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Patch notes

Achordeon updates itself in the background and tells you when a new version is waiting - this is the page that says what you would be reloading into.

2026-08-10​

New features​

  • Shift takes the run between - ticking a checkbox with shift held picks every row from the last one you picked to this one. It works in the library and in both of a songbook's lists, and it only ever adds, so rows you ticked by hand along the way are still ticked. Songs
  • Block gap - a new render setting: the space between blocks, the air that separates a verse from a chorus. Closing it up is often what fits a long song on one page, because with scale on Auto the room you take out comes back as bigger text. A songbook can set it once for every song in it. Rendering

Bugfixes​

  • A songbook page fits the desk - the preview drew its pages the full width of the pane, so on a wide, short window a page came out taller than the room it had, and reading one page at a time meant scrolling through a single sheet. A page is fitted in both directions now, the way a single song's preview has always been fitted. Songbooks

2026-08-09​

Songs written by an AI assistant​

An assistant can write a song for Achordeon and hand you a file the app takes. There is a file to give any chatbot that tells it what the file should look like, and a ready-made skill that teaches it the song syntax and lets it check its work before you ever see the song, in three builds: one for Claude, one for a Custom GPT, one file to paste into a Gem. What comes back is a file to import or a link to open. Writing a song with an AI assistant

Achordeon from the keyboard​

Every action in the song editor has a key now, and so do the lists. There are two kinds. alt and a key act on the text under the cursor and keep working while you write, so alt + c brackets a chord without your hands leaving the words. A bare key like n for a new song, or g then s to go to Songs, works anywhere you are not typing. Press ? for the list of everything the screen you are on answers to, or g then h, which is the same key wherever your keyboard puts the question mark. Every button also names its own key at the end of its tooltip, and Settings > About opens the same list. Editing

New features​

  • Share a song as a link - the Download dialog offers a Link beside the file. The song travels inside the link itself, so nothing is uploaded and nothing is fetched when it is opened - it works on a device that is offline, in a browser tab or in the installed app. A selection too long to fit in a link says so and points you at the file instead. Sharing a song as a link
  • Drop a file on the page - dropping an Achordeon file anywhere on Achordeon imports it, with no button to find and no particular page to be on first. Several files at once are offered one after another, and turning one down does not cancel the rest. Import
  • A file of its own - an export is written as .achordeon rather than .json, so it is Achordeon's file to look at and not one more .json among your downloads. Where Achordeon is installed and the system offers it, you can open one from your files and land in the app. Files already exported as .json still import, and the picker takes both. Import

Changes​

  • The preview says what it could not read - importing now names the songs Achordeon cannot make sense of, before anything is written. It used to look only at which songs were arriving and never at what was written in them, so a song that came out wrong was something you found on the page afterwards. Import

  • The audience link says it copies - the link in Manage audience was underlined like something to follow, and following it on the performing device is the last thing you want. It carries a copy mark now, reads as a field rather than a link, and ticks for a moment once the address is on your clipboard. Audience

  • The search box lets go - Escape steps back to the list and keeps what you typed, Enter steps forward onto the first result. A caret in the search field used to be a trap: every bare key is a character while you are typing, so nothing answered until you reached for the mouse. Songs

  • An arrow takes the list back - pressing an arrow moves the keyboard to the list from wherever the last Tab left it, so Enter opens the row you are on rather than the button that happens to have focus. Songs

Bugfixes​

  • A stray asterisk is text - an unclosed * italicised everything after it, so Refrain (2*) set the rest of the line in italics, and so did a marker you had not finished typing. An asterisk marks anything only when something on the same line closes it. Markdown
  • English is a spelling too - with chord notation set to English, a song written with H still printed H, so a book pasted from two sources showed H beside Bb. English now prints H as B and Hb as Bb, so either setting brings a mixed song out in one language. Your song text is left as you wrote it, as always. Rendering
  • Downloading in Firefox on Android - a PDF downloaded from the installed app opened a blank screen instead of saving. The file is handed over as a download now, rather than as something the browser is also free to open. Download
  • The Docs link goes straight there - the link to the documentation in Settings went through a redirect that flashed a blank page on the way. The documentation opens at its front page in one step now, and older links still arrive.

2026-08-06​

New features​

  • Read the whole book in the preview - the songbook preview scrolls. It has a scrollbar that says how long the book is, and it answers a wheel, a trackpad and the keys you already use, so a long book is a flick away from end to end. Sheets are drawn as you reach them, so a book of two hundred songs opens at once instead of laying every song out before it shows you anything. Songbooks

Changes​

  • A tap opens it - on a phone, tapping a song or a songbook opens it. On a desktop a click picks the row and shows it in the pane beside the list, and a double click goes in. A phone has no room for that second pane, so the tap that used to do nothing you could see now takes you straight there. Inside a songbook, tapping a song still just picks it - you are arranging the book, not leaving it. Songs
  • The file says where it came from - an Achordeon file now carries the app's address on its first line. Nothing reads it, it is for the person who finds the file on a disk a year from now. Export

Bugfixes​

  • Transpose stays up while you use it - the transpose strip disappeared a few seconds after it was opened. In fullscreen the bars take themselves away once you stop touching the screen, and on a phone they were taking the open panel with them. Anything you have opened now holds them there until you close it. Transposing
  • Downloading in the installed app - downloading a PDF from Achordeon installed as an app opened a blank tab instead of saving the file, and on Android nothing happened at all: the browser treats a PDF as something to open rather than something to save, and an installed app has no tab to open it in. It saves. Download

2026-08-04​

New features​

  • Rotate wide songs - a song wider than it is tall gets a quarter turn, so it fills the screen instead of a strip across the middle of it. The performing menu has a Rotate wide songs row on phones and tablets, on stage and in the audience alike, and it only shows up on a song that would gain by it - portrait songs in the same setlist stay upright. A downloaded sheet turns on its own, nothing to set. Stage and audience
  • Match this screen, sideways - a new aspect ratio preset that writes the shape of your screen laid on its side, for when the device is locked to portrait and turning it changes nothing. Rendering
  • Transpose while performing - play a song in another key without changing the song. The performing menu has a Transpose row, and on a desktop the control sits in the bar. The audience has one of its own, so a viewer with a capo is not bound to what the performer is playing. Transposing

Changes​

  • Lists come back where you left them - opening a song or a songbook and pressing back returns you to the row you were on, not the top of a list you had scrolled a long way down. Songs

Bugfixes​

  • Dark page in the songbook preview - turning the pages over keeps your place instead of jumping back to the title page.