Stab on the web

Stab on the web is the editor in your browser, at app.stab.audio: the same panes, menus and tools as the apps, drawn the same way. It has no library on your computer: the songs it opens are your Stab Cloud songs, the demos, a file you drop on it, a share link, or a session you join. This page covers what is particular to the web.

Stab on the web

Available on Web. Not on Mac and Windows.

This isn’t on Mac.

This isn’t on Windows.

What it opens

The home has Bring a Song In (Ask the Assistant, Import a File, A YouTube Video), Stab Cloud (signing in) and Join a Session, then shelves (the Stab Cloud shelf starting with a + card for a new song): your Stab Cloud songs, Shared with Me, Published, Collections and the Demos.

Signed in to Stab Cloud, the web works on your Stab Cloud songs, saving as you go, within your plan. A new song you make here is a Stab Cloud song.
Without an account, it opens the demos, a new song and a file you drop on the page or pick, to try: edit freely, then Keep It in Stab Cloud to save it with your changes (signing in first). Leaving one you changed asks whether to keep it. See Three free songs.
A file can be a Stab song, Guitar Pro, MIDI, MusicXML, an iReal Pro link saved as a page, or a PDF of printed music (Bringing music in). Photos of music are read in the apps.
A share link opens a song read only, without an account (Share links), and a join link opens a session (Joining a session).

The web has nothing to buy or unlock: what it can keep is your Stab Cloud plan’s (Stab Cloud plans).

Browsers

Stab runs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on computers, tablets and phones.

MIDI devices need a browser with Web MIDI: Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Safari, and every browser on the iPhone and iPad, have none, and the MIDI settings say so. See MIDI on the web.
A YouTube reference video plays in the editor’s page in Chrome and Edge; in Safari and Firefox, the Video pane offers Show the Video, which opens the song again in a page where YouTube’s player can be. See A YouTube video as a reference.
On a phone, or in a window 600 pixels wide or less, the page takes a phone’s shape: one view at a time, the Transport strip, and the views of a phone workspace as tabs along the bottom, with the workspace’s button for Edit Views… and the other workspaces, as in the apps on a phone (Views on a phone). Notes are edited through the same tools tray along the bottom, its keypad following the track: closed, the tray is the Transport strip’s button at the right (Keypad ▴, or its icon and ▴), and a tap opens it (The tools tray); Tools… at the top of the ⋯ sheet opens the tray’s menu. The phone’s workspaces are kept in the browser, apart from the computer’s.
On a tablet (an iPad in Safari, an Android tablet), the page works as the iPad app does: worked by touch, notes are edited through the tools tray, one tray along the bottom, or docked at the right as a column (its ⋯ › Tray Position), the Keypad coming up by itself on a track you write in (the frets and techniques on a string track, the piano’s keys on a keys track, the drumpad on drums). With a mouse, the keypads float over the bottom of the song instead, and the round keypad button at the bottom right hides or shows them. The built-in workspaces are the iPad’s, the page’s buttons and sheets are sized for fingers, and a long press opens a context menu. A computer with a touch screen and a mouse keeps the computer’s shape.
By touch, no key is needed. What the keys do in a song has a place a finger reaches, on a phone and on a tablet: the Keypad (frets, dead notes, rests and ties, the bends and techniques named, the voice key), the Note tool (Fret − +, String ▲ ▼, Voice ▾, the lengths, the dynamics and, in the Score, Respell, Stem, Beam, Tuplet… and Lyrics…), Note Input’s pad, the Score’s Drumpad, the Chart’s Chords tool (% Repeat, Next Bar, Type…), and Pin the Caret to the Recording in the Transport menu (on a phone, the Transport strip’s ⋯).
The Instrument pane plays by touch, the mouse or the computer’s keyboard. The page has no Audio Buffer setting: the browser sets the output’s latency.

Installing it, and working without a connection

Stab keeps itself in your browser once it has loaded: it opens at once the next time, and on a poor connection. To have it as an app, use the browser’s install button (in Chrome, in the address bar) on a computer, or Add to Home Screen on a phone. It then opens in a window of its own with Stab’s icon.

Joining a session and opening your Stab Cloud songs need a connection; offline, the page says so. See Working offline.

The web app is always the latest version. When a new one has arrived, a line at the top of the page says “A new version of Stab is ready” with Reload; it never interrupts a session, and your edits go up first. If some haven’t reached Stab Cloud yet, or another Stab tab is in the middle of something, the line says so and offers Reload Anyway.

Menus and keys

The menu bar is Stab’s own, at the top of the page: Session, File, Edit, View, Transport, Settings and Help. F10 opens it, and Alt with a menu’s letter opens that menu (Menus from the keyboard). A few keys differ from the apps where the browser keeps a key for itself: see Shortcuts on each platform.

Settings and workspaces are kept in this browser.

On the home, a song’s ⋯, or a right-click on its card, opens its menu where you clicked; on a phone, ⋯ opens it as a sheet from the bottom.

Exporting

The File menu (on a phone, the ⋯ sheet’s File) exports the open song as MIDI, MIDI with a channel per string, Guitar Pro (.gp for Guitar Pro 7 and 8, or .gp5), MusicXML or the score as a PDF. The browser downloads the file, into its downloads folder or where it asks. The first PDF fetches the score’s fonts, which takes a moment.

What the web leaves to the apps

Recording: the web doesn’t record from a microphone or an audio interface, and has no tuner or practising by microphone. Playing and recording from MIDI devices work.
Recordings: audio and video recordings don’t play on the web, and Find the Beats and stems aren’t there. A YouTube reference video does play.
Files: no audio export, and no songs kept on your computer: the exports above are downloads. Download All gives your Stab Cloud songs as one .zip.
Play Together: the web joins a session, and with Stab Cloud hosts your own cloud songs (through the relay, while the tab stays open); it doesn’t share a watch link. In a shared song, a browser holds the live session only when no app is in it.
Also in the apps only: the Sound Library, presentations as PDFs, and photos of printed music.

Everything else is here: writing, the score, the chart, the Stage, the mixer and the sound, practice, Publish, sharing, exporting.