Phones, tablets and installing the app

Rhythm Writer runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer. Adding it to your home screen makes it open like an app, full screen, and lets it work without a connection.

Install it

Offline

Once you've opened the app with a connection, it keeps a copy of itself and opens without one. Editing, playback, printing and gig view all work offline. Activating a license needs a connection once; after that the app re-checks it about once a week and keeps working if it can't reach the internet.

The phone layout

On a narrow screen each section becomes a card, and the controls you need while writing stay within reach:

• ☰ Songs at the top opens the song list.
• The song's title, artist and tempo fold into one line. Tap it to edit them.
• More opens everything else: the kit menu, Click, Count-in, Export, Import, Dark, Notation, Print, Duplicate and Delete.
• The bar at the bottom has + Section, ▶ Play and the hit / accent / ghost switch.
• Grids wider than the screen scroll sideways inside their card.

Swipe mode

The ⇄ button at the left of the bottom bar turns on swipe mode: one section fills the screen and a strip of tiles across the top shows the whole song. The song header folds into a slim bar with the song list, the title and tempo, undo and redo; tap the title or ⋯ to bring the full header back. Swipe mode is remembered between visits.

• Swipe left for the next section, right for the previous one. Swiping left past the last section adds a new one.
• Swipe up to step into a section's phrases, down to step back. Swiping up past the last phrase adds one. When a card is taller than the screen, scroll to the bottom first; an upward swipe only counts once you are there, so it never fights scrolling.
• Tap a tile to jump to that section. The + tile adds a section at the end. The dots under the strip show where you are inside a section.
• The ‹ and › buttons in the bottom bar do the same as sideways swipes.
• Swipe on the card itself, not on the grid cells: a finger on the grid paints.
• While Play runs the whole song, the card follows along to whichever section is playing.
• The grid stretches to the width of the card, so the cells are bigger than in the stacked view.
• Added a section or phrase by accident? ↶ in the header undoes it.

Sound on a phone

On iPhone and iPad, playback is heard even with the ring/silent switch on silent, as long as the device runs iOS 16.4 or later. Like a music app, pressing ▶ pauses music playing from another app; it can be resumed when you stop. On older iOS versions the silent switch mutes the app, so flip it to ring. Bluetooth headphones add a small delay; wired headphones or the speaker are tighter for practising along.