Page Turners & Shortcuts
Accessories
forScore works with a variety of accessories, including page turners, keyboards, MIDI devices, and styluses. Most MIDI devices and certain page turners can be connected using a cable (and usually an adapter such as Apple’s USB adapters or the iRig MIDI).
Most other accessories use Bluetooth and can be connected to your iOS device through the Settings app, or through System Preferences on a Mac. Several specific devices can also connect directly to forScore through the Devices section of the app’s settings panel: these include AirTurn’s page turning devices that use the newer “Bluetooth Smart” technology, such as the PED, PEDpro, and BT200 series, as well as the iRig BlueBoard, Turn Touch remote, and devices that support Bluetooth MIDI.
Keyboards
When a typing keyboard is connected to your device, forScore allows you to use a variety of shortcuts to perform common actions depending on which view you’re working in. In the main view, default shortcuts allow you to turn pages, enter annotation mode, open most menus, search, work with tabs, and more. Most of forScore’s menus include default shortcuts like search, back, and dismiss, while other views like the Metronome and Pitch Pipe feature shortcuts for common actions specific to each utility. On iPadOS or visionOS, press and hold the command key to see an overlay that shows all currently available actions and the key combination you can use to activate each one.
By default, forScore turns pages when you press the arrow keys, space key, return key, and the page up/page down keys. That’s because many page turners are actually simplified keyboards that feature just a few “keys” or pedals and they usually send some combination of these keystrokes; this configuration allows forScore to work with most accessories right out of the box.
Virtual Keyboard
iOS’ virtual keyboard, which normally appears on screen when you need to type, disappears when the system thinks you’re using an external keyboard—this can prevent you from typing while using certain page turning devices. Some of these accessories include a hardware workaround to help you with this issue, which you can learn more about here.
Customization
Most of forScore’s shortcuts can be customized, and you can set up dozens of optional actions using almost any keyboard shortcut, MIDI command, or other supported accessory input. Open forScore’s Tools menu, choose Settings, then tap “Page Turners & Shortcuts” to access them all. Where applicable, defaults commands are shown in gray to the right of their associated actions. To customize an action, tap to highlight it and then activate a control on your external device—if the signals it sends are compatible with forScore, you’ll see the command appear in blue next to it. Tap the “x” button to remove a custom command.
You can use multiple inputs to trigger the same action: just repeat the process above to assign additional inputs, and a circled ellipsis button will appear to the right of the cell. Tap on this button to see all assigned inputs and remove one or all of them if needed.
Note: if a shortcut isn’t being recognized, check that it’s not already assigned to a different action; if so, you’ll need to remove it from that other action before reassigning it to a new one. Note that certain signals, like MIDI commands that represent a range of values rather than a simple on/off state, cannot be used in this panel.
Apple Pencil
Newer Apple Pencil models are touch sensitive and can be squeezed or double tapped to perform certain actions depending on which app you’re using. Apple provides a system setting that indicates how apps should generally behave—in forScore, “Switch between current tool and eraser” and “switch between current and last used tool” work as stated, while “show color palette” and “show ink attributes” open the currently selected tool’s options, if applicable. Squeezing Apple Pencil Pro can also be configured to “show tool palette” which presents a radial tool picker in forScore so you can quickly switch tools.
By default, tool switching actions only work while you’re in annotation mode, but you can adjust this by changing the “switch tools” option in the Apple Pencil section of forScore’s settings panel (great if you use the instant annotation settings described above). Otherwise, if you prefer to repurpose the gesture and allow it to perform a different task whenever annotation mode is inactive, you can assign it to any of the options available in the “Page Turners & Shortcuts” settings panel.
AirPods
You can also flip pages using head turn gestures while wearing one or both AirPods Pro, AirPods 3, or AirPods Max. AirPods gestures are available beginning with forScore version 12.0.4. They require iOS or iPadOS 14.0 or later, compatible AirPods (a firmware update may be required), and a device that supports motion processing.
To flip pages backward or forward, hold your head still for a moment and then turn to the left or right with a quick and steady lateral motion (similar in speed and movement to a swipe gesture performed with your finger). Since gestures aren’t relative to your screen, you can start them from any position: forScore establishes a resting baseline, then waits for horizontal movement in either direction to determine when you’re trying to turn pages.
Note: AirPods gestures are not customizable and can only be used to turn pages; they do not function as inputs in the “Page Turners & Shortcuts” settings panel.
To set up AirPods gestures for the first time, open the Tools menu and choose Settings › Devices › AirPods, then enable gestures and, if prompted, allow forScore to access Motion & Fitness data to use this feature.
Once this is done, any time AirPods are active and connected to your device you’ll see the AirPods icon in the Display Options overlay where you can toggle these gestures per-window.