SUB/TIDE

A native Android client for SUB/WAVE, a self-hosted internet radio server.

Warning

This project is vibecoded. Most of the code was written by an AI coding agent (Claude Code) from natural-language instructions, reviewed and tested by a human rather than hand-written line by line. If that's not the kind of project you're comfortable running or relying on, this app isn't for you — no hard feelings, just look elsewhere.

About

The official SUB/WAVE client is React Native/Expo. SUB/TIDE is a ground-up Kotlin/Jetpack Compose rewrite of the same product, built to talk to any SUB/WAVE server's public HTTP API, with full native Android Auto support the official client doesn't have. No server is baked in — you point it at your own SUB/WAVE instance on first launch.

Download

Grab the latest signed APK from the Releases page. A new build is published automatically every time main changes (see .github/workflows/release-apk.yml).

Features

Live player	Now-playing track with cover art, artist/album, genre/BPM/key, mood tags, and a seamless elapsed/duration clock that ticks locally between server polls instead of jumping in fixed steps.
Hand-drawn transport console	Power ring, signal/listener/latency meter with a graduated scale, and a rotary volume knob — all custom-drawn, no stock Material sliders or icon packs.
Android Auto	A MediaLibraryService-backed MediaSession drives playback, the lock screen, the notification, and the car's media browser, so the stream is fully controllable from a head unit.
Timeline	Scrollable history of previously played tracks.
Booth	Live feed of DJ chatter/segments from the station.
Song requests	Submit a free-text track request and follow its pending / resolved / rejected status.
Multi-theme	Switch between server-provided palettes (e.g. classic light, midnight dark) without restarting the app.
Admin skip	Once connected as admin inside the app, a dedicated Skip tab lets you skip the current track with one tap; credentials are stored via Jetpack Security's EncryptedSharedPreferences, never in plaintext.

Screenshots

Timeline	Themes	Requests

Admin skip	Android Auto

Style

SUB/TIDE reproduces SUB/WAVE's visual identity pixel-for-pixel rather than inventing its own look: a vintage radio fascia reinterpreted as brutalist newsprint — cream paper background, near-black ink, a single warm vermillion accent, serif display type for titles, monospace for anything numeric (BPM, duration, latency, LLM token counts), zero border radius anywhere, and hairline dividers instead of Material elevation. Every color in the app comes from a themable 7-token palette (bg, ink, muted, accent, overlay, soft-border, field) fetched from the server, not hardcoded.

Stack

Kotlin, Jetpack Compose (Material 3 as a technical skeleton only — the visual theme is fully overridden), Media3 ExoPlayer + MediaSession, Retrofit + kotlinx.serialization, Coil, DataStore, and Jetpack Security.

Building from source

./gradlew assembleRelease

Producing a signed APK requires a keystore and the SUBTIDE_STORE_FILE, SUBTIDE_STORE_PASSWORD, SUBTIDE_KEY_ALIAS, SUBTIDE_KEY_PASSWORD environment variables (see app/build.gradle.kts); without them, assembleRelease still runs but produces an unsigned APK.