Adding Chords
Add chords in Chordly with drag and drop or the chord editing menu. Learn how placement works and how to position chords accurately.
Chordly gives you two ways to add chords: drag them from the palette or insert them from the keyboard.
Add chords with the palette
Click Chords + below the toolbar to open the chord palette.
Browse the chords or type into the search field to narrow the list.
Hover a chord to see its fingering diagram.
Drag the chord onto your lyric line and drop it on the exact character where the chord should land.
As soon as you drop it, the chord appears above that position in the line.
When the palette opens with no search term, your recent chords appear first. That makes repeated progressions much faster to lay out.
Add chords with the keyboard
Place your cursor where the chord should go.
Press Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux.
In the chord editing menu, type the chord symbol you want.
If needed, set the chord's formatting before inserting it.
Press Enter or click Insert Chord.
The chord editing menu opens at your saved cursor position, so you can keep typing in the document and drop in chords as you go.
How placement works
Chord placement in Chordly is character-based. When you drag a chord onto a line, it anchors to the character under your pointer. When you insert a chord from the keyboard, it anchors at the current caret position.
That anchor stays with that exact character until you deliberately move the chord or remove it.
Dragging a chord from one character to another on the same line moves it. Dragging a chord from one line to another duplicates it, so the original stays where it was and a copy is placed on the new line.
Copy and paste chords
You can also reuse a chord with standard copy and paste shortcuts.
- Click the chord
- Press Cmd+C on Mac or Ctrl+C on Windows/Linux
- Move your cursor to the new position
- Press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V
This is useful when the same chord appears again a few words later and you want to place it quickly without reopening the palette.
What to do next
- Use Editing Chords when you need to change a symbol after placing it
- Use Formatting Chords when a chord should look different from the surrounding line
- Use Deleting Chords to remove a chord cleanly without disturbing the lyric text