As of 12 October 2026 Macdio shows synced lyrics for live radio on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. Once a song is known, from the station's own title or from Song ID, Macdio fetches time-synced lyrics from LRCLIB, an open lyrics database, and highlights the line being sung as the stream plays. Because a station's audio reaches you a few seconds after its metadata, the timing can be nudged in one-second steps until the words land exactly on the voice. When only plain lyrics exist, they are shown unsynced.
Why live radio needs an offset
A streaming app knows exactly where it is in a song. A radio station does not tell you: the title arrives through the metadata channel, the audio arrives through a buffer, and the two can be several seconds apart depending on the station and your connection. Macdio starts the lyrics at the song's metadata time and lets you shift them with two buttons; the offset is kept per station, so your favorite only needs setting once.
On each device
On iPhone and iPad the lyrics fill the player. On the Mac they sit in a panel next to Now Playing. On Apple TV a panel slides in beside the cover, readable from the couch. The Apple Watch shows the song and the cover but not the lyrics.
Where the words come from
LRCLIB is a community lyrics database with synced timings for a large share of popular music, and a plain-text fallback for the rest. Macdio reads from it and writes nothing to it. Songs the database does not know show no lyrics rather than a guess.
Common questions
Does Macdio show lyrics for radio?
Why are the lyrics a few seconds off?
Which songs have lyrics?
Does it work on stations with no song titles?
Does it work on Apple Watch?
Try it
Macdio is on the App Store as a one-time purchase. The Song ID page explains how a station that sends nothing still gets its lyrics.