User Guide

Start listening

1. Open OakWave and choose the languages and listening styles you care about.
2. Confirm your Home country. Use the device region, choose a country manually, or allow approximate location where supported.
3. Tap Play for Me, or open Explore to browse by station, country, city, language, category or collection.
4. Tap a station to begin playback. Use notification, lock-screen, Bluetooth and supported car/cast controls while the app is in the background.

Find the right station

Explore understands station names, countries, cities, languages, listening styles, and local-style searches. Find Another stays within the active collection when good alternatives exist. Similar prioritizes genre/listening style before using language and location as secondary signals.

Favourites, history and Radio Passport

Save favourites and revisit recent stations. Radio Passport creates private on-device summaries such as countries, languages, styles and listening time. These summaries are designed to remain on your device unless you deliberately export information for support.

Improve recommendations

Use Improve recommendations from the player to choose More like this, Less like this, Too lively, Too much talking, Wrong language or Stream is broken. Use Undo after an accidental action. Settings can disable local learning or reset feedback.

Data, network and sleep controls

• Wi-Fi only playback can block playback on networks Android identifies as metered.
• Data Saver prefers lower known bitrates; High Quality prefers higher known bitrates.
• Sleep timer stops playback after the selected period.
• Quiet/rest hours can lower energetic recommendations and apply calmer audio settings.

Add your own public station

Explore can accept supported public HTTP(S), M3U or PLS station addresses. OakWave blocks private-network destinations, embedded credentials and unsupported schemes. Custom URLs remain on your device.

Personalize the player

Choose System/Light/Dark theme, supported dynamic colour, player skin, EQ, Reduced Motion, Simple Mode, Battery Saver and optional personal-photo wallpapers. Personal photos are selected through the system photo picker and are not uploaded by RuleOak.

Free version and advertising

Free users may see restrained Google-provided visual banner ads on eligible foreground screens when consent and current product policy allow them. Existing Home and Explore inventory keeps its bounded frequency limits. Full Player may additionally show one visually separate bottom banner only when a conservative layout-safety gate can reserve sufficient space without overlaying or compressing playback controls. It is suppressed for unsafe layouts, background/invisible state, purchase/privacy/restore flows and Lifetime Pro. Background playback, car/cast controls, Settings and core audio remain free of RuleOak-inserted ads. OakWave does not use RuleOak-inserted app-open, interstitial, forced rewarded or custom audio ads.

Broadcasters may include their own advertising or sponsorship in the live stream.

Privacy choices

Where applicable, OakWave uses Google User Messaging Platform before requesting eligible ads. Available privacy choices can be reopened from Settings. If consent or advertising services fail, radio playback should continue normally.

Lifetime Pro

Lifetime Pro is a one-time, non-consumable store purchase. It unlocks the current permanent Pro capabilities and removes RuleOak-inserted visual ads. It is not a subscription and cannot remove advertising already included by a broadcaster.

Restore a purchase

1. Use the same store account that bought Lifetime Pro.
2. Open Settings.
3. Tap Restore purchase.
4. Keep the device online while the store checks ownership.

A pending purchase does not unlock Pro until the store reports it as completed.

If a station does not play

1. Tap Retry.
2. Try another station to confirm your network is working.
3. Remember that a broadcaster can change a stream, apply geo-restrictions, require authentication, use DRM or go temporarily offline.
4. If the issue persists, send the station name, country, approximate time and device/app version to support.

Delete local data

Use Settings → Delete all local data to clear OakWave local preferences/history where supported. Uninstalling also removes ordinary app-local data.

Get help

Visit Support or email hello@ruleoak.com. Do not send passwords, payment-card data or raw purchase tokens.

Report an incorrect station or rights issue

Use the correction and takedown process for incorrect station identity, broken official links, artwork concerns or rights issues. OakWave does not bypass broadcaster authentication, DRM, geographic restrictions or access controls.