Chordly Logo

Exporting to ChordPro

Learn how to export a Chordly song as a ChordPro-style file, where the export lives, and what the downloaded file includes today.

Chordly includes a ChordPro-style plain-text export in the Download menu.

Where to export

The ChordPro export lives in the Download menu:

  • in the editor header
  • in Play Mode through the same export menu

The menu includes an Export as ChordPro option for downloading the current song as a plain-text file.

What the export includes

Chordly exports:

  • a {title: ...} directive at the top of the file
  • your song text as plain text and bracketed chord lines
  • guitar tabs as ASCII tablature, so tab sections stay in the exported file as readable text

That means a simple song can export into something like this:

{title: Stand by Me}

[G]When the night has [Em]come
And the [C]land is dark
And the [D]moon is the only light we'll [G]see

If your song includes guitar tabs, those sections are exported too. Chordly writes them out as ASCII tablature, which keeps the tab content in the ChordPro file in a readable plain-text form.

When export is useful

ChordPro export works best when you want to:

  • keep a plain-text copy of the song
  • share with another ChordPro-aware app or user
  • move a chart into an older ChordPro library
  • keep a portable backup outside the editor

It is a practical interchange format. It is not the full editing experience.

What doesn't carry over

Exporting to ChordPro is not the same thing as guaranteeing perfect round-trip reproduction of every ChordPro feature.

Chordly's editor is a live document editor. ChordPro is a plain-text interchange format. Those models overlap, but they are not identical.

So while export gives you a useful ChordPro-style text file, you should not assume that every piece of document formatting or every possible ChordPro directive survives as a one-to-one text command.

Document formatting is not the same as ChordPro formatting

In Chordly, you can change fonts, spacing, colors, alignment, and other visual formatting directly in the page.

That does not mean those choices all translate back into ChordPro directives on export. The exported file is mainly about the song text as it exists in the document, chord placement, the title directive, and tab output where available.

Metadata is not fully mirrored back out

The importer recognizes several common metadata fields, but the current exporter does not write all possible metadata directives back into the file. In practice, text that exists in the document may still come back out as plain lines, but you should not expect complete metadata reconstruction as ChordPro directives.

In practice

  • Stay in Chordly's editor when you want to keep working on the song.
  • Use ChordPro export when you want a plain-text version to take with you or share with another app.