Annotations are your own marks on a song: a circle round a tricky chord, a highlight on the line you always forget, a Stop stamp where the band cuts out. You draw them straight onto the chord sheet in the song view, and they show in Play Mode.
Start marking up
In a song, tap the Annotate button in the bottom right corner of the song. It opens into the annotation toolbar.
With an Apple Pencil or another stylus you can skip the button: start writing on the song and the toolbar opens by itself.
The toolbar
From left to right:
- Pen: draw freehand. Circle a chord, underline a word, write a short note in the margin.
- Highlighter: highlight text. Drag across the words, the way you would select text, and the highlight covers exactly those words, line by line. A line is highlighted once, however often you go over it.
- Stamp: place a label on the song (see below).
- Eraser: tap or drag over a mark to remove it. The whole mark goes, not just the part under the eraser.
- Color: tap the color dot to show the other colors. The pen has red, blue, green, orange and purple. The highlighter has yellow, green, pink and blue.
- Line size: for the pen, tap to choose Thin, Medium or Thick.
- Undo: take back your last change.
- Done: close the toolbar. Your marks stay on the song.
Marks go on the song's text: its lyrics, chords, section headings and comments. A press on a chord diagram or on the notes above the song does nothing, so you cannot mark those by accident.
Stamps
Stamps are short labels for the cues you mark again and again. With Stamp chosen, tap the stamp's name in the toolbar to pick one: Stop, Break, Hold, Repeat, x2, x4, Cresc., Dim., Rit. or Solo.
Need another one? Type it in the Your own field and tap Add. Your own stamps stay in the list on this device.
Then tap the song where the stamp should go. To move a stamp, keep Stamp chosen and drag it.
Pen, finger or mouse
- Apple Pencil or stylus: it always draws in the song view, while your finger keeps scrolling as usual.
- Finger or mouse: draws while the toolbar is open. On a tablet, once you have used a stylus, your finger goes back to scrolling, as in most note-taking apps.
Marks stay with their words
Your marks are pinned to the lines they were drawn on, not to a spot on the screen. They stay in place when you:
- make the text bigger or smaller
- open the song in Play Mode, where Fit can spread a song over columns and pages
- open it on a phone, a tablet or a laptop
When a line wraps in a narrow column, a highlight wraps with its words. A pen mark keeps its shape and stays with the first word it touches on that line.
If you hide a part of the song with Display (the chords or the tabs, say), marks drawn on that part are hidden with it and come back when you show it again.
When you edit the song
A mark stays put when you edit other lines, even when lines are added or removed above it. If you change or delete the line a mark was drawn on, the mark is set aside rather than lost.
A tray button with a number then shows in the toolbar. Tap it to see those marks. For each one, tap Place and then tap the line where it belongs, or delete it.
In Play Mode
Play Mode shows your annotations but is for reading only, like your notes: you cannot draw, highlight or stamp there. Mark up a song in the song view, and the marks are there the next time you open it in Play Mode.
Show or hide your annotations
To read a song without your marks, open the ⋯ menu in the top right of the song, choose Display and turn off Annotations. In Play Mode the same switch is in the gear, in the Show section. It is one setting for all your songs.
Only yours, on every device
- Personal: your annotations are yours alone. In a band, your bandmates do not see your marks, and you do not see theirs.
- Synced: they sync to every device you are signed in on.
- Offline: you can draw without a connection. Your marks are saved on the device and sync the next time you are online.
- Not shared, printed or exported: a shared song link, a print and an export all show the song without your marks.