Release Notes

Latest updates and improvements to Songbook Buddy.

Version 1.0.17-beta+1

May 18, 2026

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A backup-and-attachments beta on top of 1.0.16-beta+3 — sheet-attachment files now sync across your devices, a new bundle backup format keeps PDFs and images together with the database, and Complete Resync gains live per-category progress.

New & improved

  • Sheet attachments sync across your devices. PDFs and images attached to sheet songs upload to your private cloud bucket on one device and download on the next. Missing files surface a friendly placeholder in the sheet viewer instead of an error, and a Settings button re-runs the upload sweep if anything was left behind.
  • Bundle backup format (.sbbk). A new single-file backup packs the database together with your sheet-attachment files, so a restore brings songs and PDFs back as one. The classic database-only backup is still available, with an opt-out for soft-deleted songs.
  • Backup and restore show real progress. A live dialog reports what’s happening at each phase — counts per category, files written, a deleted-songs breakdown — instead of leaving you staring at a spinner.
  • Complete Resync reports per-category progress. Each table reports rows as it pulls, so you can tell a big sync is moving instead of guessing.
  • Save and recall named print layouts. Compose a print layout once, name it, and reuse it across devices — layouts sync with your account. The print dialog also gains a toggle for the header separator line.
  • Transposed key shown everywhere. When a song doesn’t declare its key, Songbook Buddy infers one from the chords; transpose, the Key chip and the chord chart all stay in sync as you shift up and down.
  • ChordPro picker pinned beside the editor. In split-edit mode the picker docks on the left of the edit view, so chord insertion is one click away. The format panel compresses its visibility and indent rows, the {year} directive renders, and the Meta section is renamed for clarity.
  • Devices tab is now Controls. A clearer name for the MIDI / footswitch / metronome panel, with a title bar to match the other sidebar tabs. The songs and setlists tabs always show the search bar again, even with nothing selected.
  • Wipe Local Database shows progress and a result. The destructive Settings action now reports what was cleared and confirms when it’s done.

Pro & subscriptions

  • Pro split into Pro and Pro Cloud. Pro stays a one-off unlock for the offline feature set; Pro Cloud is a separate annual subscription that covers multi-device sync, Band Mode and sheet-attachment sync. Existing Pro users keep their full feature set during the beta.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • Complete Resync no longer hangs on built-in chord shapes. A one-shot per-user cleanup retires legacy server-seeded chord-fingering rows, and the resync now skips built-ins on both push and pull so the sync completes cleanly with live progress.
  • Deletes survive a Complete Resync. Tombstones replicate during resync, so a song you deleted on one device no longer reappears after a fresh pull on another. Per-song band preferences sync field-by-field, so a tempo or transpose tweak no longer fights a remote edit.
  • Restore is steadier on macOS. When closing the database hangs, restore falls back to a sidecar swap and continues, with clearer diagnostics in the support log if something does go wrong. Manual database restores stay local-only and no longer auto-push to the cloud.

Print / output

  • Print dialog reflows on narrow windows. The footer row, load-layout button and preview thumbnail strip no longer overflow when the dialog is sized down.

Other fixes

  • All platforms: chord-import dialog padding tightened; indent sliders in the format panel align right with uniform width; visibility-switch rows match the font-row pitch.
  • All platforms: the Complete Resync action now confirms before running, the Pro tab routes correctly, and the chord eraser lands where you expect.

Version 1.0.16-beta+3

May 16, 2026

A polish-and-reliability follow-up to 1.0.16-beta+2 — one Import Songs dialog replaces the four scattered entries, sign-in survives a restart, and MIDI stays completely out of the way until you turn it on.

New & improved

  • One Import Songs dialog for everything. ⌘O now opens a single dialog with File, Folder, Web and Paste tabs instead of four separate menu items. The chords sidebar and status bar get a matching polish pass — transpose, the chord-import dialog, and Basic / Standard / Advanced selection levels.
  • Stay signed in across launches. Your Supabase session is restored from disk on startup, so Account stays signed in and the first sync after launch no longer races sign-in.
  • Manual sync gains a “never ask” mode. Permission prompts for background pulls can be dismissed for the session and re-enabled later from Sync settings.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • First-login sync is gentler when the server isn’t reachable. Songbook Buddy reports a friendly “sync unavailable” instead of crashing the providers, and end-to-end encryption is derived before the auth-change sync runs so the first pull after sign-in succeeds.

Live performance fixes

  • MIDI stays completely idle until you enable it. With MIDI off, the app no longer probes ports, registers with CoreMIDI, or spams MIDINotification messages on startup — fixing a Devices-tab error and the macOS log noise several beta testers reported. When MIDI is on, port dropdowns list only the ports that are actually live.
  • Footswitch stops logging keystrokes when nothing is mapped. A disabled or unmapped footswitch no longer fills the log; the device is off by default.

Chord / song editor

  • Editor caret stays put during a sync pull. ChordPro reloads now wait for the live buffer to catch up with disk, and same-song refreshes preserve the cursor position instead of snapping to the top.

Other fixes

  • iOS: the Restore picker now accepts .db files. iOS doesn’t map .db to a known UTType — which greyed out valid backups — so Songbook Buddy now accepts any file and verifies the SQLite header itself.
  • All platforms: archiving a song auto-reveals it under the Archived filter instead of leaving you wondering where it went.
  • All platforms: multi-tag include filtering returns the right list when no song matches every selected tag, instead of falling back to an unfiltered view.

Version 1.0.16-beta+2

May 15, 2026

A reliability follow-up to 1.0.16-beta+1 — the manual-save document model, theater page-turning and the rest of the big beta keep their feature set, with fixes around sync timing, the chord and song editors, and theater presentation.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • Manual-only sync really stays quiet. When the Sync interval is set to “Manual only”, scheduled and post-sign-in full syncs no longer fire on their own — explicit Sync taps, invite and setlist prerequisites, and band live-session pulls still work as before.

Live performance fixes

  • Theater mode hides controls you can’t use. Disabled status-bar buttons — Preferences, Help, transpose at limits, setlist nav with nothing to advance to — now stay out of the bar entirely instead of showing as greyed-out chips.

Chord / song editor

  • Editing a chord on one device updates the editor on another. When sync brings in a fingering edit that doesn’t change the chord’s row count, the open chord editor now refreshes in place instead of waiting for a manual reload.
  • Edits made on another device land in the open song editor. A song picked up from a remote pull no longer keeps its old title or a stale ChordPro body — the on-disk row wins.

Other fixes

  • Android: the status-bar sync icon stays tappable while a sync is in flight, so a follow-up tap queues instead of being ignored.

Version 1.0.16-beta+1

May 15, 2026

A big feature beta — a new document model with manual-save control, selectable colour themes, web and text song import, and theater page-turning — sitting on top of a deep reliability pass across sync, printing and the editor.

New & improved

  • Choose how Songbook Buddy saves. Preferences › General now offers three save modes — save instantly, save after a pause, or don’t save automatically. In manual mode a filled dot marks songs with unsaved edits, dirty rows get a hover Save action, and the File menu gains Save and Save All.
  • Selectable colour themes (Pro). Pick from four light and four dark curated palettes, each with a high-contrast variant, and customize your chord-diagram colours. Non-Pro users keep the familiar default look.
  • Import songs from a URL or pasted text. A new File ▸ Import entry pulls a song from a pasted song-page link or from text you paste or drag in, with an editable ChordPro preview before you save. Imported songs land with an “Imported” tag.
  • Smarter text import. The importer recognises chords-above-lyrics layouts, Ultimate Guitar markers and “Label: value” header blocks more reliably, and PDF imports gained a per-category plan dialog with a per-PDF preview.
  • Theater mode page-turning. Alongside continuous autoscroll, theater mode can now turn full or half pages automatically on a timer, or only on your input — keyboard, an on-screen arrow pill, screen-edge double-taps, or a footswitch / MIDI control.
  • Resizable sidebar with lockable rows. Drag the sidebar wider, and destructive row actions — star, archive, delete — stay behind a per-session Edit toggle so a fresh session is always safe. Sorting moved to a field dropdown with a direction toggle.
  • Tri-state tag filtering. Tag chips now cycle through include, exclude and off, so you can carve the library down by what you don’t want as well as what you do.
  • Bulk-assign instrument and tuning across your library from Preferences.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • Reinstalling no longer orphans your bands. Your identity key is now escrowed on the server, so a reinstall or keychain reset recovers transparently instead of stranding the band songs you’ve published.
  • The shared chord catalog is append-only and self-healing. Built-in chord shapes can’t collide between devices, and fingerings that lost track of their parent chord recover on the next sync instead of looping with errors.
  • Followers recover faster after a band-key change — owners and members rewrap keys without a needless fresh-key mint.

Live performance fixes

  • Double-Space rewind works in every theater advance mode — it returns both the playhead and the scroll view to the first page.
  • Metronome section labels fit a narrow sidebar instead of overflowing the row.
  • Audio engine shuts down cleanly when iOS backgrounds the app, avoiding an audio-session crash.

Chord / song editor

  • Custom chord diagrams behave consistently. Diagrams you create for sharp chords (G#, A#, D#) are now savable and visible, user-created diagrams stay visible regardless of the chord-count slider, and the Top-of-Song chart shows them too.
  • Barre shapes honour the finger you picked when applied.
  • ⌘0 works from the menu and without editor focus — mark-as-chord and wrap-in-brackets fire reliably.
  • 7#5 and 7+5 open the shape editor — they’re now recognised as augmented-7 chords.

Print / output

  • Printing no longer beach-balls. Printing an image or PDF sheet song from macOS completes instead of hanging the app, and print jobs use the real selected paper size instead of always assuming A4.

Updates & install

  • App data moved into its own folder. On Windows and Linux, the database, its sidecars and downloaded fonts now live in Documents/Songbook Buddy/ instead of loose in Documents; existing files relocate automatically on first launch.

Other fixes

  • Windows / Linux: pending edits flush when the OS ends your session.
  • macOS: the unsaved-changes prompt survives Cmd+Q.
  • All platforms: the sidebar controls — toolbars, sort row, chord-colour legend — reflow cleanly at narrow widths instead of clipping or scrolling.
  • iOS / Android: file save dialogs receive song and backup bytes correctly.

Version 1.0.15-beta+3

May 13, 2026

A focused hotfix on 1.0.15-beta+2 clearing three sync and permission issues surfaced via support reports.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • Sync no longer loops on a chord-diagram conflict. When two devices independently seeded the same built-in chord shape, the pull cycle re-tried the same row every few seconds and reported “Sync finished with errors.” Songbook Buddy now reconciles the local twin in place and the pull completes cleanly.
  • Band admins can edit and assign setlists again. A timing issue could silently deny band actions — “Only the band’s owner or admin can do this” — for a legitimate admin whose membership was already in place. Permission checks now read the membership directly instead of racing a background stream.

Other fixes

  • iOS: the false “Unclean shutdown” prompt no longer triggers after the system terminates a backgrounded app — the session marker is cleared the moment Songbook Buddy moves out of the foreground.

Version 1.0.14-beta+2

May 10, 2026

A follow-up to 1.0.14-beta+1 with sharper live-performance ergonomics, more reliable Band Mode sync, smoother chord assignment, and a cleaner install / update path on macOS, Android and Windows.

New & improved

  • ChordPro {key:} and {capo:} directives drive song settings on import — when a pasted or imported ChordPro file declares a key or capo, the value is lifted into the song’s settings and the directive is stripped from the body, instead of being left as inline text.
  • Chord-assignment panel picks fan out across the whole song — choosing a fingering from the side panel now updates every occurrence that shares the same chord shape. Inline picks made directly on a chord cell still stay per-segment, so you keep granular control where you want it.
  • Sidebar keeps the edited song visible after edits — the song you just saved stays selected and scrolled into view instead of disappearing back into the list.
  • Metronome popup mirrors the full sidebar — BPM, time signature, count-in and on/off are all available in the popup, not just the basics.
  • Long-press the status-bar metronome button to open settings — a quicker path to BPM / time-signature changes during a session.
  • Theater mode: Escape exits, swipe steps the setlist — pressing Esc leaves theater mode (desktop), and on touch devices a horizontal swipe advances or rewinds the active setlist.
  • Undo SnackBars auto-dismiss after 10 seconds — they no longer linger forever waiting for a click.
  • Translations and PDF manuals refreshed across all 19 locales — every supported locale ships with up-to-date UI strings and a current user_manual_<locale>.pdf.

Band Mode & sync reliability

  • Followers recover faster after a band-key rotation — the forceRefresh cooldown is preserved across the decrypt-retry chain, so a transient gap no longer freezes the recovery loop.
  • Band-keys local mirror matches the sync wire format — local rows are now written in milliseconds, in line with the rest of _upsertLocal, fixing a subtle drift-vs-sync mismatch.
  • Drift v2 datetime alignment — local datetimes are stored in unix seconds throughout, fixing edge cases where stored times disagreed with synced ones.
  • Chord picks sync onto the right shape across devices — seed-fingering ids are derived from the natural key, so a panel pick made on one device lands on the matching shape on every other device.
  • Display-settings override clears when the DB-backed value changes — your local override no longer “sticks” if the band default updates underneath it.
  • Support reports remain debuggable during a band-live session — uploaded diagnostic bundles preserve the live-session context they were captured in.

Live performance fixes

  • Metronome no longer auto-starts on a null song change — switching to “no song” stops the click instead of starting it.
  • Support session marker clears after a healthy startup — old crash reports no longer piggyback on a fresh launch.

Print / output

  • Print works in slim store builds — the print pipeline now handles stripped bundled fonts, fixing crashes on App Store, Play Store and Microsoft Store builds when printing a song with default fonts.
  • Async / context guards across the print path — eliminates a class of “looked-up an unmounted widget” errors during quick window resizes mid-print.

Updates & install

  • Installer downloads always attach instead of rendering in-place — the /files/ endpoint now sets Content-Disposition: attachment, so browsers reliably save the installer.
  • macOS Tahoe DMG builds succeed reliably — the release pipeline switched to a two-stage build to dodge a Tahoe TCC prompt that could otherwise break signing.
  • Android update path delivers monotonic version codes — versionCode is now derived from the full pubspec version, so the Play Store accepts every new beta build in order.
  • Windows installer / portable distribution cleanups — Windows signing tolerates + in the version, the harness verifier handles APK/AAB and zipped bundles correctly, and stale kernel_blob.bin files no longer ship inside Linux / Windows release bundles.

Other fixes

  • macOS: removed a stale .rawValue reference on NSImage.advancedName that broke a release build.
  • Android: silenced R8 warnings for transitive javax.xml.stream / Tika references.
  • Bug-report viewer tool: handles narrow / short windows without overflow errors.

Version 1.0.14-beta

May 8, 2026

A polish-and-reliability update  — broader localisation, a friendlier formatting sidebar, smaller downloads from the stores, and a long list of fixes for Band Mode and live use.

New & improved

  • Self-service account deletion — Preferences → Account → Advanced now offers a guided delete flow with a 30-day grace window. Cancel any time within that window and your songs, setlists and custom chords come back exactly as they were. After 30 days the account and its data are removed permanently.
  • 11 new UI languages — Czech, Danish, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Chinese join the existing English / German UI.
  • Reworked colour picker — type a hex code (#3A7BD5) or three RGB values directly, and your custom colours are remembered in a saved palette across sessions. The picker button is now a solid colour swatch instead of a hollow ring, so you can see the current colour at a glance.
  • Per-element colours and a Chord-symbols font row — the format sidebar grew a dedicated row for the chord-symbol font, and you can now pick a separate colour for the chord row, lyric row, section labels and custom blocks instead of one colour for everything.
  • Spacing slider can pull chords onto the lyrics — at the slider’s leftmost position the chord row now sits almost on top of the lyric line, which is useful for tight printed pages and dense stage view. The previous slider couldn’t go below the default gap.
  • Tappable setlist jump button in the status bar — tapping it now navigates to the current setlist entry. The sidebar Setlist tab icon was re-aligned to match.
  • Eye toggle on every password field — sign-in, sign-up and change-password forms all show a show/hide toggle so you can verify what you typed.
  • Import — .gcp and .cpm files are recognised by the import dialog alongside ChordPro and plain text.

Chord library

  • Chord names with alteration suffixes (e.g. 7b9, 9#11, 13b5, alt, …) are now parsed correctly, and the seed shape library ships with matching guitar / ukulele / piano fingerings. Existing user-defined chords are not touched.
  • Clearer empty states — the chord library tells you whether a result is empty because of your filter, because the library hasn’t been seeded yet, or because the chord name couldn’t be parsed.
  • No more surprise UNIQUE conflicts — saving a chord whose name matches a previously deleted twin no longer throws an error; the collision is healed automatically.
  • Unset diagram strings save as open, not muted — fixes a long-standing bug where partially edited shapes acquired muted strings you didn’t choose.

Band Mode & live performance reliability

  • Setlists now sync for solo accounts — you no longer have to belong to a band for setlist sync to run.
  • Custom ChordPro blocks survive saves — {start_of_block: …} / {end_of_block: …} markers are preserved through the save-normalize pass; previously they could be dropped on round-trip.
  • Faster live-leader heartbeats — followers that are already up to date skip needless rewraps; large bands feel snappier.
  • Re-encrypt band songs after key rotation — followers no longer see “Song not available” gaps when the leader rotates the band key.
  • Songs appear immediately on first key handshake — newly added members no longer have to wait for the next sync cycle to see shared songs decrypt.
  • Negative-cache undecryptable band songs — partial or broken encrypts no longer drag the recovery loop down forever.
  • Fingering favorites are per-owner — your saved fingerings stay yours instead of being mirrored across every device tied to the account.
  • Default display layout is local-only — the global default layout no longer round-trips through sync; only your real per-song / per-band overrides do.

Smaller download for store builds

  • The 119 MB FluidR3 sound bank and the bundled UI font set now lazy-download on first use in App Store, TestFlight, Play Store and Microsoft Store builds, dramatically reducing the download size for everyone who installs from a store.
  • Inline progress while the sound bank downloads — the first chord-audio tap shows a spinner and percentage on the play button instead of leaving the icon static for 30–60 seconds. Direct downloads from songbookbuddy.com keep everything bundled and behave exactly as before.

Version 1.0.13-beta

May 2, 2026

  • Pro features:

    • Band Mode with secure sharing and real-time sync across devices (Live Sessions)
    • Setlists
    • Chord shape editor
    • extended Font management
    • user defined chordpro blocks (for blocks like interlude, solo…)
    • Metronome with BPM and time signature
    • Footswitch & MIDI control

Version 1.0.12-beta

April 14, 2026

  • chord spacing fixes
  • editor autocorrect disabled
  • new Beta-Test preferences tab with update notifications
  • Pinch zoom gesture on touch devices

Version 1.0.1-beta

April 4, 2026

  • First beta release

  • Full ChordPro editing workflow

  • Built-in chord diagrams (guitar & piano)

  • Import, export and PDF printing

  • Optional cloud sync across devices

  • Presentation mode for live performance

  • Multi-language interface

  • Added batch export for ChordPro files
  • Improved PDF export quality
  • Added indentation controls for song sections
  • Fixed editor wrapping issues
  • Fixed spellcheck and autocorrection problems
  • Fixed layout and rendering issues in preview
  • Improved default layout handling
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