Chord Provider

A ChordPro viewer, editor and PDF exporter for macOS, iPadOS and visionOS

Important:

Due to rude treatment of Apple Support to get an official Apple Developer Account, the iPad and Vision Pro targets for Chord Provider are dropped.

Upon review, we can’t verify your identity with the Apple Developer app or provide further assistance with this Apple ID for Apple developer programs.

Request for further assistance was ignored. So, I lost interest to code for fully closed platforms.

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Chord Provider is written in SwiftUI and needs Xcode 15 to compile.

  • macOS Sonoma
  • iPadOS 17
  • visionOS 1.1

There are many ChordPro parsers in this world, however, none are really native in the Apple world.

I mean, in the macOS world, it is often an afterthought… Not for me. I’m mainly a mac user; the other versions are my afterthought…

Chord Provider

The icon

A Telecaster shape, of course! In mid 2016 I felt in love with a guitar. An ‘Olympic White’. That is the color of the shape. The background is a suitable modification of her ‘plate’.

  • It will view and/or edit ChordPro files.
  • It can export a whole folder with ChordPro files to a PDF with a Table of Contents.
  • It has an editor that highlights your chords and directives with colors you can change in the settings and you can edit a directive by double-clicking on it.
  • It recognise most of the ChordPro directives, but not all.
  • It can show diagrams for the guitar, guitalele and ukulele.
  • You can click on a chord diagram and it will open a Sheet with all known versions.
  • It can transpose a song; however, only in the View. The document will not be changed and that’s on purpose.
  • You can ‘define’ a Capo but that will not change any notes in the document; again on purpose.
  • It can export your song to a PDF document.
  • It can play chords with MIDI with a guitar instrument that you can select in the settings. Note: This does not work in a simulator.
  • It can play audio songs when stored next to the ChordPro file when defined with {musicpath: file-name.m4a} and when a music folder is selected (sandbox restriction).
  • Full ‘left-handed’ chords support.
  • It has a ‘Song List’ Window for your songs if you select a folder.
  • It has a ‘quicklook’ plugin for ChordPro files. Select a song in the Finder and press space
  • It makes thumbnails for your ChordPro files.
  • It has a fancier editor with linenumbers and you can edit a directive by double-clicking on it.

Limitations

Some other guitar applications claim the ownership of ChordPro files and then the quicklook does not work anymore. Chord Provider does not own them; nobody should…

Not all chords in the database are correct; especially the more complicated chords. I wrote Chords Database for macOS and iPadOS to view and alter the database with all known chords. Feel free to contribute!

iCloud

The iPadOS app will make an iCloud folder named Chord Provider; that’s where your songs should be stored. In the macOS app, you can select a folder with your songs. If you use the same iCloud folder; updates are instantly.

Documentation

The source code is very well documented with Jazzy; including the SwiftlyChordUtilities package that is an essential part of Chord Provider.

SwiftUI previews

I don’t use it so there a no #preview macro for any of my Views

TODO

  • Make it translatable; now it is only in English
  • Use different chord notations for e.g. German (CDEFGAH)

Both are not high on my list, however a PR is welcome!

Thanks

Stole code (and ideas) from:

Used packages

Both my own and in my GitHub account.

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I like to start my package names with **Swiftly* instead of the usual Swifty {.leading} or Kit {.trailing}.*

This is simply because it sounds more pleasing to me.

How to compile

Xcode 15 is required.

  1. Clone the project.
  2. Change the signing certificate to your own.
  3. Build and run!