Introducing Sonarpad for iOS and Android: a light app to read documents, check news, subscribe to podcasts, listen to radio stations, and much more!

There once was such an app that gathered similar functions in one place, but then it was removed from the App Store, so this one will be great. I've not yet tested it, but I may come back here and give feedback once I do. It's also good that Sonarpad appears to have been designed with accessibility in mind, and we can use it on Windows and MacOS as well.

This app is only in Italian. Can you please translate it so it works in English?

Hello Ambro and everyone.
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the mobile version.
Now they have become even more powerful!
I would suggest, when opening a document, the option to search for texts, if that is possible.
Thanks!

I am so impressed by your all-in-one app. Having documents, RSS, radio, media conversion, and everything else in one place is just awesome. I completely understand that it is currently in beta, but I wanted to share a few areas where things could be improved.
The main thing for me is the RSS reader. Right now, it is pretty difficult to add new RSS feeds manually. Also, the articles in the recommended news list seem outdated, and I could not find a refresh button to update them. It would also be great if you could improve how the app parses full articles, because a lot of the content is currently getting truncated.
For the radio feature, it is great that we can browse stations by language, but since this app includes radio from all around the world, it would be amazing to also have an option to browse stations by country.
Lastly, for the media converter, could you please add more options for WAV files, like being able to select the bit depth, such as 16-bit?

Thank you for considering my feedback. Yes, I did exactly that. I entered the feed name and the URL into their respective fields and clicked on add RSS, but the feed just did not get added to the list.

I love that I can now easily turn a video file into audio. Thank you for this app!!

I haven’t downloaded the iOS app to test it yet. I’m still debating whether I should. I don’t tend to do as much on iOS as I do on Windows, mainly because the touchscreen interface can be a bit finicky. For example, if you’re reading something and accidentally bump the screen, there goes your place.

That said, there is one feature I would probably use. I’m one of those few people who still connects their phone to a computer to back it up. In iTunes, or at least the Windows version, there’s a File Sharing section that lists the apps on your phone that can accept files directly. On mine, for example, I see VLC Media Player, Microsoft Edge, My Contacts Backup Pro, and a game that hasn’t been updated in forever. But that’s beside the point.

If Sonarpad were added to that list, then in theory, you could download a podcast using the Windows version of Sonarpad, grab the file from your PC, and send it directly to Sonarpad on an iPhone or iPad. From there, you could do whatever you wanted with it.

Android would probably make this a lot easier because of its file sharing system, but I don’t use Android, so I’m not too familiar with how that works. On iOS, though, if Sonarpad showed up in the iTunes File Sharing section, it would be very easy to drop files straight into the app.

That would also avoid the need to use Dropbox, which I’ve stopped using on iOS ever since they imposed device limits on free accounts. I don’t use Dropbox enough to justify paying for extra space, but of course, to each their own.

I asked on another forum and you answered there are no plans for mac version at the moment yet this seems to have improved overtime. I need to grab the mac version right now although it is my bedtime.

"First of all, I would also like to congratulate you on the very promising app and the great idea. I would like to request, if possible, that you consider translating the app into Brazilian Portuguese as well, and I would like to ask the following: which document formats are currently supported? Because I uploaded an ePub file and it didn't read it."

Many thanks again for the Mac version. Is there a way to make documents read-only? I mean sometimes I need to read an epub book only and I do not want to tamper with the text, so if there is a command to make the text read-only this would help so much.
Also for epubs, can you add a command to pull up table of content?
Thanks

Have just noticed I can not search inside text when opened with Sonarpad. Please add this feature too.

I downloaded the app, and I’ve already found a few issues.

First, when I go into Podcasts, I always have to change the country setting. It doesn’t seem to stick. I set mine to Australia, because that’s where I’m from — don’t let the username fool you — but if I close the app, reopen it, and go back into Podcasts, it’s changed again. I’m not sure what country it defaults to, but it definitely isn’t staying on Australia.

I’ve also uploaded a couple of podcast files into the Sonarpad folder. These are podcasts I downloaded using the Windows app. I can find the files, but they don’t seem to show up in a way that lets me listen to them in Sonarpad. So, at least for now, it looks like you can read documents, but you can’t listen to locally uploaded media files. Or, if you can, I haven’t found how to do it yet.

As for newsfeeds, I probably won’t use them much. I prefer reading news articles in my web browser, and Sonarpad on Windows lets me do that. I’m not sure how it works on iOS, but I’ve found that when Sonarpad opens links inside the app itself, the experience can be hit and miss. Some articles read fine, while others get truncated. That’s why, at least on Windows, I choose to open articles in my browser instead. That’s just my preference, though.

Overall, I think this is a good first start for an iOS version.

One thing I’m not sure about is syncing. For example, if I’m listening to a podcast in Sonarpad on Windows and want to continue listening on my phone, I can’t really do that at the moment. I assume the only way to make that work properly would be some kind of account system that syncs everything, unless there’s a way to sync while the phone is plugged into a computer. I don’t know if that’s possible.

To be honest, though, I’m getting a bit tired of needing an account for every little thing just to get a small bit of convenience. So I understand if that’s not the direction you want to go.

All in all, this is a pretty good start. I don’t think the iOS version needs to have absolutely everything the Windows version has, because that could easily make it bloated. Everyone uses their phone differently, and I certainly have my own way of doing things.

That said, it would be really useful if I could upload a podcast I’ve already downloaded on my PC and then listen to it in Sonarpad on iOS. I can upload the file, but I can’t actually open it and play it in Sonarpad, at least not that I’ve found.

Even if I could play it, I assume it would start from the beginning and wouldn’t remember my place. I’m not sure if that’s something that can be added. I suppose I could memorise the timestamp and jump to it manually, but I haven’t found a jump-to-time option in the app yet. Maybe Siri can do something like that in some cases, since I’ve used Siri for that in other apps before — but then again, this is Siri we’re talking about.

I was browsing the radio station directory and noticed there is no Turkish directory. That was a bit disappointing.

I do not listen to a lot of radio, but there is one particular station I like that plays Turkish music. I think it might be based in Germany, so I may have to look under Germany to find it. I tried searching for the station name, but because the directory was set to English, it did not find it.

So rather than trying to build your own radio station directory from scratch, it might be worth polishing up the existing radio station directory instead. Stations come and go, and maintaining a directory like that would become quite a chore. Over the years, plenty of radio directory sites have appeared and disappeared. Does anyone remember the Bill Sparks directory? That was popular while it lasted.

These days we have TuneIn, MyTuner Radio, and a whole bunch of other radio directories, all trying to do roughly the same thing.

That said, the radio station feature in Sonarpad could definitely use a bit of love. That is probably why I do not use it very much.

The bookmarks idea sounds interesting. I am not sure how you would pull something like that off, but it does sound intriguing.

The stations I mainly listen to are Kral Fm, the one I listen to is based in Turkiye.

But the German one is called Metropol FM.

I normally just ask my echo dot to play them cause it just grabs them from tune in.