Performing

The song view is built for the stage: high contrast, big touch targets, and navigation that works without looking.

The song header

The header shows the song title with badges for key, capo, time signature, tempo, and original key. Tapping a badge takes you to the right place: key and capo open the controls below, and the others open the editor on that field. See Editing songs.

Your screen stays awake while you use the app, so a songsheet never goes dark mid song. That is a setting rather than a fixed behaviour. It is on by default and can be turned off under Settings, Stage, see Settings.

The action rail

The action rail is the strip of icons at the top right of the songsheet. Collapsed it is icons only, and the toggle at its foot expands it to labelled rows.

The top two rows are always there and name the next and previous item, so you can see what is coming without leaving the song. Below the toggle sit the tools: Edit, Transpose, Capo, Show Capo, Zoom, and Export.

Transpose and Capo need the song to have a key. Without one they are greyed out and say so, because there is nothing to transpose from.

Transpose

The transpose wheel changes the key of the song. Chords are rewritten with correct spelling for the target key, flats in flat keys and sharps in sharp keys, and the key badge updates. Transposing changes the song itself, so the new key applies on all your devices and in every export. The original key badge keeps showing the published key.

Capo

The capo wheel sets your personal capo fret. It shows the finger shape key for each fret, so you can pick the fret that gives you the shapes you like, for example playing in G shapes with a capo for a song in B.

Capo is personal to you and does not change the song. It never goes into an exported ChordPro file, so a song you pass on stays exactly as written. A PDF is the exception: you can print one for your capo if you want to, see Import and export.

Show Capo in the action rail is a separate thing from setting a capo. Setting a capo says which fret you play at. Show Capo decides whether you see it. With it on, the sheet displays chords transposed for your finger shapes and the header shows an amber capo badge. Turn it off and you read the written chords again, with your capo setting untouched and waiting. The toggle is per device, so your tablet can show capo chords while your laptop shows the written ones.

Zoom

Zoom is per device and remembered, so a song opens at the size you left it at on that screen. It is not saved per song.

Four ways to change it:

• Pinch on a touch device or a trackpad.
• Ctrl or Cmd with the scroll wheel on a computer.
• The zoom wheel in the action rail.
• Reset, which the rail offers while the zoom wheel is open, returns to the fitted size.

Double tapping the songsheet is not a zoom. It opens the editor at the line you tapped.

Long lines scroll horizontally instead of wrapping unpredictably.

Pages instead of one long scroll

The zoom control also carries the switch between Scroll and Pages. On pages the song is laid out in columns and split into pages exactly as tall as your screen, so the scroll snaps and a foot pedal turns one page at a time. Turning it on picks a readable size that needs as few pages as possible and remembers it per device.

Pages need room for at least two columns. Zoom in past that point and the song goes back to scrolling, with the switch still on Pages and telling you to zoom out. Zoom back out and the pages return where you left off. A phone is too narrow for pages upright, but not sideways.

A device with room for columns opens its first song on Pages, and from there only the switch changes the mode. Zooming, resizing a window and turning a tablet leave it alone, and Reset picks a fresh size for the space you have now.

Moving between songs

Swipe left or right to move to the next or previous song. The order follows the active setlist when one is selected, otherwise the current folder or library order. With a setlist active you walk its dividers too, so a welcome or a break is an entry like any other. See Setlists.

On a tablet or larger you can keep the running order beside the song with the setlist navigator, and jump straight to any item in the set.

Foot pedals and keyboards

The song view responds to keyboard input, which means any Bluetooth page turner pedal that acts as a keyboard works without configuration. That covers AirTurn, PageFlip, Donner, and most generic pedals.

The forward keys scroll about 80 percent of a screen with a smooth animation, then advance when the song runs out. One pedal press keeps you moving through a long song and flips to the next song automatically at the end.