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The Editor

Chordly's editor is a full document editor for chord sheets and guitar tabs. Learn how the toolbar, header, chords, tabs, and view controls work together.

The Chordly editor is a full document editor. You type your lyrics, drag chords onto the page, insert guitar tabs, format everything, and see the finished result as you work.

Getting started in the editor

The editor is designed for larger screens. On smaller devices, Chordly shows a notice recommending a laptop or desktop.

Once a song is open, there are three parts worth learning first:

  • the editor header across the top
  • the main toolbar
  • the chord palette below the toolbar

The editor header

The top header handles song-level actions.

From left to right, this is where you:

  • rename the song
  • download the song
  • add it to a folder
  • share it
  • open Play Mode
  • check notifications
  • open the more options menu

That more menu is also one of the ways back to the dashboard. If you want to get out of the editor, you can click the Chordly logo or open that menu and choose Dashboard.

The main toolbar

The main toolbar is for formatting and view controls. It includes:

  • undo and redo
  • font family
  • font size
  • text formatting
  • text color
  • alignment
  • spacing
  • + Tabs
  • transpose
  • autoscroll
  • page breaks
  • show or hide the editor header

If the screen is narrower, some of these controls move into an expandable menu instead of disappearing entirely.

The chord palette

Below the main toolbar, you'll usually see the chord palette.

This is where Chords + lives. Open it to search for chords, browse recent ones, and drag them into the song.

When you click into a guitar tab to edit it, the chord palette area switches to tab controls instead. That is where you will see controls like Add Column, Remove Column, and Add Divider.

Format the document directly

You can type into the page freely, then format it as needed.

The formatting pages in this section cover the main document controls:

These controls shape the document itself. Chord styling is separate and is covered in Chord Sheets, because chords can be formatted independently from the lyrics.

View controls inside the editor

Two controls change how the editor itself is shown while you work:

  • Show Page Breaks switches from one continuous page to a paged preview
  • Hide Header removes the top editor header to give the document more room

Those are view controls. They change how the editor looks on screen, not the words or chords in the song.

Music tools

From the editor you can also:

  • add and move chords from Chords +
  • insert guitar tabs with + Tabs
  • transpose selected chords or the whole song
  • start autoscroll while editing

If you want the step-by-step docs for those features, continue here: