OnSong for Android: Why It Doesn't Exist (and What to Use Instead)

If you've searched for "OnSong for Android" you've already seen the answer: there isn't one. No Play Store listing, no APK, no beta. Despite being one of the most well-known chord-sheet apps on the planet, OnSong has been iOS-only for its entire existence — and there's no sign of that changing.

This post explains why OnSong is iOS-only, what that actually means for Android musicians who want the same experience on stage, and the web-app alternative that fills the gap without asking you to buy an iPad.

Why OnSong is still iOS-only after more than a decade

OnSong launched in 2011 as an iPad app. It was one of the first serious attempts to turn a tablet into a gig-ready chord binder, and it went deep on the Apple ecosystem: AirTurn pedals, Core MIDI, AirPlay, iCloud sync, Apple Pencil. That deep integration is also why an Android port has never materialised.

A few practical reasons:

Native iOS codebase. OnSong is built on Apple's frameworks. Porting to Android isn't a "recompile and ship" job — it's a rewrite.
Small team, big app. OnSong is a mature product with thousands of edge cases (MIDI triggers, DMX lighting, presentation modes). Maintaining two parallel codebases would roughly double the support load without doubling the revenue.
The market's mostly on iPad. Pro musicians skew iPad for stage use. For OnSong's core audience — worship teams, cover bands, gigging pros — iPad is already the assumed device. The commercial incentive to port has been weak.
No public roadmap for Android. The OnSong team has historically pointed people to web-based alternatives when asked, rather than promising an Android version "soon".

Translation: if you're on Android and waiting for OnSong to come to you, don't. It's not a launch delay — it's a product decision.

What "OnSong for Android" actually has to replace

The mistake most OnSong refugees make is looking for a single Android app that matches OnSong feature-for-feature. You probably don't need all of it. The bit almost every gigging musician actually uses is a small subset:

A searchable library of chord sheets
Setlists you can pull up at a gig
Transpose on the fly
Auto-scroll with adjustable speed
Offline access (stage Wi-Fi is a myth)
A dark, full-screen stage view that doesn't sleep
Bluetooth page turner support

MIDI pedal automation, DMX lighting, lyrics projection, backing tracks synced to cues — those are real OnSong features, but most players using OnSong as a "digital songbook" never touch them. Replacing the 20% you actually use is far easier than replacing the 100% you don't.

The Android-friendly answer: a PWA, not another native app

The reason no native Android app has caught up with OnSong is the same reason you don't need one: the web did. A modern browser on Android can:

Install a web app to your home screen (it gets its own icon, no browser chrome)
Store your library offline with service workers and IndexedDB
Keep the screen awake during a song
Run full-screen, locked to the stage view you want

That's what a Progressive Web App is — and it's why the best OnSong-style experience on Android doesn't live in the Play Store at all.

Fretlist: the OnSong experience on any device

Fretlist is a web app that does the core of what OnSong does — chord sheets, setlists, transpose, offline Play Mode — on whatever device you have. Android, iOS, ChromeOS, Windows, Mac, Linux. Same URL, same account, same library.

For Android users migrating from an iOS friend's OnSong setup, the practical path looks like this:

Ask them to export an OnSong .backup. OnSong's Utilities → Backup menu produces a single file that contains songs, setlists, and metadata.
Drop it into Fretlist's import dropzone. Fretlist reads OnSong .backup files natively — no manual reformatting. It also handles ChordPro, PDF, DOCX, and ZIP archives, so a mixed library still comes across cleanly.
Install Fretlist as an app on Android. In Chrome, tap the menu → "Install app" (or "Add to Home Screen"). It launches full-screen from your home screen, offline-capable, indistinguishable from a native app.
Open your setlist at the gig and hit Play Mode. Auto-scroll, wake lock, section jumps, and Bluetooth page turner support out of the box — most pedals send standard PageUp/PageDown keys, which Fretlist picks up automatically.

There's no Play Store review, no waiting for an Android build, no price-difference between platforms. A Pro plan is coming post-launch; right now it's free during Early Access.

When OnSong is still the right call

Be honest with yourself about what you actually need. If any of these describe your setup, OnSong on iOS is probably still the better answer — and Fretlist won't replace it:

You run MIDI or DMX cues from the same app that shows your chords
You project lyrics to a congregation or audience screen
Your whole band is already on iPads and in the OnSong ecosystem
You need MIDI-programmable pedal actions that go beyond page turning and section jumps

For everything else — the 80% of gigging musicians who just want their chord sheets on stage on the device they already own — the "OnSong for Android" question has a better answer than waiting. Use the device you already have.

Try it

Fretlist is free during Early Access, imports OnSong backups directly, and runs on any Android device without an app-store install. Open it in your browser and add it to your home screen — the whole setup takes about as long as reading this post did.