# the Craic — user reviews > 55 indexed App Store user reviews of the Craic by Wil Macaulay, rated 4.30/5 from 12 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-craic/id586009292/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-craic/id586009292.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 9 · 4★ 0 · 3★ 2 · 2★ 0 · 1★ 1 ## Newest reviews (13 of 55) ### 4/5 — Doesn’t cover Concertinas! *2024-03-21, version 3.5.1* Good over all, but does not cover concertinas, especially CG Anglo Concertinas! ### 4/5 — Unique and Indispensable, with some glitches *2023-01-28* Must have for anyone with more than a handful of tunes, and a great help when learning them - particularly for the musically challenged like myself. There’s nothing else quite like it on i(Pad)OS, and the latest version finally supports collections. Would love to give 5 Stars but there are some nags: - setting markers when selecting parts/bars for playback is unintuitive and capricious - selections that start with pick-up notes don’t loop properly (there’s a short pause that messes up timing). Please fix!! - multiply editing and saving a tune can create multiple copies - GUI could be a bit more intuitive/standard in some places, although it by and large works really well. ### 4/5 — Pretty good. *2022-02-28, version 2.3.2* I bought this specifically for creating and sharing sets. It’s pretty good but two changes would make it truly excellent. Firstly, I only make sets from Favourites (which in my world are tunes I can play). If I had the option of choosing JUST from the Favourites list it would save me hunting through thousands of tunes each time I want to add to the set. Secondly, within a set it would be very desirable to have the option of rearranging the items rather than having to start again when the set isn’t quite right. Otherwise the PDF creation is great as is the sharing. Money well spent. 👍 ### 3/5 — Great except one thing *2022-01-01* I love this app for learning tunes and keeping up my tune library. I only wish there was a way to sync with iCloud so that when I add a tune on my iPad, it is automatically in my iPhone’s version of the app the next time I open it too instead of manually adding it there also. ### 5/5 — Excellent support! *2018-01-03* I just purchased this yesterday and ran into a problem associated with using the Smart Keyboard on an iPad Pro — I contacted the support and they were great. They were able to figure out what was going on quickly and easily. My first attempts at entering my own songs using ABC notation are going great now. This app does what it says it does and it does it well. ### 4/5 — Nice app *2017-09-03, version 1.10.4* This is a nice app for my practice and for jams. I keep all my tunes in it. Very easy to copy and paste abc files into it. Would be nice if it visually highlited the notes as it plays them, but otherwise I love it. ### 5/5 — The Craik *2017-01-11* A brilliant Ap for all Celtic Musicians; not only is there a good range of tunes included, but it's easy to add tunes that are in abc format - i.e. From sites such as 'The Session', or tunes that have been sent to you. What's more, the Ap gives you the sheet music (printable), and will play you the tune, either once through or repeatable. If you are learning a new tune, you can slow it down to help you to play along at a comfortable 'learning' speed. Highly recommend by this fiddle player. ### 5/5 — The Craic *2016-10-27* A great bit of software, easy to use. About 70 tunes are listed and can be edited, deleted or added to. When you add your own tunes or choice of tunes, they automatically go in the list alphabetically, so are easy to find. ### 5/5 — Great Resource *2016-07-22, version 1.10.3* Love this app! ### 5/5 — Terrific App *2016-07-12* I use this app daily to learn Irish tunes on banjo. It's easy to find classic collections to import (e.g. O'Neill's, Carolan's) as well as single tunes out of the many thousands that are available. One suggestion: Would be nice if it was simpler to add tunes to a set list. Otherwise, I love it! Thanks for making such a great app. ### 5/5 — Super! *2016-05-23* Nice job! Clean and easy to use interface. Importing tunes from abcnotation and thesession websites works flawlessly --- and was EASY! The music display is easy to read and easy on the eyes. Thanks to the developer! Best of luck with this and any new projects! Clearly you have the user in mind with this app. ### 5/5 — Brilliant! *2016-05-22* This is the most practical app for lovers of Irish music who want to read along with or just play the score. Slow it down or speed it up. Thank you! ### 5/5 — Fantastic *2016-01-11* Exactly what I was looking for. Big song book plus audio playback to help me learn to read notation. Simple to use and easy to read. Thanks! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — No bagpipe option *2020-08-09* I just bought it for bagpipes and it’s not in the instrument selection. ### 1/5 — Needs to be updated *2018-09-29, version 1.10.4* The app was fine with the previous version of iOS. With iOS 12 it now does not display the staff lines, only the notes. I would have rated it as 4 stars if it still worked. ### 1/5 — Not worth it. *2017-05-17, version 1.10.4* purchased this yesterday and removed it from my tablet. App freezes up. Looked up sheet music, and nearly every tune I am working on is unable to be down loaded. Wanted to use this app to aid in learning bagpipe songs. I couldn't even use the app as it froze up after a couple minutes. I have the latest updates on my device. ### 1/5 — Less than 100 tunes *2016-03-21* There were less than 100 tunes in this app when I bought it, most definitely not thousands. ### 1/5 — Froze up *2014-08-31, version 1.8.1* Just installed this app today. While searching a tune, it froze on "downloading tune" with the apple whirly thing. Can't make stop and now the app is unusable. May have delete it. Very disappointed! ### 2/5 — Err *2024-03-13* App does import complete abc collection files properly. Not all abc tunes get imported. ### 2/5 — Not 4 drums *2016-08-28, version 1.10.3* Sadly does not support drum notation. ### 2/5 — I love this app's concept, but... *2013-09-25, version 1.3* I love this app's concenpt, but too bugy and inconvinient to daily use at this time. When I delete a tune from 'Edit' menu, the Craic often crash. And when I delete all tunes to make my library from zero, all default library appears again. I'll be happy if the Craic gets more stability, and if it allows me to make entire library from zero. And more, I think it is perfect if I can export/import entire folder tree on the cloud storage(i.e. dropbox), and if I can also read/write directly ".abc"s on it(like "Byword", the popular text editor for iOS). Though I rate this two stars, I don't regret I bought this. And I still like this. I'm looking forward future improvements :-) (Sorry for poor English, I'm not English speaker...) ### 2/5 — Does Not Play *2013-01-27, version 1.0.1* Will not allow playback of the tune to be able to listen to it. Description also states 1000's of tunes. Instead 76 in actuality. You must find and download any additional tunes yourself. Not impressed. ### 3/5 — Small Note Heads *2026-01-12* Why are all the note heads so small? Would be much easier with larger note heads. **Developer response:** You can adjust the size of the notation in the tools screen. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — The Craic *2022-01-15* Been using this for the last few years as I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Old Time fiddle music. So many tunes to learn and so little time... Love the ability to do online searches and download straight from the program. Love having an easily portable memory bank cause I sure can’t remember all these tunes. Love being able to alter notes, add bowings, fingerings, ornamentations. Love being able to save a PDF or print it out to share with friends. My only issue is when I’m editing first and second endings, I often do something that makes the program freeze up. But it’s not the end of the world. I just close out the program and boot it up again. ### 5/5 — Great traditional music app *2021-01-27* It’s so cool to be able to carry around a library of tunes in my pocket and to hear them play, import new ones and see the dots. Thanks Will for developing this app and helping me to learn new folk and traditional tunes- a big shout out to the developers of the ABC standard too! ### 5/5 — A very PalmABC on iPhone *2020-07-20, version 2.2* I had often listen abc songs with PalmABC on PalmOS PDA. I liked the tool. By comparison with it this Craic is considerably functionable id est “scrolling a score, polyphonical playing, exchanging instruments and facility about administration of abc files etc” I like this tool as same as PalmABC. ### 5/5 — Must have app for the trad musician *2020-02-22, version 2.2* I’m a fiddler in Vic Australia. I love this app. The ability to import any tune from the session website and to have it at my fingertips in any format - playback at any speed, standard music notation etc (and print direct from the app) is what I find most convenient. Simple and easy to use and does everything I need it to do. Brilliant stuff. ### 5/5 — Great App got better *2019-08-01* I started with the old app and loved that I could take my new tunes with me on my phone to learn and practice anywhere. The new features made it that much easier. Now I can hear the tunes “at speed” (as I’d eventually play them) with the note stress feature. I’m also using it on my iPad to notate as well. Bravo Macaulay! ### 5/5 — Well designed and well organized *2019-07-22* I have been using this ABC player, version 2.1, for many months, and strongly recommend it. It is simple and easy to use. It is easy to add tunes to your library, either from the web, or by cut-and-paste from email, or manually by keyboard. The smart search makes it easy to find tunes in your library or on the web. The search will find partial matches as you type, and will match on any words in any title tag (T in ABC notation). I have many tunes with two title tags, where the second tag is the subtitle, and it is very handy to search across all titles and subtitles. When playing a tune, the app will use the tempo specified in the ABC notation (the Q tag), which means you don’t need to fuss with the slider to adjust the tempo. I love that feature! If the tune doesn’t have a tempo specified, you can always use the slider. (One nice improvement would be to have a bigger slider, and I understand that is coming in another release. ) It is easy to email a tune to someone, open a tune as a PDF, open it as ABC notation for editing, or print it. Overall, it’s a great app. Larry Hohm, Seattle ### 5/5 — Clear winner!! *2019-07-08, version 2.1* Don’t think of using any other source and playback app for your trad music ABC files. The Craic is a well supported, well thought out app for those wanting to build a library of music for their traditional music learning pleasure. It is my go-to app for sourcing common and obscure tunes that I want to learn. And for the couple of years I have been using it, nothing else even comes close to how handy and easy to use this small footprint app is. Wil is a great guy who listens and acts on users suggestions, making this great app even more useful than it was when first released. By the way, I am just an ordinary paying user who gains nothing except satisfaction from giving this app and Wil a five star review. They are just that good. Colin Tasmania ### 5/5 — Simple, Functional, and Effective *2018-11-06* This is a simple, functional, and effective app for finding, learning, and editing traditional tunes in abc notation. ### 5/5 — Works well *2018-10-16* Does everything I want. From time to time there are syntax issues with tunes that come from thesession.org that have to be addressed Thanks ### 5/5 — It’s back! Excellent! *2018-10-09* Wil made a quick recovery and the app is back to it’s full glory. Now to poke around and look for any new goodies! **Developer response:** New version on the way with iOS 12 compatibility --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-18.*