Frequently asked questions

When my bandmate taps a song, does my screen change?

No. This is the one rule the whole live view is built around. Your chart moves only when you tap. When the leader flags what's coming up, it appears as an "Up next" marker in your sidebar and in the bar at the bottom of your screen. It never turns your page for you. If you're still working out the bridge of the song you're on while the band moves ahead, nothing yanks the page out from under you.

What is shared in real time: the running order (a drag by the leader re-sorts everyone's sidebar), the "Up next" flag, the set-break countdown, which songs have been played, and live messages. All of those change the sidebar. None of them change your chart.

Will the screen go dark in the middle of a song?

Not in Stage mode. Turn it on from the Aa button on the live view and Sheet Cheater asks the browser to hold the screen awake for the whole set, hides the song list, and puts a tap zone down each edge for the next and previous song. It is remembered on that device, so the iPad on the stand can be in Stage mode while the laptop you plan setlists on is not.

Some browsers will not allow it, and Low Power Mode can refuse it outright, so the control says which of the three is happening rather than quietly failing. Stage mode is free.

Can I make the type bigger, or use a foot pedal?

Yes to both, and both are free. Type size on the live view runs from 75% to 250%, and on a tablet or wider you can run a long sheet in two columns instead of scrolling. Both settings live on your account, so you set them once and they follow you to every device.

Page-turner pedals such as an AirTurn or a PageFlip work as Bluetooth keyboards, so there is nothing to pair with Sheet Cheater itself: the two commonest pedal modes already move you through the setlist with no setup. If yours sends something else, your profile settings will listen for it, so you press the pedal rather than guessing which key it emits.

Do I need a band to use this?

No. Solo use is a first-class path, not a stripped-down mode. A setlist belongs either to you or to a band, and a personal setlist works exactly the same way: build it, take it live, work through it on an iPad on a music stand. You can add a band later without redoing anything, and your personal setlists stay personal when you do.

How do I sign up, and how do I get my band in?

Sign up with an email address or with your Google account, whichever you prefer. The free tier needs no card at all, and both paid plans start with a 14-day free trial.

Your band joins with a code. Create a band, share the invite code from its page, and anyone holding it is in. From then on everyone sees the same setlists and each other's cheat sheets side by side, and any member can build a setlist, not just whoever set the band up.

If I cancel, do I lose my work?

No. Specifically, reading stays free. Your tags and repertoire statuses keep showing on your songs, and you can still filter the library and the Add Song picker by them. You just can't create or rename tags, or change a song's repertoire status, until you resubscribe. Setlists built around that vocabulary keep working.

Gigs work the same way. Every gig you've saved stays readable, rider and payout split included, so nothing you need at 6pm on a Friday disappears because a card expired. You just can't add or change one until you resubscribe.

What actually stops: PDF, track list and ChordPro export; transposing a chart and reading it in Nashville numbers, so charts go back to the key they were written in, which is where they always were; your custom cheat-sheet tab order (tabs revert to the default order, and your saved order is remembered for if you come back); and adding someone else's cheat sheet to your own live panel. Nothing is deleted, and importing a chart stays free whether you subscribe or not.

Can I track the gig itself, not just the setlist?

Yes. A gig holds the venue and how to get in, load-in, soundcheck and downbeat times, the fee and the expenses, who to call, and what the rider actually promised. It's the thing you'd otherwise have in a text message from four months ago. Your own gigs come with Premium and a band's with the Band tier, the same split analytics uses, so playing solo doesn't mean paying band prices.

A gig doesn't need a setlist. That's rather the point: you take a date in March for a show in July, and it sits on your dashboard from that day, with a link to build the set when you're ready. Attach one and it takes its date from the gig and gets marked as a show, so there's a single place to change the date if the venue moves you.

Times are whatever the clock says at the venue. Nothing gets converted, so a 6:30 load-in reads as 6:30 wherever you or your bandmates happen to be.

How does splitting a gig's pay work?

It works out who gets what. Sheet Cheater never moves any money, so nobody should be waiting on a transfer: it's the sheet you'd otherwise do on the back of an envelope, and a leader ticks people off as they're paid.

Everyone starts equal. Give someone a bigger share if they book the gigs and drive the van, or a flat amount if the sound engineer takes their fee off the top. Expenses come off before anything is divided. When the money doesn't divide evenly, the spare pennies go to the largest remainders first, so $500 across three people is $166.67, $166.67 and $166.66 rather than three amounts that quietly don't add up.

A band leader sets the split; everyone else sees it, including their own amount, without being able to change it. And somebody who later leaves the band keeps their share of a gig they played, because the split is a record of that night rather than a picture of today's lineup.

Can people outside the band see our shows?

Only if you say so. Every band has a public page at a short link you can put in an Instagram bio or on a poster, and it's off until a leader turns it on. When it's on, it shows your name and logo, where you're from, a short bio, one link of your choosing, and who's in the band. Along with it you tick which confirmed dates a fan should see. You can add a YouTube video and a booking email, and choose to publish the songs you play.

If you play on your own, you get the same page. Your public profile carries your own dates, your video, your booking email and your song list, exactly as a band page does, at the profile link you already had. There's no need to invent a one-person band to have somewhere to send people.

What a fan sees of a gig is the date, the venue, the city and the downbeat time. Not the fee, not the expenses, not the split, not the promoter's name or number, not how to get in the load-in door, not the rider, and not your load-in or soundcheck times. That isn't a setting you can get wrong: the page is built from a short list of public fields, so the rest of the gig sheet has no way to reach it.

Cancel a show you've announced and it stays on the page marked cancelled instead of disappearing, because somebody has that date in their calendar. The page is free, and it keeps working if a subscription lapses, so a link on a printed poster doesn't die with a card. Tracking the gigs themselves is Band for a band and Premium for your own, the same as before.

What happens if I share the songs I play?

Your public page grows a searchable list of everything you've marked In repertoire, so a booker can check whether you play a particular song without having to ask. It's a separate switch from the page itself, because announcing your dates and handing over your whole set list are different decisions, and it's off until you turn it on.

Anything marked "Want to learn" is never published. That's a note to yourself about what you can't play yet, and it stays private whatever else you share. Sharing the list doesn't make your cheat sheets public either: those are published one at a time, by you, and nothing about a song list changes that.

What counts as a show you've played?

Worth knowing, because every number on a band's analytics page is built on it. A setlist counts once it's marked as a show rather than a rehearsal and its date has passed. Rehearsals never count. Neither does next Friday's gig, even though it's already built and sitting in your list.

The part nobody guesses: a show with no date does count. A missing date is missing information, not proof the show hasn't happened, and plenty of setlists were built before there was a date field to put it in. If a count looks higher than you expected, that's usually the reason.

One thing gigs don't change: cancelling a gig doesn't retract the setlist. If the show was called off and you'd rather it didn't count, mark that setlist a rehearsal.

Inside a show that counts, any song you marked skipped is left out. A leader who wants it stricter than that can switch on "count only songs marked played" in the band's settings. The same definition of a played show also feeds the repertoire panel on that page, so everything you've performed but never filed can go into the band's repertoire in one tap.

What are alternates?

The songs you're carrying but don't plan to play: the encore you might not get to, the three you keep ready in case somebody shouts for one. Move a song below the line and it stays attached to the setlist with its cheat sheet ready and one tap away on the live view, but out of the running order. There's no limit on how many, because the point is being ready rather than picking three. They come with you when you duplicate the setlist, and they print on the chart book and the floor sheet.

They don't count anywhere a played song counts: not in the song count, not in the running time, not in your most-played or your average set length. The one exception is the honest one. If you tick a song off as played during the show, it counts, wherever it was sitting when you called it. Alternates are free, like everything else about building a setlist.

Who can edit a setlist?

A personal setlist: only you. A band setlist: whoever created it, or a band leader. Any member can create one. A leader can also lock a setlist, which freezes editing to leaders only. Useful once a set is settled and you don't want it drifting on the drive to the gig.

One thing that surprises people: a leader can't delete a setlist somebody else created, and a setlist can't be moved to a different band after it's created. If you need it somewhere else, duplicate it to that band. The copy is additive, so aiming it wrong costs nothing.

Can I use it on an iPad? Can I install it?

Yes. An iPad in landscape is the device this was designed around first, with big touch targets and a layout meant to be read from a music stand. It works on phones and laptops too. In Safari on iOS or iPadOS, use Share → Add to Home Screen and it opens full-screen without browser chrome, like an app.

What happens if the venue wifi dies?

Straight answer: Sheet Cheater is a web app and it needs a connection. What's in place today is a service worker that caches the app's styles, scripts and icons, and keeps a copy of each page as you visit it. So a page you've already opened this show still comes back if the network drops, instead of a browser error. A page you haven't opened yet won't load, and real-time sync stops until you're back on.

Practically: if the venue's wifi is a question mark, use a phone hotspot, open the songs you'll need before you start, and export the set to PDF beforehand as a backup. Proper offline mode is on the roadmap and isn't built yet. We'd rather say that than have you find out at a gig.

Do I need an account to look around?

No. Discover is open to anyone. Search the cheat sheets other players have published, open a song and read its chords, lyrics or tab, filter by instrument, and browse whole shared setlists with their running orders. All of it without signing in, and all of it free.

What needs a free account is anything that keeps something: copying a sheet into your own library, following one so the author's edits reach you, rating it, copying a shared setlist, and writing your own. A song page is public only when somebody has published a cheat sheet for it, so nothing you write is visible to a stranger unless you publish it yourself.

What are public cheat sheets, and who approves them?

Any cheat sheet you've written can be published for other players. Publishing doesn't make it discoverable straight away. It goes into a moderation queue first, and only once it's approved does it appear in Discover and on the song's Public tab, where other people can rate it, follow it, or copy it into their own account.

Following keeps a live link to the original, so the author's edits reach you. Copying makes an independent sheet that's yours to change. Both are free.

Can I share a whole setlist, not just a cheat sheet?

Yes. Share on any setlist you can edit publishes it to Discover as a shared setlist, and anyone can copy it into their own account and change it however they like. It goes through the same moderation queue as a public cheat sheet. Sharing and copying are both free, on purpose: a discovery page is only worth visiting if people can put things on it.

A copy arrives as a rehearsal rather than a show, so a set you downloaded to learn doesn't get counted as a gig you played. Mark it as a show once you've booked one. Two things to know before you share: the songs in it become visible in everyone's library, the same as publishing a cheat sheet, and the sheets themselves aren't included. A setlist is a running order, so what you get is the songs and the breaks.

Whoever shares a setlist tags it, from a fixed list: wedding, bar or pub, festival, acoustic, covers, and so on. That's what the filter on Discover runs off, so browsing for "three hours of covers for a wedding" is a couple of clicks rather than a search for words somebody might not have used. Every song in a shared setlist also carries a link out to Apple Music and Spotify, which is what you want when you've just taken a set and don't know half of it yet.

If I change my setlist after sharing it, does the shared copy change?

No. What you share is a snapshot taken at that moment, so you can keep rewriting the setlist for next Friday without quietly rewriting what other people are browsing. When you do want the listing to catch up, Update from setlist re-takes the snapshot, and it goes back through moderation because the whole song list changed.

The same separation works in your favour later: deleting the setlist doesn't remove the listing, and removing the listing doesn't touch anyone's copies. Once somebody copies a setlist, their version is entirely their own.

Do I need to know Markdown?

No. Cheat sheets are stored as Markdown, so headings, bold and lists work if you already write it. Plain text is completely fine too, and chord charts and tab are best pasted as-is into a code block, which preserves the spacing that makes them line up.

One exception, and it's the useful one: a cheat sheet whose type is Chart is written in ChordPro rather than Markdown, so a line starting with # is a comment there instead of a heading. The editor's help button knows which kind you're writing and shows the right syntax.

Can I write chords above the lyrics?

Yes. Add a cheat sheet, set its type to Chart, and write it in ChordPro: [G]Amazing [C]grace puts each chord over the syllable it belongs to, on the song page, on stage and in your exported PDF. It reflows rather than scrolling sideways, so a long line still reads on a phone. Free.

Charts are an option, never a chore. The Chart tab only appears on songs where you've actually written one, so if your cheat sheets are four lines of reminders, nothing about the app changes.

Two things ride along with it. If a chart has sections, whether you write them as {soc} or [Chorus], live mode puts a row of buttons above the panel so you can jump straight to one mid-song. And once a guitar sheet has a key, the editor suggests the capo positions that put you in open chords, so "Eb" becomes "capo 3, play in C". Both free.

Can I play a song in a different key from the chart?

Yes, and it moves for you alone. Tap plus or minus on the song page or in the live view and the chart moves with you, showing the key it was written in beside the key you have landed in. Nobody else's screen changes, which is the same rule that keeps a bandmate's tap from turning your page.

Nothing is rewritten. What you typed stays exactly as you typed it, so the sheet is still there in its own key if you hand the song to somebody else or change your mind. A PDF you export prints in the key you moved it to and names that key on the page, so nobody is handed a chart that quietly lies about what it is. A capo is still a separate setting, because a capo answers a different question: what shapes your fingers are making.

If you read numbers rather than letters, one setting in your profile turns every chart into Nashville numbers, everywhere you read them. A chart with no key on it stays in letters and tells you why, because numbers against a guessed key are wrong in a way that looks right. Both are Premium, and both apply to Chart cheat sheets only: a sheet you typed as free text has nothing to move.

Can I bring charts over from another app, or take mine somewhere else?

Both. Importing is free, and always will be: moving off another app shouldn't cost anything. Open a song, choose Import a chart, and a ChordPro file from Songbook Pro, OnSong, Chordii or anywhere else becomes a Chart cheat sheet on it. It shows you the chart before saving anything, so you can back out if you grabbed the wrong file. An import always attaches to the song you started from and never creates one, so it can't leave you with two nearly identical songs.

You don't need a file at all, either. Paste a chart off a chord site with the chords on their own lines above the lyrics, click convert, and the editor works out which lines are which and lines them up. It shows you the result rather than silently rewriting what you pasted, because the guess is occasionally wrong.

Exporting is Premium, alongside the PDF and track list exports that were already there: one cheat sheet as a ChordPro file, or a whole show as a single file another chart app will open.

If I delete my account, what happens to cheat sheets other people follow?

Anything you published publicly, cheat sheets and shared setlists alike, is preserved and re-attributed to "a deleted account" rather than deleted out from under the people relying on it. Someone who followed your chart for a song shouldn't lose it because you left. Everything private to you, including your unpublished cheat sheets and personal setlists, is removed with the account.