May 2026 · Release Notes

On the wrist, in the car

The iPhone app is a sit-down surface. The wrist and the car are quick-glance surfaces. AWE Radio version 1.6 fills both.

Apple Watch: the dial on your wrist

The watch app is built around a single gesture: a vertical swipe moves between stations, a horizontal swipe moves between channels within a station. Two axes, no menus, no nested screens. The Digital Crown is reserved for volume; paging is touch only, so the two inputs don't fight each other. Tap the artwork to toggle play or pause; a brief icon confirms the action and disappears.

For now the watch is curated to AWE Radio's own four channels: chill, hype, afterdark, cruise. Broader station discovery stays on iPhone and web. The wrist is for committing, not browsing.

One detail we cared about: the watch reads the cover art from whatever is currently playing and shifts its background colour to match. It's the same colour treatment as the iPhone's now-playing screen. You glance down and the watch is already wearing the album.

Apple Watch showing the listen/hype channel playing Magnetik by Malandra Jr., with a violet gradient background. Apple Watch showing the listen/afterdark channel playing Lora by COMA, with a deep purple gradient background. Apple Watch showing the listen/cruise channel playing Blind the Sun by Derun, with a teal-green gradient background.
Three channels, three colour treatments.

CarPlay: three tabs, no scrolling

Our CarPlay interface went live at the end of April, approved by Apple. The interface is three tabs, deliberately:

The heart button is built into the now-playing template, so the small action that powers AWE Radio's discovery loop ("I love this track, save it for later, follow this channel") works the same in the car as it does on the phone or the watch.

Why this shape. The CarPlay rules are strict: no scrolling lists, no custom views, glance-distance legibility. We could have shipped a simpler "channel list" interface. But the dial is the metaphor that defines AWE Radio, and the dial is what your hand reaches for at a stop light. Same surface, same shape, less detail. That's the right translation.

One dial, three surfaces

The phone, the watch, and CarPlay all share the same idea of "your dial": an ordered, growing list of stations and channels you've tuned into. Add a station on your phone and it's there in the car. Heart a track on CarPlay and it lands in your Liked tab on the phone. None of these are separate apps with separate lists. They're three windows onto one dial.

Coming next

The next release (1.7, in App Review imminently) makes "one dial, three surfaces" literal. Your dial moves from a per-device list into a property of you, the listener: phone, watch, web, and CarPlay all read the same one. Reinstall the app, rebuild your dial automatically. Add a station on the wrist, watch the phone update.

Same release brings a typographic refresh across every surface. The slug-and-channel handle (listen/chill, marksparadise/music) becomes the visual identity element. Cleaner, more honest, less stuff fighting for attention.

AWE Radio for iPhone is on the App Store. Apple Watch and CarPlay support are part of the iPhone app. Install once, all three surfaces work.

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