JustChords is the hardest app in this category to argue with. It is deep, it is well made, and it asks for a tip rather than a subscription. If you and everyone you play with are on Apple devices, you should probably just use it — and this article will say so again at the end.

What follows is for the case where that "if" does not hold.

What JustChords does well

The feature list is long and most of it is genuinely useful on stage. Transpose, capo, and rewrite a song into a different key outright. Setlists you can share. Autoscroll at tempo. A metronome and a tuner. Chord diagrams for guitar, ukulele and piano, with buttons that play a chord so you can hear what you are about to read. Audio tracks attached from Spotify, Apple Music or a URL. Bluetooth and MIDI pedals for hands-free page turns. AUv3, so it runs as a plugin inside Logic Pro and GarageBand. ABC notation for sheet music. AirPlay to project lyrics. Annotations, cues, highlights. Real-time collaborative setlists — PlayTogether — that keep a band in step.

And it is free, with optional in-app purchases that exist to say thank you rather than to unlock anything. That is an unusually generous way to sell software and it deserves to be said out loud.

The thing that sends people looking

iPhone, iPad and Mac. That is the whole list. There is no Android build and no web version.

PlayTogether keeps a band's setlists in sync in real time — but everyone in that band needs JustChords, which means everyone needs an Apple device. It is a fine answer for a band that already has one; it is not an answer for the guitarist whose phone is a Samsung.

What changes when it is a browser

Strumfolio opens at a URL. iPad, Android tablet, Windows laptop, an old phone with a cracked screen — if it has a browser, it has the app. Add it to the home screen and it runs full screen. Once a song has been opened it keeps working with no connection.

The free plan holds a real repertoire with no time limit: one songbook, thirty songs. Paid plans lift the caps and add ukulele shapes, the worked-out capo and a printed booklet.

Following needs nothing at all

This is the sharpest difference, and it is worth being precise about rather than waving at.

PlayTogether syncs setlists between people who have the app. Strum Together shares a link. Whoever opens it follows the same song in the same key, live, from their own screen, with no account, no install and no copy of your library. The people following do not need Strumfolio in any sense — they need a browser.

That makes it a different tool for a different moment: not "my band and I stay in step", but "everyone in this room, including people I met tonight, is reading what I am playing".

Starting a session is on the paid plans. Following is free, always, for anyone.

Reading the same sheet in four alphabets

International, Italian, German — where H is B and B is B flat — and Nashville numbers, which name each chord by its degree of the key rather than by a letter. Chosen per reader rather than per song, so one sheet serves a session player reading numbers and a singer reading La at the same time.

Chord fingerings are worked out from the notes that make the chord rather than looked up in a table, which is why a chord you invented in the editor still gets a shape.

When to stay with JustChords

Most of the time, if you are on Apple. Specifically:

  • You want the deepest feature set for the price of a tip. Strumfolio's caps and its best parts are on paid plans; JustChords' are not.
  • You need a metronome or a tuner in the same app. Strumfolio has neither — its tuner is a separate app on another address.
  • You use MIDI, pedals, audio tracks, AUv3, or AirPlay projection. None of those exist here.
  • You read sheet music. ABC notation has no equivalent in Strumfolio, which is a lyrics-and- chords app and nothing else.

That is a serious list, and pretending otherwise would not help anybody choose.

When the browser wins

One case, but it is a common one: the people who need to read your songs are not all on Apple, or are not all people you can ask to install anything. If that is your rehearsal room, this is what that room can actually use.