Apple Pencil and keyboard

Apple Pencil on the score

With a score open, touching the page with the Pencil draws immediately — no annotation mode to enter first. Your finger keeps its normal role: pan, zoom, and turn pages. The Pencil writes; the hand navigates.

Two switches in Page Turner's Settings screen, under the Accessibility section, control this. Both are on by default:

• Draw with Apple Pencil anytime — the behavior above. Switch it off and the Pencil only draws inside annotation mode, like a finger.
• Recognize handwritten fingerings — turns handwriting into score data as you write (details below). Switch it off and the Pencil is pure ink: the score never reacts to your strokes.

Limit — Both toggles assume an Apple Pencil already paired to a compatible iPad. Page Turner has no Pencil pairing of its own; if the Pencil doesn't work in other apps, pair it in the iPad's settings first.

What handwriting recognition does

With Recognize handwritten fingerings on:

• Write a digit 1–5 on or near a note — it becomes a typeset fingering on that note, replacing your handwriting.
• Scribble over an existing fingering — it's erased.
• Scribble over a Roman-numeral harmony label (from the Analysis feature) — the label at that spot is changed or deleted.

Anything else you write — circles, breath marks, reminders in the margin — stays as ink, untouched.

Turn pages from any keyboard

The reader listens to fixed page-turn keys from any connected hardware keyboard — including a Bluetooth page pedal, which is a keyboard as far as the iPad is concerned (see Hands-free control for pedal pairing):

• Right arrow, Page Down, or Space — next page.
• Left arrow or Page Up — previous page.

These five keys are fixed; the Shortcuts list below remaps other reader actions, not page turns. They keep working while a panel or popover is open over the score — you don't have to close anything to keep turning.

Limit — While you're typing in a text field (a search bar, a piece name), every reader key types instead of acting — Space inserts a space, it doesn't turn the page. Dismiss the field or the on-screen keyboard and the keys take over again.

Reader keyboard shortcuts

Every main reader action has a hardware-keyboard shortcut. The map lives in the reader: open the Toolbox, scroll to its Accessibility section, and expand Shortcuts. (It is not in the app's Settings screen — only in the Toolbox.)

The factory defaults:

On iPad, holding ⌘ on the connected keyboard shows the system shortcut overlay with these actions listed (Open Library, Open Metronome, … — Search appears as Search library).

Remap a shortcut

1. In the Toolbox, expand Shortcuts and tap the action you want to change. Its current combination shows as a badge on the row.
2. In the editor below the list, toggle the modifier keys — ⌘ ⌥ ⌃ ⇧ — and type the key in the text field (a plain letter like P, or a full combination like ⌘P).
3. Tap Save.

Two more buttons in the editor:

• Off — disables the shortcut for that action entirely.
• Reset — restores that action's factory default from the table above.

No duplicates

Two actions can never share a combination. If you save a shortcut another action already uses, it moves to the action you're editing and the other action's shortcut is switched to Off. The editor warns you before you save — for example Saving ⌘P moves it from Piano. — so nothing changes silently.

Note — Like the page-turn keys, shortcuts pause whenever a text field is being edited or the on-screen keyboard is visible, so typing a piece name never fires reader actions.