Beat Keeper 3.5

We’re happy to announce the immediate release of Beat Keeper 3.5, the latest update to our standalone metronome app. This version features enhanced cursor support on iPadOS, so you can scroll with your trackpad or mouse to quickly and precisely adjust the BPM. It’s now available for macOS as a universal purchase, so you can download and install it onto your Mac at no additional cost. And, as always, it’s absolutely free for anyone who purchased a previous version. Click here to learn more about Beat Keeper, or get it on the App Store by visiting the link below.

Beat Keeper

Available now for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

Mac Apps Update

With macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple made it easier for developers to bring their iPad apps to the Mac and we did so enthusiastically—debuting Mac versions of our four Music Box apps as well as Nocturne.

When Apple announced these updates, they positioned it as a multi-year project and at the time they made it clear that Mac apps could only be sold separately from iOS and iPadOS versions. We expected this to change in a year or two, but last month Apple unexpectedly announced that they would soon begin allowing developers to adopt Universal Purchases meaning that customers could buy an app once and install it on all of their compatible devices at no additional charge.

Making our Mac apps took a lot of work at a time when our resources were already stretched thinly with iOS and iPadOS 13’s massive changes, so we felt like charging for these Mac apps was an acceptable but temporary tradeoff. We always planned to offer universal apps as soon as Apple allowed us to do so, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Unfortunately, Apple provides developers with no way to combine apps once they’ve been released. If you’ve bought our iOS/iPadOS apps they’ll now run on the Mac too, but the standalone Mac apps have been discontinued. If you bought any of these Mac apps and you don’t already own the iOS/iPadOS version, get in touch with us so we can make sure you continue to receive all future updates.

Our strategy has always been to make something great and release it when it’s ready, and although this transition is trickier than we’d like we stand by the decisions we made. If you supported us by buying any of our Mac apps, thank you—it truly made a difference and allowed us to ensure that these apps have a bright future on the Mac.

Cursor Support

This week Apple released iPadOS 13.4 and, with it, introduced full support for using an iPad with a mouse or trackpad. We’ve tried it out with forScore and have been pleased with the results right out of the box, but we’re most excited about ways we can update our app to take full advantage of the new tools Apple has given developers.

So today we’re happy to announce that with forScore 11.2, due for release soon and already in beta testing, we’re adding convenient new capabilities such as page turn gestures, the ability to scroll up and down to adjust the metronome or pitch pipe, full support for pinch and pan gestures when zooming in on a page or cropping it, and more.

We’ve updated our sneak peek and added an info page to give you a sense of what you can expect when this update is ready. With this week’s hardware and OS updates, Apple has proven once again that they’re far from done pushing the iPad forward and we’re proud to be able to put these enhancements to good use.

Sneak Peek: forScore 11.2

Our next big update is almost ready, and today we’re very excited to be able to give you a first look at what’s coming in this incredible new version. Here is just some of what you can expect to see in forScore 11.2:

We’ve completely rewritten our Crop interface with three goals in mind: enhanced precision, greater flexibility, and the ability to crop or uncrop all pages of a document at once. We re-thought every control and interaction, added a bunch of new capabilities, allowed for more freedom when positioning your page, and built it for maximum performance and efficiency. There’s way too much to go into here, so be sure to check out the sneak peek article below for more details on this exciting upgrade.

Next, we added some big new things when it comes to Content Providers. We’re welcoming Virtual Sheet Music to the growing list of providers, you can now download Musicnotes purchases in any available transposition, and you can set up automatic downloads to let forScore add new purchases to your library as they become available.

The Pitch Pipe now features a new continuous playback mode so you can hear a note indefinitely, and Buttons can now be configured to use a specific sound bank. Spotlight integration makes it easy to find your setlists, scores, and bookmarks right from the home screen, while improvements to library management make browsing and managing your files better than ever. And, when you’re annotating, optional two- and three-finger taps make undoing or redoing markings a breeze.

For our forScore Pro subscribers, we’re introducing Page Copy & Paste. A new default annotation layer, the “PDF” layer, works just like any other—except that when you use the selection tool to copy or duplicate an area, it copies the contents of the page itself so you can reposition them or paste them on another page or even into another document.

That’s a very quick overview, so for more details be sure to visit the page below. As always, this update will be completely free for all existing users and we think it’s a big step up. If you want to take it for a spin today, consider becoming a beta tester to try out early versions and help us get it finished. Otherwise, stay tuned for more!

forScore 11.2 Sneak Peek  

Crop

The Crop tool lets you change how forScore presents each page of music on-screen without modifying the PDF file itself. Note that cropping or uncropping a page permanently adjusts any existing drawn annotations you’ve made, so consider creating a backup before proceeding.

Basics

Reposition your page by using one finger to drag it around within the canvas or using two fingers (a “pinch” gesture) to zoom in or out. If needed, you can reduce the sensitivity of these gestures by dragging the slider along the left side of the screen up or down. Use higher speeds to make big changes, then use lower speeds to make small, precise adjustments. Tap the “x” button in the bottom toolbar to reset your page’s position and zoom factor, if needed.

To save your changes and close the Crop interface, tap the “Crop” button in the top right-hand corner of the screen. To save your work and continue cropping nearby pages instead, tap the arrow buttons in the navigation bar to move to the previous or next page. If a page is already cropped, you won’t be able to make any additional changes to its position and the “Crop” button will be replaced with a red “Uncrop” button which you can use to reset all cropping data.

Tap the guide icon (a rectangle with a horizontal line through it) in the toolbar along the bottom of the screen to show or hide the cropping guide. This guide shows you how your page will look in both portrait and landscape device orientations. Keep in mind that the landscape guide represents where the page will end up given the current device’s screen size and settings (like whether or not forScore is configured to show the status bar along the top of the screen). It does not represent every scenario and other devices may present your pages differently.

Note: cropping overrides the Metadata panel’s margin adjustment value; cropped pages will not zoom in or out based on this setting.

Automatic Positioning

When the Crop tool loads a page, it automatically scans it to find the best fit and repositions your page accordingly. Use the zoom button in the toolbar to reset to this positioning at any time.

De-skewing Pages

If your page is crooked, use the de-skew controls to straighten it. Tap the rotation icon in the toolbar to show or hide the de-skew control which appears along the bottom of the page. Drag it left or right to rotate the page clockwise or counter-clockwise. When you do, a grid appears temporarily to help guide your adjustments.

Editing All Pages Simultaneously

In the toolbar along the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a button that looks like a grid of pages—tap here to crop or uncrop all pages of the current score simultaneously. Choose “Crop All Pages Automatically” to let forScore scan each page and adjust it to best fit the screen (pages that are already cropped won’t be changed). Or, position the current page as needed and use those values to crop all uncropped pages in the document by choosing “Crop All Pages Like This.” If any pages in the document are already cropped, choose “Uncrop All Pages” to uncrop them all.

Automatic Backups

Each time you open the Crop interface and make one or more changes (cropping or uncropping one or more pages), forScore makes an automatic backup of the current score and places it in the “Recently Updated” section of forScore’s Backups panel. If you want to revert to this last-saved state, close the Crop interface, open forScore’s Tools menu and choose Backups, then visit this section to see a list of scores. Tap your score to return it to your library, either as a second copy (“Keep Both”) or replacing the current copy (“Restore Original”). Note that forScore keeps only the most recent snapshot of a score, and recycles it after seven days, so it’s important to use this feature immediately after you make a change, if needed.

Keyboard & Cursor Support

forScore’s Crop interface features extensive support for use with keyboards, trackpads, and mice. With the Crop interface open, hold down the Command key (on an iPad) or open the “Crop” menu (on a Mac) to see most of the available key commands, including shortcuts for most of the items in the navigation bar and toolbar along the top bottom of the screen.

You can also use a keyboard to adjust the page’s position by using the bracket keys (‘[‘ and ‘]’) to zoom in or out, the bracket and alt keys to rotate, and the arrow keys to nudge the page in any cardinal direction. Press these keys or key combinations once or press and hold them down to repeat the action as many times as necessary. Use the shift key with any of these commands to increase their adjustment rate.

Place two fingers on your trackpad and use pinch or pan (scroll) gestures to zoom in or out and reposition the page on screen (note that not all trackpads support these gestures). If these gestures are unavailable or you prefer not to use them, click and drag the page to reposition it instead, and use key commands to zoom in or out.

Note that the speed adjustment slider on the left side of the screen reduces the sensitivity of touch as well as cursor gestures (scrolling or panning) but does not affect the speed of adjustments made using keyboard shortcuts.