Radio as an alarm, and a sleep timer

What each one does, and what neither can do

Set a time and a station once and the alarm repeats daily: at the time you set, the station begins playing on its own, with no tab focused and nothing clicked first. The sleep timer offers fifteen to ninety minutes, counting down on the key itself and ending in an eight second fade.

Neither can wake the machine, and no browser extension can: if yours sleeps overnight, set its own wake schedule and let the alarm handle the audio once it is awake. Neither exists in a tab either, because a page that stops existing when you close it cannot start the radio at six in the morning.

Why a fade and not a stop

The thing that wakes a half asleep person is not sound, it is change. A stream that stops dead at ninety minutes is a change. A stream that loses a decibel every second for eight seconds is not, and most people never hear the end of it at all.

The countdown lives on the key rather than in a menu, and pausing the radio by hand does not cancel it. A timer that disarms itself because you paused for a phone call is a timer you stop trusting.

Choosing a station that will be there at six in the morning

An alarm is the least forgiving use of internet radio, because it fires once and you are not awake to fix it. Three things make a good wake up station.

1. It broadcasts through the night. Plenty of small stations do not, and one that goes off air at midnight local time will not be there when your alarm fires.
2. It has capacity. A large national broadcaster pays for enough listener slots that it does not refuse connections, which is the commonest reason a stream that worked yesterday refuses today.
3. You have heard it cold. Play it once at roughly the hour you intend to wake. Some stations open with several minutes of advertising, some run automation overnight and a live desk from six.

Time zones are the trap and the opportunity at once: waking at seven in Sydney to a station in Europe means waking to the middle of somebody's evening. The language shelves are a good way to go looking for a morning happening somewhere else.

What is free, and what the unlock covers

The free Chrome player carries the whole station catalogue, the search, the shelves, the filters, the equalizer and the spectrum wall. Nothing about finding and playing radio sits behind the unlock: the catalogue is not ours to ransom. World Radio Pro adds the alarm, the sleep timer, the other deck finishes, unlimited saved stations and the removal of the promotions bar. Free on Chrome. World Radio Pro on Chrome is an optional one time unlock, priced on the store listing.

There is no account and no password in it. The unlock is tied to the email address it was bought with, so the one thing worth noting down is which address you used, which the support page covers. The web player has neither feature and is not going to: a page cannot schedule itself.