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What have we been up to?

· 4 min read
Andrés Ortiz Corrales (angrykoala)
Andrés Ortiz Corrales (angrykoala)
Co-creator of My Guitar Tabs

Hello everyone! The last update to this blog was about our support for PDF export in version 1.11.0, all the way back in December last year.

Since then, we haven't been building any major new features — we've been busy fixing bugs, polishing the app experience, and acting on community feedback to make this the best tab-making app possible. I wanted to take a moment to highlight all the things we've worked on during that time.

Cool new things​

Better PDF export on more devices​

Support for saving tabs as PDFs is a really important feature for us. It's a challenging one to get right across all the different devices where you can use My Guitar Tabs — but we're committed to making it better. Over the past few months, we've added several fixes to improve how PDFs look and to expand support for creating them on more devices.

It seems those efforts have paid off: in just a few months, over 4,000 PDFs have been created with My Guitar Tabs! The feature is still in beta, and we know there's more work to do before it's where we want it to be.

Curious to see what a PDF looks like? Check out this Demo PDF. You can also find more information about exporting tabs to PDF here.

Support for harmonics​

We've received lots of feedback about new notation markings to add to My Guitar Tabs. One of the most common requests was support for harmonics — and it's finally here!

Natural Harmonic Notation

You can learn more about how harmonics are notated here.

More instruments!​

Despite the name, My Guitar Tabs isn't just for guitars — we've supported multiple instruments for a while now. Based on community requests, we've recently added two new ones to the roster:

  • Bass (5 strings)
  • Guitar (7 strings)

You can find more information about supported instruments here.

Clear Trash​

This one's been on the list for a while — you can now easily clear all the songs in your Trash with a single action.

Fixes and improvements​

Alongside the main features we've been working on, we've also shipped a bunch of smaller fixes and overall improvements.

Made the app smaller!​

My Guitar Tabs was already a fairly lightweight app, but we've managed to reduce its size by around 15%. A smaller app means faster installs and updates, lower memory usage, and a smoother overall experience.

Right now, the web app is about 1.8 MB. For context, the website you're reading this on is about 6 MB.

Fixed some issues with the local database on iOS​

Safari and iOS have some known issues with IndexedDB, the browser database we use to store your songs locally. As far as we know, this doesn't prevent you from using the app on iOS, but it may stop working properly after the app has been in sleep mode for a long time.

We've addressed some of these issues, but further testing and improvements are still needed to ensure smooth performance across as many devices as possible.

What's next?​

My Guitar Tabs is a passion project — because of that, we don't usually stick to rigid plans. Instead, we focus on what we think will make the app better, with the time we have available. Right now, here are a few areas we're exploring:

  • We're reviewing a long list of community feedback: feature requests, improvements, and new notations. While we can't tackle everything, we're committed to adding and refining the most requested features. Our Discord is a great place to suggest your favorite ideas!
  • Continuing to improve and fix the iOS app. Turns out building a cross-platform app with just two part-time developers is tough! We'll keep working on known iOS bugs.
  • Enhancing PDF and ASCII export.
  • Investigate importing tabs from other sources.