Was excellent. Now buggy abandonware.
Forscore was recommended to me for readIng renaissance polyphony from facsimile editions. I’ve now been using it for several months, and I’m hooked. Goodbye to struggling with crufty, dog-eared paper copies in poor light! It’s hard to think of any comment that hasn’t been made here before, except that...
... in another life I have to read technical manuals in PDF form, and I needed an app in which to make marginal notes. It took an embarrassingly long time to realise that I already had one.
Update (after several years use): I'm downgrading this to 2 stars for the following reasons:
1. The developer, a single programmer it seems, appears to have lost interest in this program, and neither posts updates nor responds to bug reports.
2. There are long-standing bugs that can require an app hard-restart during rehearsal/performance:
2.1. The spontaneous, random, event of appearance of the page-scroll-thumbnail, obscuring part of the page, and persisting until an app hard-restart, and
2.2. The inability to turn pages after hiding the default annotation layer, for which the workround seems to require an app hard-restart followed by the creation of a score-layer.
Beware getting locked-in to this app. With hundreds of scores and countless hours of annotations, I find myself trapped in a proprietary format with no migration path out of it.
... in another life I have to read technical manuals in PDF form, and I needed an app in which to make marginal notes. It took an embarrassingly long time to realise that I already had one.
Update (after several years use): I'm downgrading this to 2 stars for the following reasons:
1. The developer, a single programmer it seems, appears to have lost interest in this program, and neither posts updates nor responds to bug reports.
2. There are long-standing bugs that can require an app hard-restart during rehearsal/performance:
2.1. The spontaneous, random, event of appearance of the page-scroll-thumbnail, obscuring part of the page, and persisting until an app hard-restart, and
2.2. The inability to turn pages after hiding the default annotation layer, for which the workround seems to require an app hard-restart followed by the creation of a score-layer.
Beware getting locked-in to this app. With hundreds of scores and countless hours of annotations, I find myself trapped in a proprietary format with no migration path out of it.
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Great…and awful
Forscore is a terrific app for storing, displaying and marking up scores with great features. The syncing between Apple devices is a nightmare and has been for several years. Forscore REALLY needs to get serious about fixing this. It really undermines the user experience causing vast amounts of time wasted consulting help, customer service, deleting, backing up re-syncing and more.
.
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Very good but still room to be better
The app does the job nicely for the most part. Little missing things here and there keep it from being great—when installing on a new device, I have to add a document on that device first to be able to set up iCloud sync; and I’ve found no way to move multiple items to a library in one go. Things like that.
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Best purchase of the year
Saved me sooooo much time. Metronome, keyboard, audio import functions Wow! I finally can keep track of my music and actually have the space to write stuff in. Best app ever
Excelent
Excelent
Extremely frustrating
I have used this app since 2019 and up to this point I have enjoyed all the features that this app has to offer. After the last update, I lost hours upon hours of set lists that I complied over the years, and the new menu to songs is absolutely terrible. Unfortunately, I have grown accustomed to most of the changes, but I have to ask the question. Why? Why did create an update that erased all my work? I’ve tried other score programs, but the brunt of my library exists on ForScore. Usually when you get an update, it doesn’t erase the work you already have put it. The recent list needs to go back to what it was prior to the update.
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Good, but not perfect
Would be better if I could manually add sync points for page turns. Also, when playing along, the play/pause buttons on my MacBook don’t function natively with the software.
Love it
I am a newer cello player and I live that I can upload or scan new pieces in quickly.
It has a nice dashboard and tuner built it
I have marked up pieces so I can search inside easier for longer pieces
I just bought a blue tooth pedal
Very helpful when my quartet practices I can switch music quickly.
Best app I have bought
It has a nice dashboard and tuner built it
I have marked up pieces so I can search inside easier for longer pieces
I just bought a blue tooth pedal
Very helpful when my quartet practices I can switch music quickly.
Best app I have bought
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Can’t share set lists!
It should be easy to share a set list, but spent an hour and can’t figure it out. Am I an idiot, or is this an inexcusable flaw?
Amazing
ForScore is amazing it is easy to use and upload your music from previous platforms
iPhone syncing fails often without notice
I have forscore on Mac iPad and iPhone. I do most of the Inuit on Mac, most playing using iPad, and use iPhone just because it’s handy at times.
iPhone consistently stops syncing due to some vague “server date” problem. Restarting requires choosing server or iOS.
Unacceptable. I’m deleting the iPhone app.
iPhone consistently stops syncing due to some vague “server date” problem. Restarting requires choosing server or iOS.
Unacceptable. I’m deleting the iPhone app.
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New version kills iCloud sync with old version??
TLDR: DO NOT UPGRADE if you are using iCloud syncing with any older iPads. New version of forScore appears to transparently change sync data without warning, which prevents older versions from syncing.
Bought a new iPad last month and installed forScore on it. Set up iCloud syncing like normal. It’s not my sheet music iPad, but nice to have music on it for the occasional use.
Went to my sheet music iPad today and realized it hasn’t synced since last month. Dragged down in the dialog box to force a sync, and an error message pops up: “forScore Update Required.” Okay, went to App Store. No updates available - forScore requires iOS 17 or later. Sheet music iPad is an old iPad Pro, because hey it’s just sheet music and that doesn’t require much processing power. Was working great, until I have to upgrade iOS, and the iPad is too old to do that. And now I can’t sync my sheet music, so the iPad basically got obsoleted with no warning and no way to roll it back.
To be clear, my complaint is not that forScore got upgraded and now only supports newer iOSes. That’s fine and appropriate. My complaint is that setting up iCloud sync on a newer version apparently changed my sync data and has now rendered my previously functional iPad useless. There was no warning from forScore that they were going to do this. There’s no backwards compatibility. There’s no way to roll back either the forScore version or the old iCloud sync data. There’s no way to get my previously perfectly functional iPad working again. Really feels like a particularly customer-unfriendly approach. Wish I had literally any option other than buying a new iPad. 🤦♂️
Bought a new iPad last month and installed forScore on it. Set up iCloud syncing like normal. It’s not my sheet music iPad, but nice to have music on it for the occasional use.
Went to my sheet music iPad today and realized it hasn’t synced since last month. Dragged down in the dialog box to force a sync, and an error message pops up: “forScore Update Required.” Okay, went to App Store. No updates available - forScore requires iOS 17 or later. Sheet music iPad is an old iPad Pro, because hey it’s just sheet music and that doesn’t require much processing power. Was working great, until I have to upgrade iOS, and the iPad is too old to do that. And now I can’t sync my sheet music, so the iPad basically got obsoleted with no warning and no way to roll it back.
To be clear, my complaint is not that forScore got upgraded and now only supports newer iOSes. That’s fine and appropriate. My complaint is that setting up iCloud sync on a newer version apparently changed my sync data and has now rendered my previously functional iPad useless. There was no warning from forScore that they were going to do this. There’s no backwards compatibility. There’s no way to roll back either the forScore version or the old iCloud sync data. There’s no way to get my previously perfectly functional iPad working again. Really feels like a particularly customer-unfriendly approach. Wish I had literally any option other than buying a new iPad. 🤦♂️
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Fix the piano!!
Piano feature used to be really useful but now can’t pin it on the page, so it now hides half the page of music. Why??? It used to be fine, why change it to make it more awkward???
Unresponsive app and No Support for help
This app, although great in theory, does not do anything it says it does in the screen shots. I Cant even find their phone or email for help. Way too difficult for a beginner. I'll request a refund through my CC since i can't get ahold of this company.
Doesn’t work at all
IPad Pro is up to date. Downloaded and -aid for the pro version of the software. I cannot make it work.
Not recommended!
Not recommended!
Good app, started having issues…
Notes on pages randomly become invisible. This is unacceptable. It almost cost me a very special performance. Please fix your app.
Need a PhD to operate it
Maybe it’s my frustration early on
But don’t expect to get this and start right away.
But don’t expect to get this and start right away.
Great app other than syncing.
This is a great app in all respects except it has poor syncing capabilities which frequently results in lost updates/data.
Won’t sync with iCloud
I’ve loved having this app for my music library since the very beginning of forScore. It’s so well thought out and so useful that I recommended it all the time.
That said my particular use, which may not be yours is that I have a MacBook Pro, a 13 inch iPad and an iPad mini that I use for different purposes at different times. All my efforts to sync with iCloud as advertised has failed over a period of years. I’ve reached out to support and they sent me a very long explanation, which I appreciated but didn’t really fix my problem. They described how difficult it is to sync things using iCloud and it wasn’t forScore that was bad but that iCloud was bad. So for me adding scores to this app on one device means that I will not have it on my other device when I reach for it.
Bottom line: if you only use this app on one device, you are all set. It’s great and it will work for you and you’ll have all your music in one place. However, if you have forScore on more than one device, this app falls frustratingly short.
I hope they work this thing out at some point, and I will look forward to revising my rating for the five stars that it will deserve.
Thx, -steve
That said my particular use, which may not be yours is that I have a MacBook Pro, a 13 inch iPad and an iPad mini that I use for different purposes at different times. All my efforts to sync with iCloud as advertised has failed over a period of years. I’ve reached out to support and they sent me a very long explanation, which I appreciated but didn’t really fix my problem. They described how difficult it is to sync things using iCloud and it wasn’t forScore that was bad but that iCloud was bad. So for me adding scores to this app on one device means that I will not have it on my other device when I reach for it.
Bottom line: if you only use this app on one device, you are all set. It’s great and it will work for you and you’ll have all your music in one place. However, if you have forScore on more than one device, this app falls frustratingly short.
I hope they work this thing out at some point, and I will look forward to revising my rating for the five stars that it will deserve.
Thx, -steve
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Great Software
This software organizes my scores better than anything I’ve used. The layers let me separate the LH, RH, and score changes. So once I learn the piece I can turn off the LH, and RH layers.
