# Owl Radio

> Owl Radio (https://owlrad.io) is a free web app for listening to old-time radio at night. It plays classic radio mystery shows, 1920s–1950s music and old news broadcasts from the Internet Archive, and you can add sleep sounds like rain, thunderstorms, a night train or a crackling fire underneath. No account, no ads, no subscription.

Owl Radio is an installable web app (PWA) that works in any modern browser on iPhone, Android and desktop. Add it to the Home Screen to keep listening with the screen off.

## What you can listen to

- Mystery and suspense: Suspense, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Whistler, The Mysterious Traveler, The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Richard Diamond, Molle Mystery Theatre, Boston Blackie, Nick Carter, Nero Wolfe, Dragnet, The Black Museum
- Music (1920s–1950s): 78 rpm records from 1920–1925, Glenn Miller on the Air, AFRS Jubilee, The Bing Crosby Show, This Is Jazz, Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party (1956)
- News and history: early broadcasts from the 1920s–1930s, Europe on the Brink (1938–1939), World War II news (1940–1945), Words at War

## Ambience

15 sounds, each with its own volume: rain, light rain, downpour, rain on the window, thunderstorm, night train, cozy fire, wind, ocean waves, crickets, creek, mantel clock, radio static, box fan and brown noise. Most are public-domain (CC0) recordings that loop without a gap. The rest are generated on the device. Listeners can save their own mixes on their device and export or import them as files.

## Features

- Tuning-dial interface with Mystery, Music and News bands
- Sleep timer (15 minutes to 2 hours, or end of episode) with a gentle fade-out
- Resumes each episode where you stopped; Favorites and Continue listening lists
- Lock-screen controls for play, pause, skip and next episode
- Light on battery: sounds load once and loop from memory, and shows stream as 64 kbps files

## Sources

- Programs: Internet Archive Old Time Radio and 78 rpm collections (https://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio). Owl Radio links to and streams these files; it does not host or alter them.
- Ambience recordings: Freesound contributors, CC0 public domain, credited in the app.

## Links

- App: https://owlrad.io/
- Made by f00d4tehg0dz: https://f4d.me
- Jump to a band: https://owlrad.io/?view=mystery, https://owlrad.io/?view=music, https://owlrad.io/?view=news
- Ambience mixer: https://owlrad.io/?tab=ambience