NerLan

An iOS language-learning audio player for Taiwan's National Education Radio (國立教育廣播電台) Channel+ platform. Browse close to a hundred language-learning radio programs across 19 languages — Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Spanish, French, German, Taiwanese, Hakka, and more — and listen to full episode archives, online or offline.

There is a matching Android app at plateaukao/nerlan-android.

Features

• Browse programs — ~96 language-learning programs, filterable with wrapping language chips (19 languages)
• Full episode archives — every episode of every program via the Channel+ on-demand archive, with infinite scroll
• Background playback — AVPlayer with lock-screen / Control Center controls (play/pause, skip, seek)
• Playback speed — 0.5× to 2× in steps, remembered across launches
• Repeat modes — off / repeat all / repeat one
• Offline listening — download episode MP3s, grouped by program and language
• Favorites — bookmark individual episodes and whole programs
• Mini player — floating now-playing bar above the tab bar, expandable to a full player sheet

Architecture

A small SwiftUI app (iOS 17+) with a handful of singletons behind the views:

• NERAPI.swift (ChannelPlusAPI) — thin async/await URLSession client for the Channel+ REST API at https://channelplus.ner.gov.tw/api/v1 (programs list, paginated episode archives, audio/image URL builders). The API is unofficial — endpoints were discovered from the site's network traffic.
• PlayerManager — app-wide @MainActor singleton owning the AVPlayer and the current queue. Drives MPNowPlayingInfoCenter and MPRemoteCommandCenter for lock-screen / Control Center integration, and persists rate/repeat settings in UserDefaults.
• DownloadManager — URLSession background-configuration downloads into Documents/audio/{episodeId}.mp3, with per-episode progress published to the UI.
• FavoritesStore — favorited episodes and programs.
• Persistence — favorites and download records are plain JSON files in the app's Documents directory; no database.

Views live in NerLan/Sources/Views/: a three-tab ContentView (Programs / Favorites / Downloads) plus program detail, full player sheet, and mini player bar.

Building

The project is XcodeGen-based — project.yml is the source of truth and NerLan.xcodeproj is gitignored, so generate it first:

brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate
open NerLan.xcodeproj

In Xcode, set your own development team under Signing & Capabilities (or edit DEVELOPMENT_TEAM in project.yml before generating), then build and run on a device or simulator.

Command line alternative:

xcodebuild -project NerLan.xcodeproj -scheme NerLan \
    -destination 'generic/platform=iOS' \
    DEVELOPMENT_TEAM=YOUR_TEAM_ID -allowProvisioningUpdates build

Scripts/build_release.sh archives and exports a development-signed .ipa into .build/export/ (it is hard-wired to the author's team id; adjust TEAM_ID for your own use).

The .ipa attached to GitHub releases is development-signed, so it only installs on devices registered to the author's team — building from source is the normal way to run the app.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial client. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by National Education Radio. All audio content, program metadata, and artwork belong to 國立教育廣播電台 (National Education Radio, Taiwan) and are streamed/downloaded directly from their public Channel+ service for personal listening.