Edit a piece's metadata

Open a piece's Properties

Every score in Page Turner carries its metadata in a Properties panel. Two ways in from the library list:

• Tap the ⓘ info button at the trailing edge of a row. On iPad, Properties opens as a side panel next to the list; on iPhone it opens as a sheet.
• Or tap the … button on a row and choose Properties.

Properties is tabbed: Details, About, Studio, Versions, Training. Everything on this page happens in the Details tab.

The iPad side panel has a Full Screen button if you want the sheet instead — same content, more room.

Edits save themselves

There is no save step. Both the side panel and the sheet write each change to disk about half a second after you stop typing, and flush once more when you close the panel. The sheet keeps a Save button in its top bar as a shortcut, but closing without tapping it loses nothing.

Title and composer

The first section of Details holds the piece's identity:

• Title — the display title used everywhere in the app. Renaming here renames the library row.
• Composer — suggests known composer names as you type, so one composer doesn't fragment into several spellings.
• Original file — read-only, shown for imported files. The file name the piece arrived under, so you can compare the cleaned-up title against what the file actually said.

Auto-format — clean up and fill in

The Auto-format button under the composer field runs two passes:

1. Instantly, on the device: cleans casing, opus / BWV / K. / D. numbers and accents, normalises the composer name, and classifies the form and period into tags.
2. Then online (the button reads Looking it up… while it works): looks the piece up on Wikipedia and with an online classifier, and fills only the fields that are still empty — composer, years, key, catalogue, movement.

It never overwrites something you typed. After it runs, an Undo button appears next to it to put everything back the way it was.

Two follow-up dialogs can appear:

• Two possible matches — the lookup can't decide between two works (two sonatas with similar titles, say). Pick the right one, or tap Ignore; either way, only empty fields get filled.
• … movements found — the title resolved to a multi-movement work ("Sonata 1-1" style names do this). Create sub-sections makes one library entry per movement and opens the movement editor so you can adjust the page ranges; Just fill in the total only writes the movement count into of.

Note — The first pass works offline. Without a connection the online lookup simply leaves the remaining fields blank.

Work details

The Work details section holds the structured fields:

Two fields appear only when they apply: Lyricist for vocal repertoire (lieder, opera), and Tune name for hymns.

Year and Key also pre-fill on their own when the panel opens, from the built-in catalogue and anything the About tab has already gathered — no wand tap needed. The network lookups stay behind the wand.

Note — Edition and arranger are not here. Each score file carries its own, in the Versions tab — so an Urtext and a Schirmer copy of the same piece each keep their own edition label.

Movements

In the Structure section, the Movements row opens the movement editor, where you mark the page each movement starts on. Auto-detect scans a PDF for whitespace breaks and a MusicXML / MEI file for embedded movement headers. Bookmarks (the bookmark icon in the reader) are personal jump-points and stay separate from this list.

Tags and notes

• Tags — free-form labels. Type in Add a tag and tap Add. Auto-format also writes the form and period it detects into tags.
• Notes — free text about the piece.

Star and difficulty

• To star a piece, tap … on its library row and choose Star (or Unstar). Starred pieces are what the ⭐ Starred filter shows.
• There is no per-piece difficulty field in Details. To set difficulty, use the bulk-edit bar instead: tap Select in the library toolbar, select the piece (one is enough), and tap Difficulty. See Organize.

Trust, but verify

Important — Auto-detected fields can be approximate — the composition year especially. Check anything that matters against a trusted source (IMSLP, your printed edition) and correct it; a value you type by hand always wins over an automatic one.

Catalog works are read-only

Opening Properties on a Catalog work shows the shared catalog's facts. You can read them — Details, About, Studio, and Versions tabs — but edits aren't saved there. From the catalog, Properties opens straight on the Versions tab, because that's where the useful actions live:

• If the work has a downloadable score, tap Add to My Library (download score). The copy in My Library is yours to edit.
• A Find a score online section offers Search on IMSLP, Search on Mutopia, and Search on MuseScore for tracking down a file yourself.

Limit — Some catalog works are metadata-only: no score file to download yet. Those you can't edit until you bring the work into My Library with your own imported file.

Delete from Properties

At the bottom of Details:

• A local piece shows Delete piece. The confirmation spells out the cost: the piece and all its versions, takes and annotations are removed from this device.
• A cloud piece shows Remove from this device. Confirming hides it from your library; the catalog copy is untouched and you can add it back later.

Fix many pieces at once

For metadata problems across the whole library, don't open pieces one by one:

• The bulk-edit bar (Select in the library toolbar) rewrites Composer, Form, Period, or Difficulty on every selected piece. Format titles cleans the selected titles in one tap and reports how many it changed — it works on local pieces only, so it hides when the selection includes cloud pieces.
• Janitor's Missing metadata suggestions find pieces where a composer, title, catalog number or form can be filled in, and its Review metadata screen shows every change as before → after so you approve each one.

Both are covered in Organize.