Adding songs

A song can start as an empty page, arrive as a file from another app, or come straight from SongSelect. However it gets there, it lands in your library as a normal song you can edit, transpose, or simply view.

The Add song screen

The round Add song button sits at the bottom of the songs panel, and the empty library offers the same thing. It opens seven ways in:

Every route except the archive imports lets you choose the folder before the song lands, and it starts on the folder you are currently viewing. Pick No folder to keep the song out of any folder, or create a new folder without leaving the screen.

On the Free plan the entries turn grey once your library is full. See the free song limit for what counts and how to make room.

Create a song from scratch

Give the song a title, choose a folder, and Create and edit opens it in the editor with nothing in it yet.

From there the editor does the rest. Pasting a songsheet from a website or a document is often the fastest start: SONGUIDE recognizes the pasted lines as chords, lyrics, and section headings for you.

Import ChordPro files

SONGUIDE imports ChordPro files with any of these extensions:

.cho .crd .chopro .chord .pro .chordpro .txt

OnSong text files with the .onsong extension are accepted too and converted to ChordPro on the way in. All ChordPro extensions are parsed the same way. Files can be up to 1 MB each and a song up to 100,000 characters, which is far more than any song needs. You can select multiple files at once, and each becomes a song in your library.

Anything that cannot be imported is skipped rather than failing the whole run. When the import finishes it tells you how many songs came in and how many were skipped, with the reasons broken down, for example unsupported file types or empty files.

Files exported from SongSelect import especially well: sections, metadata, and the CCLI footer are all recognized. See the ChordPro format guide for exactly how directives are handled.

Import a ZIP archive

To move a whole library at once, import a ZIP archive of ChordPro files, up to 50 MB as the archive sits on disk rather than unpacked. Subfolders in the archive become folders with the same names, and files without a subfolder go into a folder named after the archive. If a folder of that name already exists, the new one gets Import added to its name. An OpenSong backup with the .osb extension is accepted here too.

On the Free plan, an archive holding more songs than your remaining space says so before anything is imported, and you can let it fill the remaining space or cancel.

Coming from OpenSong

Moving from OpenSong has its own guided route. A backup from OpenSongApp on Android or a zipped Songs folder from a computer brings the whole library over, converted to ChordPro with your folders kept. Migrating from OpenSong walks through the steps.

Coming from OnSong

Moving from OnSong has a guided route too. OnSong's export produces ChordPro or OnSong text files that come over converted. OnSong 2020 exports with its one-time purchase, the subscription versions need a paid plan. Migrating from OnSong walks through the steps.

Coming from Charts

Charts by WorshipTools has no export, so its guided route works with the clipboard instead: copy a song's ChordPro text in Charts or the Planning web app, and Create song from clipboard makes it a song with title, details, and sections intact. The folder choice is kept between songs, so the loop stays fast. Migrating from Charts by WorshipTools walks through the steps.

Import from SongSelect

SongSelect is CCLI's song library, and importing from it needs your own SongSelect subscription. You sign in on SongSelect yourself and use its own ChordPro download, so SONGUIDE never asks for, stores, or transmits your CCLI login, and every download counts against your own SongSelect allowance as usual.

Open SongSelect opens the site in your browser. Sign in, open a song's chord sheet, and choose the ChordPro download. Back in SONGUIDE, Pick downloaded files opens the file picker so you can hand the download over, folder choice included.

Opening a file from another app

On iOS and Android you can share a ChordPro or OnSong file from another app, for example from WhatsApp, from Mail, or from a file manager, straight into SONGUIDE. A file received in a chat or email can also be opened directly with SONGUIDE. Either way it opens as an import so you can review before the song lands in your chosen folder. A ZIP archive or OpenSong backup shared this way imports with its folders, the same as importing it yourself.

Files arriving from outside the app start on No folder, because there is no folder you were looking at when they came in.

Duplicating a song

Duplicate in the Edit song screen makes a copy in the same folder and opens it with the title selected for renaming. The copy is named after the original with (Copy) added, so Amazing Grace becomes Amazing Grace (Copy). Duplicate it again and you get Amazing Grace (Copy 2), counting up so no two songs share a name.

The copy carries the lyrics, chords, and metadata, and from then on the two songs are completely independent of each other.

That is what makes duplicating the right move when you play the same song with two bands or in two projects. Transpose one copy into another key, give it its own capo, rewrite its comments, cut a verse, and the original stays exactly as it was. Move each copy into the folder of the band or project it belongs to and both stay where you expect them.

Next steps

• Editing songs shows how the editor works.
• ChordPro format documents every directive SONGUIDE understands.
• Import and export covers getting your songs back out again.