natively on your Apple TV. Browse stations on the big screen, enjoy Now Playing with full artwork, use the Siri Remote, and discover featured content via the Top Shelf. The tvOS app was built from scratch with the living‑room experience in mind — not as an afterthought, but as a first‑class platform.
Apple Watch App
A dedicated watchOS companion that turns your wrist into a full remote control. Play, pause, resume, and switch stations. Control volume with the Digital Crown. See the current song, add it to your library, and dismiss or snooze active station alarms — all without pulling out your phone. Complications keep the current station one glance away on your watch face.
Audio Equalizer
A 5‑band equalizer (Sub Bass, Bass, Mid, Treble, Brilliance) with eight factory presets, an unlimited number of custom presets, a frequency response visualizer, and per‑station memory. Set an EQ curve for your favourite jazz station, and Pladio remembers it every time you tune in. Includes loudness normalization so quiet stations no longer get lost next to the loud ones.
In-App Volume Control
For when the system volume isn't quite right. A dedicated Pladio volume control — independent of your device's master volume — that syncs across your devices via iCloud. Ideal for late‑night listening, for pairing with specific speakers, or for fine‑grained fade control with the Sleep Timer.
Sleep Timer Presets
Sleep Timer has always been part of Pladio. What's new in Premium are configurable presets: save your favourite durations (20 / 40 / 60 minutes, or anything up to 480), set a default that auto‑activates when you hit Play, and quickly extend the timer from the Lock Screen without opening the app.
Station Alarm (Wake-Up)
Wake up to your favourite radio station, not a generic ringtone. Pladio's Station Alarm supports multiple scheduled alarms with gradual volume fade‑in, snooze, and auto‑stop. It works even when the device is locked (via a silent audio keep‑alive), falls back to a built‑in alarm sound if the stream is unavailable, and syncs across devices through iCloud. On Apple Watch, you can dismiss or snooze directly from your wrist.
New Free Features in 1.4
Premium is not the only story. Pladio 1.4 also brings a fresh wave of free features — available to everyone, no subscription required.
CarPlay Widgets
Beyond the existing native CarPlay templates, Pladio now shows dedicated widgets on the CarPlay dashboard. Quick access to your favourite stations and current playback, right where you need it.
Dynamic Island
On supported iPhones, Pladio appears in the Dynamic Island. Glance at what's playing and control playback without leaving the app you're in — the current station and song stay one tap away.
Home Screen Widgets
A full set of Home Screen Widgets for iOS and macOS, in Small, Medium, and Large sizes:
Now Playing — the current station and song
Favorites — quick access to your starred stations
Recents — your most recently played
My Stations — your manually added streams
Quick Resume — one tap to resume where you left off
The interactive buttons work even when the app isn't running — thanks to pending action handling through the App Group. Quick Resume is also available as a compact widget on Lock Screen and Apple Watch.
Shortcuts Support
Pladio now exposes a rich set of Siri Shortcuts and App Intents: play a station, stop playback, resume, toggle favorites, set or cancel the Sleep Timer, and get information about what's currently playing. Build your own automations — "Hey Siri, play my morning station" — or combine Pladio with Focus Filters to automatically start a station when a Focus Mode activates.
Under the Hood: The New Cloud Station Database
Pladio 1.4 introduces a fundamental change you won't see directly — but you will feel it.
Until now, the radio station database was bundled into the app itself (a .radiopack file). Updating or correcting a station meant shipping an app update, waiting for App Review, and waiting again for users to install it.
Starting with 1.4, Pladio connects to its own cloud backend (api.pladio.app) to fetch and keep the station database up to date. The previous bundled database is still included as a fallback, so nothing breaks if the network is unavailable.
What this means in practice:
Stations can be added, corrected, and re‑synced with radio-browser.infowithout needing a software update.
Updates to the database can happen as often as needed — days instead of months.
The sync is delta‑based: only what has changed gets downloaded, which keeps things fast and data‑efficient.
All of this is built on my own infrastructure in eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) with privacy in mind.
This is the architectural foundation for a lot of future improvements. More on that in the coming months.
Better Metadata, More Codecs, More Streams
Pladio 1.4 also ships with a quietly significant audio pipeline upgrade. Based on extensive testing and bug reports from the beta program, the song‑recognition and stream‑handling logic has been rewritten in several places.
Faster metadata identification across many streams: where previous versions sometimes took 60 seconds or more to recognize a song, 1.4 often identifies it within seconds.
Broader codec and stream support — Pladio 1.4 now plays:
AAC and HE‑AAC / AAC+
xHE-AAC
MP3
Opus
Vorbis (OGG)
HLS
Icecast / Shoutcast (ICY metadata parsing)
More streams just work, out of the box.
Alongside this, a long list of bugs has been fixed and dozens of smaller optimizations have landed across playback stability, widget reliability, and WatchConnectivity sync.
New: Pladio Web Manual
Starting with 1.4, there is a dedicated online manual for Pladio — covering setup, features, tips, and troubleshooting:
👉 kreaniqs.gitbook.io/docs/pladio
The manual is still a work in progress and will expand over the coming weeks. If you find something missing or unclear, please let me know.
Help Translate Pladio
Pladio is currently available in 27 languages. With 1.4, the community can now help improve and expand these translations through Crowdin:
If you speak another language natively — or spot a translation that could be better — your contribution goes directly into the next release. Everyone who contributes will be credited.
The Pladio Promise, Restated
This release changes a lot. Here is what it does not change:
Everything that was free in 1.3 is still free in 1.4. Forever.
No ads. No tracking pixels. No selling of data. Ever.
Privacy-first. Analytics stay on the EU PostHog endpoint and respect your settings.
Built by one person in Switzerland. 🇨🇭
Supported in 27 languages — and growing, with your help.
Premium is the way Pladio becomes sustainable as a long‑term project. It is not the way existing users are pushed into paying. That distinction matters, and I intend to keep it.
What's Next
Pladio 1.4 is a big release, but it's also a foundation. Now that the Premium architecture, the cloud database, and the audio pipeline are in place, the pace of updates will pick up.
On the roadmap:
Pladio 1.5 — more Premium features: Song History, Playlist Export, Listening Statistics, Year in Review, and a high-quality stream preference.
Pladio 2.0 — a fundamental move to a fully cloud-backed architecture, with a significantly smaller app size.
I'll write more about each of these as they get closer to ship.
Download
Pladio 1.4 is rolling out on the App Store today for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
👉 Download Pladio on the App Store
👉 Website: pladio.app
👉 Manual: kreaniqs.gitbook.io/docs/pladio
👉 Translate Pladio: crowdin.com/project/pladio
👉 Feedback & Feature Requests: feedback-portal.pladio.app
Thank you to every beta tester, every translator, every person who reported a bug or sent an email over the last weeks. Pladio 1.4 is better because of you.
Patrick
Indie Developer, KREANIQS
