Guide

Everything Chordora does, in order. If you read only one section, read the first. The rest explains itself as you go.

The idea

Every song is text in ChordPro format: lyrics with chords in square brackets. Both views grow out of that single source — the sheet for playing and the editor for writing.

A tap always opens the sheet first; the editor sits one level above it. The source is the binding version: transposing, wrapping and hiding chords change the display only, never what you wrote.

Creating your first song

In the Songs tab, tap + at the top right. The empty song opens in the editor right away.
Type the text, or paste it from the clipboard.
You write the title straight into the header. The pencil beside it opens artist, key, capo, tempo and tags.
Save via ⋯ › Save. The entry is only enabled while there is something to save.

Chordora does not save automatically. That is deliberate: if you go back with unsaved changes the app asks first, and discarding is a reliable way out. The pencil saves on its own, because the song details read the stored version.

The ChordPro format

You needn't learn it by heart — the toolbar writes all of it. Knowing it just makes you faster.

Notation	Meaning
`[G]Amazing [C]grace`	Chords in square brackets, right before the syllable they sound on.
`[D] [G] [C]`	Several chords without lyrics — for intros and instrumental passages.
`{title: Amazing Grace}`	Metadata in curly braces. Likewise `{artist}`, `{key}`, `{capo}`, `{tempo}`.
`{start_of_chorus}` … `{end_of_chorus}`	Sections. Likewise `start_of_intro`, `_verse`, `_bridge`, `_outro`. After a colon you can set your own heading.
`# note to self`	A note just for you. It stays in the editor and never shows on stage.
`{comment: two voices from here}`	A hint printed in the sheet — small and italic. Short form: `{c: …}`
`and then (quietly) on`	Round brackets: in the sheet the text appears without them, italic and muted instead. For directions in the middle of a line.

Your line breaks are kept. On top of that the sheet wraps over-long lines at the screen edge — chord line and lyric line always at the same point, so every chord stays above its syllable. Breaks happen at word boundaries, never inside a chord name.

A whole song looks like this

{title: Amazing Grace}
{artist: Traditional}
{key: G}
{tempo: 72}

{comment: Three-four time — count it calmly}

{start_of_verse: Verse 1}
[G]Amazing [G7]grace! how [C]sweet the [G]sound
that saved a wretch like [D]me!
{end_of_verse}

Comments and sections

Three notations look alike and do different things:

Notation	In the editor	On stage
`# text`	visible	nothing
`{comment: text}`	visible	grey italic
`{start_of_chorus}`	visible	CHORUS heading

You mostly meet {c: Chorus} in files from chord sites, where it stands in for a real section. It only prints the text, though — the app has no way of knowing a chorus starts there. If you want structure, use {start_of_chorus}.

The editor toolbar

The bar sits above the text at all times.

Undo and redo — continuous typing counts as one step, each tool action as its own.
Mark as a chord — puts square brackets around the selection. With no selection an empty pair is inserted.
Section — intro, verse, chorus, bridge or outro. If something is selected, the section wraps around it; with no selection it takes the paragraph the cursor is in. If the cursor is already inside a section, that one is retyped — ChordPro has no nested sections.
Stage comment — turns the selection into a {comment: …}.
Editor-only note — turns the line into a # line. Tapping again takes it off.
Close keyboard — appears while the cursor is in the text.

Below the bar you find every chord the song already uses. One tap puts it at the cursor — with [A7sus4] that saves a fair bit.

Tap an existing chord and it is selected together with its brackets. Start typing and only the chord is replaced — the brackets stay. Delete, on the other hand, removes it entirely.

Taking songs from the web

Songs copied from the web usually have a chord line above the lyric line:

G         C
Amazing grace how sweet the sound

When you paste through the text field's context menu, Chordora recognises this on its own and moves each chord to the right place in the text:

[G]Amazing [C]grace how sweet the sound

If a chord lands in the middle of a word, it snaps to the nearer word boundary rather than cutting the word in half. A note at the bottom reports the conversion and offers Undo. Text that is already ChordPro, and plain lyrics with no chord line, are left untouched.

The stage view

The sheet is the view for playing: read-only, full-bleed, without navigation or tab bar. Title and artist sit at the top left. Close and auto-scroll are at the top right, the caret with the remaining controls at the bottom right.

Auto-scroll — starts and pauses the scroll that runs along with you. Swipe yourself at any time; the run continues from wherever you let go. A mere tap does not stop it, that is what the pause button is for. You set the speed in Settings.
Transposing — up, down, reset, by semitones. The current shift and the resulting key are shown under the title. The source never changes.
Text size — remembered per song; without its own size the value from Settings applies.
Show and hide chords — switched off, the chord lines fall away entirely and the view gets considerably more compact.
Open Editor — the way to editing.

Transposition, text size and the chord switch are saved per song and are back the next time you open it.

Photos of the sheet

Often all you have for a song is a handwritten sheet. You capture it via ⋯ › Photos in the editor: the dashed tile with the + offers Scan page, From library and — as soon as an image is on the clipboard — From clipboard.

The document scanner finds the edges of the paper, straightens it and lifts the contrast; several pages go in one pass. To reorder, drag one tile onto another.

Photos rank equal with the text: a song may have both, text only, or photos only. In the sheet the photos hang below the text in order — one content, nothing to switch. Auto-scroll runs across both.

As with the text, adding, deleting and reordering only take effect on Save.

Setlists

In the Setlists tab, tap + at the top right and give it a name.
Use + inside the setlist to pick several songs at once.
Use Edit to reorder by the handle. Swiping left takes a song out of the setlist — it is not deleted, it stays under Songs and in every other setlist.

Setlists appear as tiles, two side by side. Each shows the name and the first few titles. A long press opens Rename, Duplicate, As PDF, a Colour to mark it with, and Delete setlist. From two setlists onwards a sort control also appears at the top left.

The same song may sit in any number of setlists, at a different position in each — it is not copied. If a song is deleted, it disappears everywhere.

PDF for the band

A long press on a song or on a setlist offers As PDF.

For a setlist the document starts with a cover page — the setlist's name and the songs it contains with their artists — after which each song starts on a new page. Every page carries a page number and the Chordora mark.

The PDF does carry the photos, each on its own page. It prints on A4 in a fixed character width, in whatever key the sheet was last set to. For band members it is therefore the more complete format.

Sharing in ChordPro format

A long press on a song offers Share; the editor has the same entry in the ⋯ menu. What gets sent is a .chopro file — an open text format other programs can read.

From the editor the working copy is shared, from the list the stored one. If a song contains photos the app points this out first: a ChordPro file can only hold text. You can still send it — for the complete version use the PDF.

Search and sorting

The search field in Songs searches title, artist, lyrics, chords and tags at once.

The symbol at the top left picks the sort order: recently opened, title, artist or date created. Swiping left offers Delete and Editor, swiping right puts the song into a setlist. A long press opens Share, Rename, Duplicate and As PDF.

Settings

Appearance — light, dark or follow the system.
Accidentals — By key picks sharps or flats to suit the target key, E♭ rather than D♯ in flat keys. Alternatively you can fix one spelling.
German notation — writes H for B and B for B♭, both when reading and when displaying.
Text sizes — separate for editor and sheet. The control in the sheet itself overrides the value for that one song only.
Auto-scroll — speed for songs that have nothing of their own saved yet.
Language — German and English. You switch it in the system settings; the entry takes you straight there.

Capo and key

Capo is information only and does not shift the chords. If a key is stored, the sheet additionally shows the sounding key — with a capo on the 2nd fret and shapes in C, that is D.

If you really want to transpose, use the transpose buttons. They change the chords shown, not the source.

What is free and what costs

Chordora is free and holds ten songs — including the three demo songs it ships with. If you don't need them, delete them and you get the room back.

Beyond that, Chordora Unlimited removes the limit — €2.99 once, no subscription, valid on every device with the same Apple Account. Everything you have already created stays and remains usable, whatever you decide.