KnowYourNeck vs Harmonauta
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
KnowYourNeck
Explore the interconnectedness of musical scales and arpeggios on a guitar fretboard. Visualize chord tones, target notes, and practice with visual overlays for backing tracks. Offers tools for learning intervals, scales, and chords, with advanced features for Pro users.
- Overlay multiple arpeggios
- Identify target notes between chords
- Play along with visual fretboard overlay
- Visualize intervals and scales
- Display chord voicings and inversions
- Real-time pitch detection
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Most guitar apps show you one scale or arpeggio at a time. KnowYourNeck shows you how everything connects. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT • Multi Arp — Overlay up to three arpeggios simultaneously. See the chord tones for an entire progression on the neck at once, so you can practice connecting lines and navigating changes instead of just memorizing isolated shapes. • Target Notes — Identify which notes are safe landing points between chord changes. Overlaying a scale against an arpeggio shows you exactly which degrees work as target notes when you land on a new chord — the key to sounding musical instead of mechanical. • Play Along with Visual Overlay — Practice with backing tracks while the fretboard changes with every chord in your progression. A preview shows the upcoming scale or arpeggio before the change hits, so you can prepare your line in advance. Available in Jazz, Blues, Rock, Funk, Bossa, and Drone styles. EVERYTHING ELSE YOU GET • Intervals — Visualize the distance between any two notes across all six strings. • Scales — Every common scale and mode mapped across the full neck with color-coded degrees. • Chords — Triads, Drop 2, Drop 3, and Shell voicings with every inversion drawn as a grip across the neck. • Lick Builder (Pro) — Tap out note sequences on the fretboard and save your lines. • Quiz Mode (Pro) — Test intervals, chord tones, and scale mastery with detailed accuracy and speed stats. • Pitch Detection — Play a note and the app identifies it on the neck in real time. • Zen Mode — Full-screen fretboard with no chrome, for focused practice. BUILT FOR LEARNING Toggle note names or scale degrees. Switch sharps and flats. Show or hide open strings. Chromatic color mode to spot patterns fast. Whether you're working on your first pentatonic or learning to navigate a jazz progression, KnowYourNeck shows you the neck the way it actually works — as a connected system, not a collection of boxes. Free to explore. Upgrade to Pro for the Lick Builder, Quiz Mode, and Play Along.
Harmonauta
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Harmonauta is a music maker for songwriters that starts where songs actually start: with a feeling. Instead of scales, wheels and chord tables, you get a living galaxy of sixteen emotions. Tap Longing, add a little Joy, pull Serenity closer, and the Core hums the key it hears. Forge it, and Harmonauta lays out a chord progression that carries that feeling: the right mode, the right movement, the right extensions, voiced and played back so you can judge it by ear. Then keep shaping. FORGE A TONE • Blend up to four emotions and weight them by dragging them toward the Core • Progressions built from a library of emotional archetypes across seven modes • Depth control: Pure triads, Rich sevenths, or Lush ninths and colour tones • Feel control: hold, pulse, strum, picked or piano comping, plus tempo and key • Genre: Pop, Rock, Hip-hop, R&B, Electronic, Folk, Jazz, Lo-fi, Bossa nova, MPB, Reggae or Blues, or let the feeling decide • A melody line written over your chords, shown as a piano roll, rerollable • Reroll for another take on the same feeling HEAR IT PROPERLY • Ten instruments (pad, glass keys, pluck, electric piano, nylon guitar, crunch guitar, organ, bells, strings, flute) and three basses • Drums with sixteen grooves, from a soft pulse and bossa to boom bap, swing, samba, one drop, four on the floor and a blues shuffle • Bass lines that play a real part: a pedal under calm, lush chords, root and fifth, octaves when it gets loud, a walking line through the key; genres bring their own, from a blues boogie to samba and bossa • Five spaces from dry to cathedral and plate • Binaural beat for headphones: a quiet tone in each ear around the key note, pulsing in time with the song • The screen stays awake while anything is playing • Auto picks all of it from the feeling or the genre; override anything in the Sound sheet RESHAPE ANY CHORD • Shards: smart substitutions for every chord, from relative minors and mediants to secondary dominants, tritone subs and borrowed colour • Change chord lengths, add and remove chords • See the guitar shape for every chord, with alternatives one tap away GROW IT INTO A SONG • The Journey builds an intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge and outro from your seed • Tint any section with a different feeling and Harmonauta rewrites its harmony to match • Reorder, duplicate, repeat and regenerate sections • Play the whole arrangement end to end; the trail scrolls itself to the section being played TAKE IT WITH YOU • Guitar sheet PDF: chord diagrams above every bar, fingerings, barres, positions • MIDI export for any tone or full song with chord, bass line, melody and drum tracks, ready for your DAW • Copy a chord sheet as text • A library that remembers every tone and song with its mood Harmonauta is built for songwriters, composers, producers and anyone who has a feeling before they have a chord. It runs entirely on your device, with no account and no internet required.
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Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Harmonauta at none against KnowYourNeck's 2. Harmonauta also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 11 days). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. KnowYourNeck sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Harmonauta asks for nothing beyond the download.
KnowYourNeck ships an update every 11 days, Harmonauta every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | KnowYourNeck | Harmonauta |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 11 days | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 79 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Adam Rhodes | Evandro Guedes Machado |
In-app purchases
KnowYourNeck
- KnowYourNeck Pro$4.991 Month
- KnowYourNeck Pro$49.991 Year
Harmonauta
No in-app purchases









