This interface is intended for AM and FM (analog) radio receivers and transmitters. Conventionally V4L2 radio devices are accessed through character device special files named /dev/radio and /dev/radio0 to /dev/radio63 with major number 81 and minor numbers 64 to 127.

Devices supporting the radio interface set the V4L2_CAP_RADIO and V4L2_CAP_TUNER or V4L2_CAP_MODULATOR flag in the capabilities field of &v4l2-capability; returned by the &VIDIOC-QUERYCAP; ioctl. Other combinations of capability flags are reserved for future extensions.

Radio devices can support controls, and must support the tuner or modulator ioctls. They do not support the video input or output, audio input or output, video standard, cropping and scaling, compression and streaming parameter, or overlay ioctls. All other ioctls and I/O methods are reserved for future extensions.

Radio devices may have a couple audio controls (as discussed in ) such as a volume control, possibly custom controls. Further all radio devices have one tuner or modulator (these are discussed in ) with index number zero to select the radio frequency and to determine if a monaural or FM stereo program is received/emitted. Drivers switch automatically between AM and FM depending on the selected frequency. The &VIDIOC-G-TUNER; or &VIDIOC-G-MODULATOR; ioctl reports the supported frequency range.