Songbook, Setlist & Chord Charts FAQ

Gig Songbook is an iOS songbook app built for gigging musicians, cover bands, and solo performers. Store lyrics and chords for every song in your library, attach backing tracks or reference audio, and perform full-screen on stage — offline-first, with optional iCloud sync and no account required.

Unlike a static PDF, your digital songbook stays searchable, filterable, and editable. Update a chord mid-gig from Performance mode, sync across devices via iCloud, attach audio and images per song, and pair lyrics with live chord charts and stem separation when you need to rehearse without vocals.

Yes. On first launch the app offers to load a ready-made demo setlist — songs complete with lyrics and chords, organized into a set — so you can explore Performance mode, chord charts, and setlist editing right away. Missed the prompt? Load it from Settings any time your library is empty.

Loading the demo needs an internet connection (a one-time ~12 MB download); everything works offline afterwards, and you can delete the demo content whenever you like.

Yes. Tapping a song in your library opens a read-only song view, like a contact card: key, BPM, duration and labels at a glance, an inline audio preview, swipeable score pages (when the song uses the image view), a stage-styled lyrics & chords preview, and when (and on which device) the song was last edited. Nothing can change by accident while you browse.

From there, Edit sits in the toolbar and Rehearse launches with one tap. In a hurry? Long-press a song in the library for instant Rehearse, Edit, and Add to Setlist actions. Inside a setlist, tapping a song row instead starts the performance right from that song.

Copy lyrics anywhere — Safari, Notes, a chat — and open the Songs tab. A Paste Clipboard as New Song button appears next to the title. One tap opens the song editor prefilled: title, artist, key, BPM and lyrics are detected automatically from the pasted text (a title: / artist: header is read in full; otherwise the first line becomes the title). Review, save, done.

The button is the iOS system paste control, so there is no "allow paste?" pop-up — the app never reads your clipboard on its own; the content is handed over only when you tap. If the copied text doesn't look like lyrics (very short, just a link, or markup), the app tells you and the offer disappears until you copy something new. After a successful save the button hides too, until the next copy.

Yes. Use the sort button at the right end of the filter row: Title (A–Z, with the quick alphabet index bar), Recently Modified — newest first, grouped into Today / Last 7 Days / Last 30 Days / Older, so new and freshly imported songs sit right at the top — or grouped by Artist or Label. Your choice is remembered across launches.

Yes. Open any song from your library and scroll to the end of the read-only song view: an In Setlists section lists every setlist that contains the song, with its date, venue, and a lock badge for locked setlists.

There are three ways from the Songs list: swipe a song row, long-press a song and choose Delete (the red item at the bottom of the menu), or open the song and tap Delete Song at the bottom of the editor. Deleting from the editor takes you straight back to your Songs list. If the song is in any setlists, you'll be asked to confirm and told which ones — and either way you get a 7-second Undo (see below).

You can undo it. When you delete a song, an Undo banner with a 7-second countdown appears at the top of the Songs list. Tap it and the song comes straight back — at its original position, and back in every setlist it was part of, with its sections and any per-song settings intact.

Nothing is actually removed during those seconds: the song's audio, stems, and score images stay on disk and nothing syncs yet, so an undo leaves no trace. The delete only becomes final once the countdown ends (or when you start another delete, make another change, or leave the app).

Yes. For songs with no audio attached, tap the auto-scroll play button in the performance bar and the lyrics and chords scroll hands-free. Set a song's Duration (in the editor, next to Key and BPM) and the whole sheet scrolls over exactly that time; if there's no duration, it paces from the song's BPM instead. A speed control in the top bar fine-tunes the rate live — saved per song — and the bottom bar shows an elapsed / total time. You can still scroll with your finger at any point, and pausing freezes it in place. Songs with audio keep using the normal player and optional lyrics-follow sync instead. In a setlist, a duration-paced scroll advances to the next song when it reaches the end — and audio songs do the same the moment the track finishes — so your set rolls on hands-free, with the controls staying up on an automatic advance so you can see what's playing now.

Open a song that has a recording and lyrics, choose Manual Tap Sync in the editor's Lyrics Sync section, start playback and tap TAP on each line as it's sung. Every tap sets the line's time right away; tap a line again to correct it, or use Undo Last. From version 1.3.12 there's no warning when a time lands before or after a neighbouring line.

Open the Setlists tab, tap +, name your setlist, and add songs from your library. Drag to reorder, set date and venue, then tap Play Set for full-screen performance — step through songs with the prev/next controls, or jump to any song from the floating song-picker button. You can launch Play Set straight from the Setlists list too, via the play button on each setlist's row.

Yes. Swipe right on any song — or long-press it — and choose Add to Setlist. A picker lists all your setlists with their song counts, and a green checkmark shows the ones the song is already in. Tap a setlist to add the song, tap again to remove it, and add it to as many setlists as you like in one go.

Need a new setlist? Choose New Setlist… to create one on the spot and drop the song straight in. Locked setlists are shown with a lock badge but stay protected from changes.

Yes. Add labeled sections — Set 1, Break, Encore, whatever you need — from the Add Section button or by swiping a song row to start a divider right there. Each section shows its own song count and length, and you can drag songs and dividers freely, even from one section into another. Tap a section header to rename or remove it.

You also get gig timing: the total length of every set shows in the Setlists list and setlist detail, and during a performance a subtle clock shows the current section, time elapsed and remaining, and whether you're running over or ahead of plan (shown on iPad).

Yes. Long-press a setlist in the Setlists tab and choose Save As… to create a full copy — handy when a new gig is mostly the same set with a few swaps. The same long-press menu also lets you Edit the setlist's details or Lock / Unlock it without opening it.

Yes. Lock any setlist before you walk on stage. While locked, songs cannot be reordered, deleted, or edited — preventing accidental changes during a live set.

A locked set also plays each song with the stem mix you set up — Original, 2 stems, or 4 stems, with your muted parts and levels — instead of reverting to the original track. The stem picker and mixer are hidden so the mix can't change mid-gig; it just plays as frozen.

Yes — via export. Tap ⊙ → Export Setlist to create a portable file with the setlist, all songs, audio, stems, and images. Share via AirDrop or Messages; your bandmate imports it into their Gig Songbook in one step — a review screen shows which songs are new to them and what a song they already have would change, before anything lands in their library.

Real-time shared setlists (live updates for the whole band) are planned for a future update.

Yes (with Pro, free for the first 7 days). In Settings → MIDI Control, tap Learn next to Next Song, Previous Song, Scroll Down or Scroll Up and press the pedal, key or button you want to use. In Performance and Rehearse it then changes songs, scrolls the lyrics a page at a time, or turns score pages. Program Change n opens song n+1 of the setlist.

USB and network MIDI devices connect on their own; Bluetooth MIDI pedals pair on the same screen. The Loopy Pro plugin follows the same settings.

Only if you want to jump straight to a particular song. If you step through the setlist with Next Song and Previous Song, you don't need it and can switch it off in Settings → MIDI Control — the ⓘ next to the switch explains it too.

Next Song moves one step: from song 3 to song 4. A Program Change jumps to a fixed place: Program Change 8 opens song 9, wherever you are. That helps when a pedal sends a fixed Program Change per button — a requested song out of order is one press away — or when Loopy Pro or a keyboard sends one as you load a song's project or sound, so the lyrics follow by themselves.

Turn it off if your pedal or Loopy sends Program Changes for something else, such as plugin presets — otherwise songs change unexpectedly. Many devices count from 1: their “Program 1” arrives as Program Change 0, the first song. Last Received shows what really arrives.

Look at the value Last Received shows. Gig Songbook counts a Control Change at 64 or above as a press, and ignores the 0 a footswitch sends as it comes back up. If your pedal sends value 0 for every press — the M-VAVE Chocolate does for A+B and C+D — just learn it: a CC learned at a low value counts every message as a press.

If only every second press works, the switch is set to toggle and alternates 127 and 0. Set it to momentary in the pedal's editor app.

If nothing shows up at all, check the device under Devices in MIDI Control, or pair a Bluetooth pedal again with Connect Bluetooth MIDI Device. In Loopy Pro, choose the pedal as the MIDI source in the Gig Songbook plugin's window.

Yes (with Pro, free for the first 7 days). Gig Songbook comes with an AUv3 MIDI plugin: in Loopy Pro, or another AUv3 host, add the MIDI plugin Gig Songbook and your lyrics and chords appear in its window — all songs, or a setlist with its sections, transposed the way you set them.

Step through songs with the arrows, or by MIDI from a footswitch or a Loopy button: Program Change n picks song n+1 of the list, CC 80 goes to the next song and CC 81 to the previous one, and CC 82 and CC 83 scroll the lyrics down and up. Loopy buttons can do the same through the plugin's parameters — Next Song, Previous Song, Song, Scroll Down and Scroll Up — with the action Adjust MIDI AU Parameter.

To keep your footswitch buttons for Loopy: switch on Auto-Scroll with Host Transport in the plugin's song list, and the lyrics scroll on their own while Loopy plays (paced by the song's length, or Loopy's tempo), and an expression pedal can move through the song with the Scroll Position parameter. A song change can ride along on a button you already press, as a second action of that binding. The host remembers the setlist and song with your project. Open Gig Songbook once after installing so the plugin can read your songs.

Use two banks in M-VAVE's CubeSuite app: bank 1 for Loopy, bank 2 for Gig Songbook, switched by pressing A+B or C+D together.

1. Note what each switch sends today: press it once and read Last Received in Settings → MIDI Control.
2. Connect the pedal in CubeSuite (it may be listed as FootCtrl or FootCtrlPlus) and pick a mode with custom messages per switch and bank switching on A+B / C+D — per M-VAVE's manuals, Advanced Custom Mode 2.
3. Bank 1: A–D send what you noted, for Loopy.
4. Bank 2: short press of A–D sends CC 80, 81, 82, 83, value 127, channel 1 — Gig Songbook's defaults for Next Song, Previous Song, Scroll Down and Scroll Up. Set the switches to momentary, not toggle.
5. Write the settings to the pedal and close CubeSuite.
6. In Loopy Pro, leave CC 80–83 unbound, and choose the pedal as the MIDI source in the Gig Songbook plugin's window.

On stage, C+D switches to Gig Songbook and A+B back to Loopy. A mode that tells short from long presses may send the short press only when you lift your foot — check in bank 1 that your loop starts still land where you want. Menu names and mode numbers differ between M-VAVE's manuals and CubeSuite versions.

Simpler, without banks: in the pedal's factory mode, A+B and C+D send their own messages — CC 24 and CC 25 at value 0. In Settings → MIDI Control, tap Learn next to Next Song and press A+B, then Previous Song and C+D (every message of a CC learned at value 0 counts as a press). Leave CC 24 and 25 unbound in Loopy, check that A+B and C+D trigger nothing there, and switch on auto-scroll with Loopy's transport in the plugin. Single presses of A–D stay with Loopy.

Yes. In Performance or Rehearse mode, open the chord panel to see chord charts for every chord in the current song. Toggle between Guitar and Piano; tap any chord for a larger view with every voicing at once — guitar shows the standard shapes spread across the neck (open, barre, and mid-neck positions), piano shows root position plus inversions. Charts render on-device — no internet required.

Yes. Your Guitar/Piano choice is saved per song, and per song within a setlist (the setlist setting wins). A song in two setlists can show guitar in one and piano in the other. You can also pick the default instrument in Settings → Chord Diagrams; songs with no preference of their own use that default (guitar out of the box).

Yes (with Pro, free for the first 7 days). Use the − / + control on the performance screen to shift every chord up or down — lyrics never change. The transposition is saved automatically per song, and per song within a setlist, where the setlist value takes priority. So the same song can sit at a different key in different setlists, and a small badge shows each song's transposition in your library and setlists. A locked setlist applies its saved transpositions automatically and disables editing.

Yes. Guitar and piano chord charts are free for all users. Live chord transposition (shift every chord up or down during a set) is a Pro feature, free for the first 7 days after install.

Yes. Add images or PDF pages to any song — full scores, lyric sheets, or printed chord charts. In Performance mode, swipe through image pages instead of the text lyrics view. Whether a song shows its images or the text lyrics is remembered per song, and per song within a setlist (the setlist setting wins), and importing a PDF score opens to the image view by default.

Attach an audio file to the song, then run stem separation from the song editor, Rehearse, or Performance mode:

• 2 stems — Vocals + Instrumental (quickest way to remove vocals)
• 4 stems — Drums, Bass, Other, Vocals (mute any combination in the mixer)
• 6 stems — Drums, Bass, Other, Vocals, Guitar, Piano (a separate on-device model, downloaded on first use)

Switch playback to Stems, mute the Vocals stem, or listen to Instrumental only. Processing uses an on-device AI model — your audio is never uploaded to a server.

Each layout is separate — a song exported as 6 stems is played as 6 stems, because its "other" track has guitar and piano taken out of it; the app offers only the layouts you have exported for that song, and you can export another one at any time.

Yes. Alongside 2-stem and 4-stem, the 6-stem layout splits a track into Drums, Bass, Other, Vocals, Guitar, and Piano — handy for isolating a guitar or piano part to learn it, or muting it to make room to practice your own. It uses a separate on-device AI model (about 123 MB, downloaded the first time you use it) and supports the same realtime playback, mixer, and offline export as the other layouts, on the same devices.

In the mixer every stem gets its instrument icon and its own waveform, with the part you have already played highlighted — so you can see where you are in each part at a glance. Tap an instrument to mute or unmute it. For levels, tap its speaker to open a full-width slider under the row, or press the speaker and slide up and down to set it in place; the waveform grows and shrinks with it. On iPhone the waveforms stay compact so six stems still fit comfortably above the player bar. The mixer sits directly on the player bar, so play, stop, skip and scrubbing all stay available while you mix.

Built for practice, not studio mixing: it's a rehearsal aid that helps you hear each part more clearly — vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano — not a perfectly clean, professionally-mixed multitrack. Separation quality depends on the song.

Yes. Once stems are saved to disk (Export Stems or Save Realtime Stems), playback mixes them into a single timeline so the parts stay locked together — including after you quit the app and open the song again. Realtime separation (while the AI is still streaming) keeps each stem on its own player and starts them together; if something still sounds soft or smeared, that is usually the separation itself, not the player drifting apart.

Every new install gets 7 days of every Pro feature, full stem separation and remove-vocals workflows included, at no cost. After the trial, Pro is required to generate new stems; stems you already created keep playing back for free.

Yes. Mute vocals and keep instrumental stems for practice. You can also balance drums, bass, and other parts independently in the 4-stem layout, or go further with the 6-stem layout to isolate guitar or piano too. Import your own legally obtained audio (Files, iTunes purchases, Bandcamp downloads) — the app does not download from YouTube or Spotify.

Gig Songbook accepts MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, AIFF, CAF, and any other audio format recognised by iOS. Import via Files or iCloud Drive in the song editor, or use Import Audio Files (Pro) for bulk import with metadata detection.

Open any song in the editor and scroll to the Audio section at the bottom. Tap Add from Files. The iOS Files picker opens — navigate to iCloud Drive, On My iPhone, or any connected storage provider and select your file.

The file is copied to the app immediately. The app also reads embedded metadata (title, artist, lyrics) and can auto-fetch timed lyrics via Shazam — no extra steps needed.

Yes — with Pro. Tap ⊙ → Import Audio Files in the Songs tab to select multiple files or an entire folder at once. Each track is detected, tagged, and shown in a review screen before any songs are created. You can edit titles and artists, run Shazam on unrecognised tracks, and confirm in one tap.

When you tap Add from Music Library and choose a protected track, you'll see the message "This track is not available (may be DRM-protected)" — that's Apple's DRM preventing export, not a bug in the app.

If the purchase is DRM-free (any purchase after April 2009): open a song in the editor, scroll to Audio, tap Add from Music Library, and select the track. The app exports it to M4A and attaches it automatically.

Alternatively, find the file in the Files app under On My iPhone → Music and use Add from Files instead.

The track you selected has FairPlay DRM. This is common for older iTunes Store purchases (before 2009) and all Apple Music subscription downloads. iOS blocks any app from exporting these files — there is no workaround.

No — and this is a hard platform limitation, not a missing feature. Spotify streams are encrypted with Widevine DRM and are decrypted in real-time inside Spotify's own process. The audio never exists as a plain file that another app can read. There is no official API to access the audio data.

Spotify's Terms of Service also explicitly prohibit copying or redirecting the audio stream. Any app that attempted this would be removed from the App Store.

Not directly inside the app — Gig Songbook's audio player uses its own attached audio files, not a streaming service. You can run Spotify in the background alongside Gig Songbook for lyrics reference, but the two apps play independently.

No. Downloading audio from YouTube videos violates YouTube's Terms of Service (section 5.H) and the rights of the content owners. Any app that offered this functionality would be rejected by Apple's App Store review and could face legal liability.

Yes, fully. Gig Songbook is offline-first. Your songs, setlists, audio files, and settings are stored locally on your device. You can create, edit, and perform without any internet connection. iCloud sync is entirely optional.

From version 1.4.0 that includes the media you added on your other devices — see the next question.

Yes, from version 1.4.0. Recordings, score pages and stems you added on another device used to stay in iCloud until you opened them, and iOS could take them away again to save space. Now each device downloads them on its own and keeps them, so a song you added on your iPhone plays on your iPad on stage with no network.

This is the default: Settings → Media on This Device → Keep Everything on This Device.

Yes. In Settings → Media on This Device, choose Download When Needed: files from your other devices are then downloaded when you open them, which needs internet. Each device decides for itself — your iPad can keep everything while your iPhone saves space.

Switching asks first and tells you how much would be downloaded and how much space is free. It never deletes anything, and files you add on a device always stay on it.

Don't want downloads over mobile data? Turn off iCloud Drive under Settings → Cellular (Mobile Data) in iOS; iOS then waits for Wi-Fi.

Every setlist shows it — in the list, and at the top of the setlist itself: a check when every recording, page and stem is on the device, how many files are still loading, or a warning when there isn't enough space (with how much to free up) or a file is missing on every device.

On a device set to Download When Needed, turn on Available Offline in a setlist to keep just that set on the device — the rest of your library stays in iCloud. Turning it off frees the space again.

When you are signed into iCloud, the app stores songs and setlists in your private iCloud container — the same iCloud that stores your files in iCloud Drive. Nothing goes through our servers. Changes sync automatically across your devices when connectivity is available.

Each song and setlist carries a last-modified timestamp. When two devices both edit while offline and later reconnect, the most-recently-edited version of each item wins — independently of the others, so no edits are lost.

From version 1.3.10 each song and setlist is stored as its own small file. Editing one song uploads a few kilobytes instead of your entire library, and two devices working on different songs never write to the same file — so they cannot get in each other's way at all.

Sync is built to be version-safe. Your library is saved in a versioned format that newer releases keep reading, so updating one device never strands the others. If a device ever opens a library that was saved by a newer version of the app than it's running, it won't overwrite it — it keeps working locally and shows a small "iCloud sync paused" notice until you update. Once updated, your local changes sync straight back up, so you don't lose data either way.

Your songs and setlists stored in iCloud are not deleted when you remove the app — they remain in your iCloud container. Reinstalling the app will restore everything automatically.

Data stored only on the device (if iCloud was disabled) is deleted with the app. Use Export All Songs (Pro) as a local backup before uninstalling.

No. Up to version 1.3.9 the app removed files it considered unused at every launch — recordings, score pages and stems no song pointed at — without showing you anything. From 1.3.10 that no longer happens at all.

Unused files are only removed from Settings → Maintenance → Storage Cleanup, and only after you have seen them: each row names the file, why it can go and how much space it frees, and a row marked iCloud only tells you that removing it removes the file from your other devices too. The same screen also lists the opposite case — a song pointing at a page, a recording or stems that exist on none of your devices — and offers to drop the dead link.

The list is deliberately withheld until iCloud has finished syncing and every song has arrived. Until then, a file that simply hasn't downloaded yet would look unused — and that is exactly the mistake that cost one user her score images in 1.3.8.

Deleting a song still deletes its own audio, pages and stems, after the undo window. That part is your decision, not a clean-up.

This was a bug in version 1.3.8, fixed in 1.3.9. On a device that hadn't downloaded the images yet, iOS keeps them as hidden placeholder entries; a clean-up routine mistook those for leftover files and removed them from iCloud, and a second routine then removed the now-empty page references on the other devices too. Both are fixed: a file that is only waiting to download is never treated as leftover, and tidying up on one device can no longer delete anything on another.

If your pages are still missing, restore a device backup from before the loss on one device — the songs come back with their pages attached, and the result syncs to your other devices. Image files that no longer belong to a song are not deleted: Settings → Maintenance → Storage Cleanup never offers them for removal, and nothing is removed without you seeing the list and confirming it. They are still there when a restore brings the pages back.

Yes — the export bundle carries the media inside it, not just links to it. From version 1.3.9 it also fetches anything that currently lives only in iCloud before writing the file, showing "Downloading … media files from iCloud…" while it does. Stem files are large, so give that step a few minutes on a slow connection.

If something still can't be included, the export says so before you save — naming the songs it belongs to — instead of quietly handing you a backup without media. In earlier versions those files were skipped silently, so an export made on a second device could contain every song and none of its pages.

From version 1.3.11 an import no longer decides that for you. Choosing a file opens a review screen first: every song in the file is matched against the song it came from and sorted into New, Changed and Identical, and nothing is written until you say so.

Each changed song names what actually differs — not just its title. Lyrics, chords, key, labels and notes, and the media alongside them: "Stems: none → 4 files (48.3 MB)", "Audio: not downloaded → 4.2 MB", "Images: 1 file → 2 files", down to score pages that only changed order. Each row also says whether the copy in the file or the one in your library was edited more recently.

Tap the compare button next to a changed song to see both versions side by side: lyrics, chords and notes line by line with every change marked, and the pages in order, with added, removed and moved ones highlighted. Underneath, the song is shown exactly as the import would leave it.

New songs are ticked for you. Anything that would change a song you already have is yours to tick, one by one, from the comparison, or a whole section at a time. A song you tick is replaced by the version in the file — but media the file doesn't carry is kept, so an export taken before you separated a song's stems can't take those stems away. Your playback settings — transposition, stem mix, tempo and pitch, scroll speed — are never overwritten by an import.

This also fixes something you couldn't see: until 1.3.10 an import wrote every audio, image and stem file in the bundle over your library's copies — even when it reported that it had imported nothing at all. Now only the files belonging to the songs you ticked are written, and only where they genuinely differ.

Setlist files go through the same screen, with the setlists listed at the top and a switch for replacing ones you already have by that name.

Yes. On a slow or busy iCloud connection the app could briefly hang while it waited for iCloud to fetch your library. That work now runs in the background, so the screen stays responsive and your library fills in as it arrives — no more freeze at launch or during a sync. Starting a track also plays without the short hitch some songs had on the very first tap.

Every new install gets 7 days of every Pro feature with no purchase required: full stem separation (remove vocals, 4-stem and 6-stem mixing), the practice tools, chord transposition, the Online Song Catalog, import & export, and the Loopy Pro plugin. The window starts on first launch, and Settings shows the day it ends. After it expires, Pro is needed for these features — including generating new stems.

Stems you already separated before the trial ends continue to play back without Pro. See also Remove Vocals.

No. The AI model (~75 MB full-quality on iPhone 12 and newer and iPad M1+; ~54 MB on iPhone 11 / SE 2 and earlier and pre-M1 iPads) runs entirely on your device. The 6-stem layout uses a separate, larger model (~123 MB) downloaded independently the first time you use it. Your audio never leaves your phone. Each model is downloaded once over Wi-Fi on first use.

Yes — there's a built-in slow-downer. Open the player and you can slow a track down (or speed it up) without changing its pitch, shift the pitch up or down in semitones — the whole mix moves together, drums included, so nothing drifts out of time — and set an A-B loop by dragging the A and B handles on the seek bar to repeat a tricky passage. Pick Original in the mixer and the unseparated track gets its own waveform row, with its volume set the same way as a stem.

Tempo and pitch sit right above the tracks in the mixer, as simple − / + controls: each step lands exactly on the value you want, and each shows what it means musically — the song's BPM at the current tempo, and the key you land in when you transpose. Tap the value to reset it. Pitch can be changed while the song is playing; tempo is set while playback is paused.

Tempo and pitch are remembered per song, and per song within a setlist. These practice tools are part of the 7-day free trial of every Pro feature, then included with Pro.

Yes. During realtime playback you can seek freely within the audio that has already been separated — the seek bar shows how far that reaches. And when the song plays through to the end, just jump back on the seek bar (or tap Play) to listen again: the separated audio stays ready in memory, so it replays instantly without running the separation again. It's kept until you switch songs or stop playback.

Yes. Saved stems are part of your library and sync through your private iCloud container, just like your songs and audio files — nothing goes through our servers. On another device (or after reinstalling), the player shows a "Downloading stems…" badge while iCloud fetches the files; stalled downloads are restarted automatically, and playback switches to the stems the moment they've arrived — no need to run the separation again.

The same applies to a song's attached audio file and its score images: if you open a song whose media hasn't reached this device yet, the download starts automatically and the app shows "Downloading audio…" in the player and "Downloading image…" on score pages until they're ready.

Real-time playback (stems play as the song plays, no export step): iPhone 14 Pro and newer, iPad M1 generation and newer.

Offline export (separate the stems first, then play): all supported iPhones and iPads running iOS 17+. On older devices the player bar shows an Export Stems button — tap it once and stems are saved for instant playback from then on.

Model quality: iPhone 14 Pro and newer and iPad M1+ run the full-quality (~75 MB) model on the GPU. iPhone 12 and newer use that same full-quality model — also GPU-accelerated — for their offline (exported) stems, even though they don't do realtime playback. Only iPhone 11 / SE 2 and earlier and pre-M1 iPads use the lighter ~54 MB model on CPU. The 6-stem layout (Drums, Bass, Other, Vocals, Guitar, Piano) uses its own separate ~123 MB model, downloaded independently on first use, and follows the same realtime-vs-offline device support as the 2- and 4-stem layouts.

Note: hardware identifiers are always one generation ahead of the marketing name — the iPhone 16 product uses iPhone17,*, iPhone 17 uses iPhone18,*, and so on. The cutoff is major number ≥ 15, so all current and future iPhones are supported.

No. Pro is a one-time purchase of €17.99. Pay once, own it forever — no monthly or annual fee. The exact price for your region is shown in the App Store.

Every Pro feature is free for the first 7 days after install. Pro then unlocks for good: live chord transposition, stem separation & mixer, practice tools (tempo, pitch & A-B loop), the Loopy Pro plugin (AUv3), Online Song Catalog, bulk audio import with review, improved TXT/PDF/MD import, Import PDF Score, and export songs & setlists as portable JSON backups.

Everything else — unlimited songs, setlists, audio tracks, chord diagrams, lyrics sync, performance mode, iCloud sync — is free.

Yes. Pro is tied to your Apple ID, not a single device. Sign into the App Store with the same Apple ID and tap Restore Purchase in Settings → About → Restore Purchase to activate Pro on any of your devices.

No. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. Your songs and setlists stay on your device and in your private iCloud container — never on our servers.

All requests are user-initiated and send no personal data:

• Fetch Lyrics button — sends song title and artist to api.lyrics.ovh and lrclib.net
• Online Song Catalog — sends a search query to lrclib.net
• Auto Sync via Shazam — records a short audio sample, sends it to Apple Shazam, then fetches timed lyrics from lrclib.net
• Attaching an audio file — if title/artist are missing, may use Shazam to identify the track

Read the Privacy Policy on GitHub →

The quickest way is right inside the app: tap Send Feedback at the top of Settings to send a feature request, bug report, or question without leaving Gig Songbook. You can also email us at gigsongbook@gerov.com or open an issue on GitHub — we read everything.