Editions and platforms
Stab is one app on six platforms. Your songs open on all of them, and almost every tool is on every one. Where a platform can’t do something, its page here says so, and this one lists it all in a table. Available in English and French.
What each edition can do
Available on every platform.
The editions
- Mac and Windows. One desktop licence covers both, on two computers. It’s bought from stab.audio and comes as a licence key; no account is needed.
- The web. app.stab.audio is the full editor in your browser: every editing tool, the score, the chart, the Stage, practice, MIDI devices (in browsers that support them), and joining a Play Together session. Signed in to Stab Cloud, it works on your Stab Cloud songs, saving as you go. Without an account, it opens the demos and a file you drop on it, to try; Keep It puts one in Stab Cloud with your changes.
Before you buy, every tool works on three songs of your own: the songs on this device and your own songs in Stab Cloud, counted together. At three, adding another (a new song, an import, a duplicate, a demo kept) asks you to unlock Stab or subscribe to Stab Cloud, or to delete one first. If you hold more than three without either (after a subscription ends, for instance), Stab is read only on every song until you choose or delete enough: each song still opens and plays at its written tempo, prints and exports, but editing, practice tools (the loop, speed, key, Wait for Me, Listen, Follow Me, playlists) and changes to the sound and the mix wait. Songs shared with you never count.
Stab Cloud is a subscription for what runs online: your songs on every device, version history, share links and Publish. If it ends, your three most recently changed cloud songs stay; the others can be downloaded for 14 days, then they’re deleted.
What the platforms don’t share
- Files on disk. The Mac and Windows keep your songs in a library folder you can move, and find recordings by where they are on disk. The iPad and iPhone keep them in the Files app, under On My iPad (or On My iPhone) › Stab, and Android under Stab in its Files app.
- What the web leaves to the apps. Its songs are your Stab Cloud songs, with no library folder on your computer. It doesn’t record from a microphone (playing and recording from MIDI devices work), play audio or video recordings (a YouTube reference video does play), or export audio (it does export MIDI, Guitar Pro, MusicXML and the score as a PDF). It joins Play Together sessions, and hosts one only for your own Stab Cloud song, with Stab Cloud.
- Windows of their own. On the Mac and Windows, a pane can move to a window of its own. The iPad opens a song in a new window; the phones and the web show one song at a time.
- An external display. Mirror on Display, for a TV or a projector, is on the iPad; Android has External Display….
Every feature, platform by platform
Each row links to the feature’s article. “Later” means it’s coming to that platform; a dash means it isn’t there.
Updates
Available on Mac and Windows. Not on Web.
This isn’t on Web.
Stab from stab.audio updates itself. The second time you open it, it asks whether to check for updates automatically; if you agree, it checks once a day and offers each new version when there is one. Check for Updates…Check for Updates… (not on Web), in the Stab menuthe Help menu—, checks now, and its window lets you change your answer.
The web app is always the latest version: a new one loads the next time you open it, or when the page offers it and nothing is under way.
| Command | Keys | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Check for Updates… | the Stab menu |
| Command | Keys | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Check for Updates… | the Help menu |
Not on Web: Check for Updates….