Changelog

You are reading it. Everything that reaches you, from new features to smaller fixes, is listed here in your language, with a link to the help centre whenever a page exists. Find it under Product Updates in the site menu: flat.io/changelog, flat.io/edu/changelog and opuscan.com/omr/changelog.

Articulations, Ornaments and Dynamics show their shortcut next to their title while open. The first time you use one, a tip explains that pressing a number after the shortcut selects an item in the category.

Since loop mode was introduced, adding a sync point while playback was paused placed it where playback had started rather than where you paused. It now lands at the paused position again, as before.

The import flow on iOS has been rebuilt using the same engine as the web app and Android: check the detected title and instruments before the score is built, and start a new import while earlier ones are still processing. Opuscan for iOS gets the same flow.

Every MusicXML file Flat produces is now MusicXML 4.0, whatever the version of the file it was imported from.

• Swing markings are exported. MusicXML 4.0 can express swing playback, so a swung score now carries its swing (or explicit straight) marking into other applications. Flat already read it on import; it now writes it too.
• Tablature exports are valid. String tunings were missing a required attribute, which made every tablature export fail strict validation. They now pass.
• Every export is checked against the MusicXML 4.0 DTD, including compressed .mxl files, and validation failures are reported instead of silently shipping an invalid file.

Applications that only read MusicXML 3.1 open 4.0 files as before; only the swing marking is new to them.

Labels like "Sop.", "Hn." or "Violin II" now resolve to the right instrument, and the instruments you confirm before import are always applied.

Large scores are no longer split or merged into the wrong systems, and multi-bar rests keep their bar count.

A page engraved with smaller or larger staves no longer comes out at one fixed default size.

Syllables land on the right notes, and footers, dynamics or verse numbers are no longer sung. Titles and composers come from the right text, with credits in more languages.

Some PDFs store their Japanese text in an encoding that used to come out as unreadable characters. Lyrics and titles from these files are now read correctly, and an import set to several languages now uses all of them.

Tied notes now reach their second note in other notation apps, and a 22-bar rest is exported as 22 bars instead of one, so bar numbers match the original.

Fewer markings are dropped or misread, from chords in Sibelius fonts to "rit." no longer setting a tempo.

Photographing a monitor or tablet adds a fine pixel grid over the page that used to hide the staves. Imports now see through it.

Clefs and figured bass appear only on the staves that carry them, pickup bars are numbered as in print, multi-bar rests and trill lines export as valid MusicXML, and cross-staff piano voices stay on the correct staff.

A mark clipped at the top of the page, written inside a sentence, or glued to a rehearsal letter is now read. Relative directions such as rit. or accel. no longer invent a tempo.

Flat for iPhone and iPad follows Apple’s Liquid Glass design from iOS 26: translucent bars and sheets, larger corner radii and the new system controls. Nothing changes on iOS 18.

The new score flow now includes a step for the basics (tempo, key signature and time signature), so a score starts the way you want instead of with the default settings.

• Flags no longer collide when two voices share a beat.
• First repeat endings align with the barline.
• The tuning box has the right background colour.
• Recorder scores: part names render correctly and the lowest notes can be selected.

• The volume popover is back in the iPad editor.
• Library banners can be dismissed.
• Playback speed can no longer be changed during playback, which garbled the sound.
• Score options apply when playing a playlist.

Metronome equations and tempo words such as "poco allegro" stay where they belong.

Credits in Polish and Spanish, wrapped over two lines, split across text boxes, or set in the music font are now recognised.

If you close the review screen or lose the tab, the import no longer waits forever: after a day it continues with the title and instruments it detected, and the score lands in your library.

The list showed your own name and avatar instead of the score owner's.

A new "Fine-tune your setup" step in score creation lets you choose the tempo, the number of bars, the key signature and the time signature before the score opens.

Partial Japanese words now match, and results no longer change unexpectedly as you type.

The score you were editing on one device is one tap away on the other, between the Mac app and the Flat app on iPhone and iPad.

Lyric hyphens now appear under Kodály stick notation, stems no longer collide with tablature staves, touching ledger lines are spaced apart, and the one-bar repeat tool is disabled in the first bar.

In read-only views, clicking a notehead on another staff selects that note instead of the nearest one on the current staff. The greyed natural placeholder of an empty key signature and the system and page break markers, which only make sense while editing, are no longer drawn.

Scores shared for viewing always displayed transposing parts at written pitch. The viewer’s top bar now has the same concert pitch switch as the editor.

A two-bar repeat looked and played correctly when written, but came back scrambled the next time the score was opened.

The instruments you have set up yourself are available when you create a score in the Mac and Windows apps, just as on the web.

Type a synonym or a common alternative name and Quick Search now finds the tool, with fewer searches returning no results. Lyric mode can now be opened from the palette too.

In a voice that contains a rest, clicking or entering a note could sound the following note, or nothing at all.

On electric bass and some other plucked-string instruments, dead notes on the lowest string played nothing. They now fall back to the nearest sample.

On some scores with a percussion part, a few notes kept sounding every few seconds after pausing or clicking in the score, as well as over normal playback.

Power subscribers saw a watermark on these features in the mobile apps, and tapping it did nothing. The apps now recognise every feature included in your plan.

Instrument samples are now cached in persistent storage, which puts an end to the silent playback some users encountered after an app update. The on-screen keyboard no longer hides and reappears when moving from one lyric to the next.

MusicXML, MIDI and PDF imports now assign the high-quality version of each instrument when the account has access to them, instead of the standard sounds.

Some notation programs export per-note tuning offsets (a few cents sharp or flat) in the pitch itself. Flat used to reject the whole file; it now rounds these notes to the nearest written accidental and imports the score.

The import flow on Android has been rebuilt on the same engine as the web app: pick the pages you want, check the detected title and instruments, then let the scan finish while you keep using the app. Opuscan for Android gets the same wizard.

In some piano scores, the second voice inherited the staff of the previous one, so right-hand notes were written on the bass staff.

Busy systems that continue from the previous line no longer lose notes, a part that mixes triplet and plain systems no longer turns into rhythm slashes halfway through, and slurs and articulations placed on a double stop stay on the chord.

Text recognition now covers Vietnamese, Thai, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, plus 24 more Latin-script languages such as Czech, Hungarian, Croatian and Lithuanian. Words with accents and diacritics are also kept instead of being discarded as unreadable, and Hebrew text embedded in a PDF is no longer thrown away.

A bare "Horn" now resolves to the French horn instead of the cor anglais, "Alto" and "Tenor" on a band part to saxophones, brass band basses to the tuba, and a percussion clef misread on a pitched part is corrected. A vocal line that enters after a piano introduction is recognised as a voice instead of a second piano. On Chinese scores, the 詞 and 曲 labels route the names to lyricist and composer, and bilingual lyrics keep every verse. Changing the instrument of a drum part in the review step keeps the drum kit.

Photograph an open book and the import reads the left and right pages one after the other, instead of as one wide page.

Adding three or more notes, or grace notes, under an 8va bracket could draw the last notes an octave too high while playback stayed correct.

Switching a guitar part to an instrument without tablature used to silently discard bends, slides and other tab-only notation. A confirmation now tells you what will be lost before the change happens.

The redesigned tuplet menu replaces the old one for all accounts. On phones, the tuplet button no longer appears greyed out, and when a tuplet cannot be inserted, the reason is shown, as on desktop.

The option that writes incoming MIDI notes into the score during playback is now an editor action, so you can assign it a key in the shortcuts panel (Audio group) instead of reaching for the tick box. See MIDI input.

Bars under a "1." or "2." bracket used to play on every pass unless the bracket sat at the very end of the repeat. They now play only on the pass they belong to, wherever they sit, and the same applies with D.C. and D.S. jumps.

A new option in the playback menu reduces the demands playback places on your machine, for older computers or when a lot else is running.

The metronome sound now ships inside the app instead of being downloaded on demand, so it no longer fails to load on a slow or absent connection.

Chord symbols written with solfège names are recognised, extensions stacked over the chord ("sus4" under "A7(6)") are folded back onto it, and sharps and flats drawn in the notation font of a digital PDF are read instead of dropped. Chord symbols detected by text recognition are imported as chord notation rather than discarded.

Page and catalogue numbers no longer shift the bar numbering, "Words and Music by" and bare "by" lines no longer end up in the composer or subtitle, flush-left movement headings go to the movement title, boxed rehearsal numbers are kept, and expression text above or below the staff is imported as a direction rather than as a credit.

First verses and second-verse syllables near a neighbouring staff are recovered, the sung line no longer scatters across both staves of a grand staff, and copyright footers, end-of-piece credits, tempo words, stage cues and stray music-font glyphs are kept out of the lyrics.

Part names printed in the margin or in the header now match the right instrument more often for organ, choir, percussion and band scores, including abbreviations, plurals and ordinals ("1st & 2nd Horns in F"), and names in Japanese and other languages are looked up too. Dynamics, metronome marks and lyric syllables next to the staff are no longer mistaken for a part name. Transposing instruments are exported with their transposition so they play back at concert pitch.

A pickup bar is carried to every part instead of being created from a lone short bar, printed multi-bar rest counts are read as such, bars that overflow by one duration are corrected from the model's next best guess, and notes with a missing duration inherit the current one instead of disappearing. Unpaired ties and tremolos or noteheads the editor could not load no longer make the whole import fail.

The Flat apps on iOS and Android can open a score's history: browse earlier versions, see who changed what, and restore one or copy it as a new score.

Plug a MIDI keyboard into an Android phone or tablet over USB or Bluetooth LE, and play your notes straight into the score. It reconnects automatically when the keyboard wakes up.

Pick your keyboard layout in the shortcuts reference and the editor remaps its shortcuts to the keys where they actually are, so AZERTY, QWERTZ and other layouts no longer clash with the defaults.