Public Beta KDE Plasma 6 Qt 6 / KF6

Just radio. No bloat. Built for KDE Plasma.

A lean Linux desktop radio player that plays music and gets out of your way. Fast station browsing, solid playback controls, MPRIS integration, and tray behavior without any heavy media suite overhead.

Jump to Install GitHub

Arch / AUR $ yay -S bearwave-git

Fast station access

Desktop-native controls

MPRIS, media keys, system tray icon, and cached state fit into your daily desktop workflow.

Strictly limited

BearWave will never manage podcasts, organize files, or scan a music library. It just plays radio.

Features

Built for Linux workflows, not for feature checklists.

Focused core capabilities for daily listening on KDE Plasma with reliable integration.

Search and filter

Search locally by station name, genre, and country, then sort by name, bitrate, or votes.

Favorites & Resume

Persistent local favorites and last-station resume keeps daily usage fast and simple.

World view

Browse stations by countries, flags, and popular genre tags from one focused dashboard.

Manual station add

Add custom streams manually when you want a station outside the normal discovery flow.

Metadata and covers

Track metadata, notifications, and local cover caching add polish without heavy overhead.

Linux-native stack

Qt 6, QML, KDE Frameworks, and QtMultimedia keep the app aligned with modern Plasma desktops.

100% Free & Open Source Software

BearWave is licensed under the GPLv3. No ads, no tracking, no mandatory accounts. The entire source code is hosted on GitHub and open for contributions.

View on GitHub Go to Install

Technologies

Platform & integrations

BearWave stays Linux-first and integrates seamlessly into your desktop workflow.

Linux Platform

Arch Linux / AUR

KDE Frameworks 6

Qt 6 / QML

MPRIS Playback

Radio Browser API

System

Support matrix & project status

BearWave is currently in public beta. It is built for contributors, testers, and technically comfortable Linux users who prefer control over fully polished consumer packaging.

Arch Linux: actively tested

KDE Plasma 6: primary target

Other distros: best effort

Install

How to install

BearWave is source-first and best supported on Arch Linux and KDE Plasma. Here are the two clean paths today. (Flatpak support outside the Flathub Store is in progress.)

Step 1

Option A: AUR package

Use the official `bearwave-git` package if you want the shortest route on Arch.

yay -S bearwave-git

Open AUR package

Step 2

Option B: local source build

Build from source if you want the documented upstream path.

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j"$(nproc)"
cmake --install build --prefix "$HOME/.local"

Open repository

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BearWave a general media player?

No. It is intentionally focused on internet radio and Plasma-friendly desktop playback.

Does it support non-KDE desktops?

In theory, it runs on almost any Linux desktop with Qt 6. However, integrations like the system tray and media keys are optimized specifically for KDE Plasma, where they work best together.

Is it really free and open source?

Yes. BearWave is 100% free software, licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license. You can find the entire source code on GitHub.

Where does BearWave store its data?

To keep things simple and transparent, BearWave saves everything locally in standard directories:

Favorites~/.config/bearwave/favorites.json

Settings~/.config/bearwave/state.json

Caches & Covers~/.cache/bearwave/

Contact & Legal Notice

Provider Information (Section 5 DDG)

Sebastian Palencsar

Senior Infrastructure Architect

Bahnhofstrasse 8

17213 Malchow

Contact

Email: dev@bearwave.app

Social Media

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