How to import songs from Ultimate Guitar into Fretlist

TL;DR

Open the song on ultimate-guitar.com (chord version preferred, tabs work too), press ⌘A / Ctrl+A to select the complete website, copy, then click Ultimate Guitar under the Import card on the Fretlist Dashboard and paste. Fretlist strips UG's page chrome and pulls out title, artist, key, capo, tuning, and chord-above-lyrics structure automatically. No API, no scraping, no extension.

Steps

1. Open the song on ultimate-guitar.com. The chord version imports most cleanly, but tabs are supported too.
2. Select the complete website and copy: ⌘A → ⌘C on Mac, Ctrl+A → Ctrl+C on Windows. Don't worry about selecting only the chord block — Fretlist handles the surrounding chrome.
3. Paste into Fretlist: on the Dashboard, click Ultimate Guitar under "Or paste from" beneath the Import card. Paste (⌘V / Ctrl+V) and click Import.
4. Review: Fretlist shows the parsed title, artist, key, capo, tuning, and chord sheet. Edit anything before saving.
5. Save — the song is in your library, ready to transpose, add to a setlist, or open in Play Mode.

Why no built-in UG search?

Some chord apps scrape Ultimate Guitar to search and import on your behalf. Fretlist doesn't, for two reasons:

• Legal. Ultimate Guitar's terms don't permit scraping or automated access, and the chord transcriptions are user-submitted content under their own copyright rules. The Cmd+A paste workflow keeps you in control of what you're copying — same as if you'd handwritten it from the page.
• Reliability. UG redesigns their site regularly, and that breaks every scraper that depends on it. The browser already does the work; Fretlist just has to clean up the paste.

Related docs

• Import from Chordie — paste Chordie chord pages with the same workflow
• Import from OnSong — bring your entire OnSong library across in one go
• Import from SongbookPro — migrate your SongbookPro library into Fretlist

Need help?

Email hello@fretlist.com — Dear John reads every message.