Scanner Radio allows you to listen to live audio from police scanners, fire scanners and radio transmissions from other departments such as rail and weather departments, from all around the world. Working on a volunteer based system where people with live radio scanners volunteer to provide these audio feeds, it’s a great app that you can use to find out what’s happening around you and around the world.
Here’s a list of the key features of Scanner Radio:
- Add scanners you listen to the most to your Favorites list for quick access.
- View scanners that are located nearest you, sorted by distance, by clicking on “Near Me”
- View the top 50 scanners that have the most listeners (updated every 5 minutes).
- View list of scanners added most recently (new additions are being added all the time).
- Browse the directory of scanner feeds by location or by genre (public safety, weather, railroad, etc).
- Configure alerts to have the app notify you when lots of people are listening to a scanner (indicating that something big may be happening).
- Add Scanner Radio widgets and/or shortcuts to your phone’s home screen for quick access.
Requiring just an internet connection to work, Scanner Radio provides audio feeds from over 3100 scanners (according to the official description) around the world. You can choose from different categories according to genre (rail, weather, public safety, etc), area (from a list of countries), source (websites that provide you with the feed), and also set custom scanners according to your preference. You can add feeds as your favorites, then access them from the Favorites screen for quick access.
The Top 50 option shows you a list of the top 50 most listened to feeds, according to the number of listeners. Another nice feature is the option to use your location to get audio feeds in your area. Using GPS or wireless networks to determine your location, it shows you audio feeds within 250 miles of your location. Quite useful when you want to find out what is going on around you. You can also download the Chat Rooms add-on and start chatting with other listeners.
There is an option to configure alerts that let you know when certain channels have increased activity with a set number of listeners, which you can change from its default value. There are widgets as well, which you can place on your homescreen for quicker access to your favorite feeds. You can upgrade to the Pro version for which removes ads and adds features like setting the time of the day you get alerts, ability to run the feeds using the play button on the widgets, receiving alerts for scanners located near you.
Scanner Radio is a really fun and useful app if you want to find out what’s happening around the world. No more waiting for the news, Scanner Radio lets you listen to feeds as and when events take place. Grab it for free from the Android Market by the clicking on the download button below. Leave your thoughts on this app in the comments.
[button link=”https://market.android.com/details?id=com.scannerradio” icon=”arrow” style=””]Download Scanner Radio[/button]
