Drag & Drop
Drag and Drop gestures make working with forScore much faster and more intuitive. In most cases Drag and Drop provides a second way of doing things, so you’re free to use the original way if you prefer.
Note: Apple restricts Drag and Drop interactions to a single app at a time on iPhones or iPod Touches running iOS 14 or earlier. Update these devices to iOS 15 to access all of the features described below.
Basics
To use Drag and Drop on iOS or iPadOS, tap and hold certain items for a moment until they appear to lift off the screen, then drag your finger away from it slightly to begin the drag process. While holding the item with one finger, you’re free to use your other fingers to interact with forScore or any other app on your device. On macOS, drag and drop works immediately—just click and drag without pausing first. Since Macs don’t support multiple simultaneous pointer interactions, some drag and drop techniques described below may not be practical on macOS.
Note: Contextual Menus also use a long press gesture and change how Drag and Drop works in cases where both are available. Tap and hold an item to show its contextual menu and then drag the preview away to use Drag and Drop (there’s no need to lift your finger first, just use one continuous motion). If you prefer, you can disable either Drag and Drop or Contextual Menus in the Accessibility section of forScore’s settings panel.
In some cases, tapping additional similar items adds them to the drag session (like dragging a score in the Score menu, then tapping other scores to drag them at the same time). You can open and close menus and panels and your drag items will follow your finger as long as it’s touching the screen.
When you’ve dragged your finger over a valid drop zone, you may see some indication that lifting your finger here will perform some kind of action. The drop zone may react by moving or changing colors, or a green “+” badge may appear, for instance, letting you know that dropping the items in this spot will copy them in some way. Each interaction works a little differently, so try some of the following examples for yourself to see how they behave.
Rearranging Items
Many of forScore’s views list items that can be rearranged: setlists and their contents, libraries, audio tracks and MIDI commands in the Metadata panel, accounts in the Services panel, and more. Typically, these items can be arranged by tapping “edit” and then dragging the three horizontal lines on the right-hand side of the cell up or down as needed. With Drag and Drop, there’s no need to enter “edit” mode first—simply tap and hold any part of the item until it lifts up and out of the list, then drag up or down.
Working With Items
Scores and bookmarks can be dragged out of forScore’s Score, Bookmark, and Setlist menus, the Search panel, and you can even drag the current item out of the main view’s title display (and remember: you can use any combination of these sources to add multiple items to your drag session). Drag any single item onto the page to open it, or drag one or more items into the Tab bar to open them in tabs.
Working With Setlists
No feature is better suited to Drag and Drop than Setlists. Creating, editing, and organizing your setlists is dramatically simpler and faster using these new gestures. To rearrange setlists or their contents, drag items up or down as discussed in the “rearranging items” section above. You can also drag a setlist into or out of a folder to move it.
To create a new setlist, drop one or more scores or bookmarks into the main Setlists list and supply a name. To add items to an existing setlist, drop them onto the setlist’s name and they’ll be added to the end of that list. Or, hover over a setlist (or tap it) to open it, then drop the items into the list at a specific point. You can even drag items out from one setlist and into another one to copy items between them.
Importing & Sharing Files
Drag and Drop isn’t just restricted to the same app; you can also drag compatible files into forScore to import them. Drop one or more PDF files into the Score menu to add them to your library, onto the page to import them and open the last one, or drop them into the tab bar to import and open all of them in new tabs. Drop them into the Setlist menu to create a new setlist with them or add them to an existing setlist using the same methods described in the previous section.
Importing works with other files, too. Drop any file type supported by forScore into certain views or panels to import them. Other supported formats include our own 4SC (scores), 4SS (setlists), and 4SB (backups) file types, as well as certain kinds of text and audio files.
You can also drag some items out of forScore to export them: drag a score to share a copy of its source PDF file, or drag an audio track, recording, or backup file to copy it to any other app that accepts them.
Audio Tracks
forScore uses Drag and Drop to help you work with audio files more quickly and flexibly, too. Drag them into and out of the audio file picker to import or export them, or drag them onto the media box to import them and link them to the current score or bookmark.
If the current track is a locally stored file, you can drag the track’s title out of the media box to send a copy to another app. Otherwise, if it’s a track that comes from your device’s shared Music library, you won’t be able to export the file but you can still use Drag and Drop to add the track to another score or bookmark in your library (drop it into the Metadata panel’s audio track list).
Annotating
While annotating, use Drag and Drop to rearrange your drawing presets by dragging them left or right. You can also work with images in several ways: drop an image onto the page (from the Photos app, Safari, or any app that allows you to drag images) and forScore will place it as an annotation. Resize it, reposition it, then tap outside of it to complete the process.
Create new stamps by dragging images from other apps directly into the Stamp Creator’s canvas. Use the Selection tool to select an area of drawn annotations, then use Drag and Drop to copy them as an image to other apps. Since you’re working with standard images in both cases, you can even combine these two examples to create new stamps from annotations you’ve previously drawn by hand, all without leaving the app or needing to go to your computer to deal with image editing software.
Services
In the Services panel, use Drag and Drop to move files between folders or drop certain things here to upload them. Drag scores, bookmarks, setlists, audio files, backups, or CSV files into the Services panel to upload them.
MIDI
Drag commands between the various MIDI sections in the Metadata panel and the Button editor to copy them, or drag commands onto the page to create a new button with them.
Multiple Windows
On iPadOS, Drag & Drop gestures can be used to create new windows. Drag a score or setlist to the left or right edge of the screen until it shows the forScore app icon, then let go to open a new window displaying that content.
Disabling Drag and Drop
Some users may find that iOS’ Drag and Drop gestures interfere with their ability to work. Although iOS does not currently provide a system setting to disable them, forScore offers an option in the Accessibility section of its Settings panel called “Drag and Drop” that significantly alters how it utilizes these gestures. When this setting is disabled, forScore does not make items available for dragging and most interactions return to how they worked with older versions of iOS.
Note that this setting does not affect how forScore receives drop gestures originating from other apps, however, so you can still do things like drag a PDF file from the Files app directly into forScore to import it.