Does iPhone have an FM radio?

No. No iPhone has a usable FM radio receiver, and Apple has never allowed software to tune an FM station on one. In 2017 Apple said its phones carry no FM chip that can be switched on and no antenna for FM signals. You can still hear AM and FM stations on an iPhone through internet radio apps, which stream the same broadcasts over Wi-Fi or cellular.

Do iPhones have an FM radio chip?

Not one you can use. The wireless chips inside older iPhones did include an FM tuner block on the silicon, which is where the rumour started, but that block was never wired to an antenna and was never exposed to software. A dormant transistor is not a radio. In 2017, after a public campaign to switch FM on during hurricane season, Apple stated that its phones have no FM radio chip that can be enabled and no antenna designed to support FM signals.

That covers every model to date. Not the first iPhone, not the iPhone 17 generation, nothing in between. The question comes back every September because each new model brings a fresh round of searches, but the answer has not changed in eighteen years.

Why Apple does not enable FM radio on iPhone

Apple has never published a reason beyond the hardware statement above, so anything else is other people's reasoning rather than company policy. Three explanations come up repeatedly, and they fit what is known about the hardware.

The first is the modem itself. Phone makers buy cellular chips as a package, and FM support in that package is only a starting point. Making it work still costs an antenna path, filtering, and board space that competes with cameras and battery. The second is the antenna. FM wavelengths are long, which is why phones that do receive FM ask you to plug in wired headphones and borrow the cable as an aerial. The third is simply what people do with a phone. Apple sells music and has built its audio features around streaming and its own services, so a broadcast tuner sits outside the product it is actually shipping.

Whatever the reason, it lands the same way for a listener. No setting, no jailbreak, and no App Store download can open a radio receiver that is not wired to anything.

Receiver or transmitter, not the same thing

These two get mixed up constantly, and the difference matters because one of them has a real workaround.

An FM receiver picks up broadcasts. No iPhone has a usable one. An FM transmitter does the opposite and sends a short-range signal that a nearby radio can tune into. No iPhone has ever had one of those either, but this is the part you can solve, with an accessory rather than an app. A car FM transmitter takes audio from the phone over Bluetooth or a cable and rebroadcasts it on an empty frequency, which is how older cars with no CarPlay and no aux input end up playing whatever the phone is streaming. Anything in the App Store calling itself an FM transmitter is either controlling such an accessory or misusing the term.

What happened to the headphone antenna trick

On many Android phones, FM reception only worked with wired headphones plugged in, because the cable doubled as the antenna. That is a large part of the confusion, since someone who has seen it work on one phone reasonably assumes every phone can do it. It was never an iPhone feature, and the iPhone has had no headphone jack since the iPhone 7 in 2016, so even the physical prerequisite is gone.

The emergency argument, taken seriously

The strongest case for FM is not music. It is what happens when the network fails. A broadcast signal keeps arriving when cell towers are congested, without power, or destroyed, which is exactly when people want information. That argument deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch. If that is the risk you are planning for, buy a cheap battery or hand-crank FM radio and keep it in a drawer. No streaming app substitutes for it, this one included.

What the iPhone does offer on that front is a different set of tools. Wireless Emergency Alerts arrive over the cellular network without any app, and recent models can send an SOS message by satellite when there is no cellular coverage at all. Useful, but a complement to broadcast radio rather than a replacement.

Can you still listen to FM stations on an iPhone?

Yes, and this is the part most people are actually after. Nearly every AM and FM station of any size also streams its broadcast over the internet, which means the station you would tune on a car radio is usually available on an iPhone within a second or two of tapping it. You are hearing the same programme, the same presenters, and the same ad breaks, delivered over Wi-Fi or cellular instead of over the air.

Two differences are worth knowing before you rely on it. An internet stream is usually a few seconds behind the broadcast, which matters if you are listening to a football match next to someone with a radio. And a stream needs data, roughly 58 MB an hour at 128 kbps, so about 1 GB for 17 hours of listening. On Wi-Fi it costs nothing from your plan.

How to listen to radio on an iPhone

Three steps, no account needed.

Install a native radio app from the App Store. Search for the station by name, or browse by country and genre if you are looking for something new. Tap it once to play, then save it as a favourite so it is on the first screen next time.

Macdio for iPhone covers 55,000+ stations with CarPlay, Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen controls, sleep timers and a bedside Clock Mode. It identifies the song straight from the stream with no microphone permission (see what song is playing on the radio), records shows and splits them into named tracks, and syncs favourites across your Apple devices. One purchase, no subscription, nothing tracked. It needs iOS 26, so an older phone will need one of the free alternatives in the radio app comparison.

What internet radio does better than FM

Frequently asked questions

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