MuseScore Studio 4.6 is now available!

• Sep 30, 2025 - 16:43

We are delighted to announce the release of MuseScore Studio 4.6!

This version is packed with new features, including:

  • More options for showing and hiding empty staves
  • Significantly improved realtime playback experience
  • Tons of new features for piano, voice, guitar scores
  • Chord symbols overhaul
  • Ability to load any SMuFL-compliant music font
  • VST3 support on Linux
  • Numerous workflow enhancements
  • And much, much more...

The update is compatible with macOS Tahoe 26.

Watch the release video

How to get the update

I’m new to MuseScore Studio 4

Head over to the Download page to see the available options:

  • Windows & macOS
    • The main download option gives you the MuseHub utility, which you can use to install MuseScore Studio and MuseSounds.
    • There's also the option to download MuseScore Studio without MuseHub, but you'll need MuseHub if you want to use MuseSounds.
  • Linux
    • The main download option will just give you MuseScore Studio.
    • You’ll also need to download and install MuseSounds Manager if you want to use MuseSounds.

You can find additional builds on our GitHub Releases page, including for Linux ARM64.

I already have MuseScore Studio (version 4 onwards)

Within the next few days, users on Windows and macOS will receive a notification about the update within MuseScore Studio or within MuseHub.

If you don't want to wait, you can install the new version manually without MuseHub (see above).

New features in this release

Playback

  • Realtime note preview now supports duration and velocity control, as well as the sustain pedal, allowing an intuitive playing experience with a connected MIDI keyboard
  • Count-in is back! (Playback toolbar > Playback settings cog)
  • MuseSounds playback no longer fades-in when pressing play
  • Play count for repeated sections can be controlled in Properties, with options to add appropriate text to score (e.g. "Play N times")
  • Fixed regression where instruments were muted after undoing their deletion with Ctrl+Z

Engraving

  • A comprehensive new system allows localised control over showing and hiding empty staves
  • Any SMuFL-compliant music font can now be applied
  • Measure numbers are now treated as system markings and can also be shown below the system, with many new options for customisability in Styles
  • All system markings can now go below the bottom staff
  • Better alignment options for repeat & jump markers, voltas, etc.
  • Better alignment of rests in multiple voices
  • Better rhythmic grouping of rests and beams in local time signatures
  • New properties for frames to control padding to notation above & below
  • Harp pedal diagrams can be anchored at arbitrary beat positions (not just on notes and rests)
  • Enharmonic spelling: new options added in Tools menu
  • Fixed regression where slurs from grace notes were placed incorrectly and not saved in the MSCX file
  • Fixed issue saving and loading of scaling/spatium size in parts
  • Fixed regression in placement of whole measure rests in secondary voices
  • Adding breath marks no longer hides courtesy clefs in cutaway staves
  • Barlines are no longer masked by invisible text lines
  • Ties are no longer shortened by chord symbols that contain a slash
  • Hairpin ending on final beat of final measure is no longer excluded from parts
  • Collision avoided between dynamics and left barlines
  • Collision avoided between arpeggios and clefs
  • Added 19th century French tenor clef (G clef ottava bassa with C clef)
  • Repeat-dot position in these fonts was tweaked for better SMuFL compliance: Gootville, MuseJazz, Emmentaler

Guitar

  • Engraving support for hammer-on, pull-off, and tapping techniques (playback supported in MuseSounds Guitars Vol. 2 and upwards)
  • Fretboard diagrams now auto-fill based on their associated chord symbol
  • Fretboard diagram legend can be automatically generated based on chord symbols in score
  • Any text font can now be used for tab numbers
  • Improved engraving and playback support for bends to grace notes after main notes
  • Fret number in fretboard diagram is not repositioned unnecessarily when text is edited
  • Circular markers are no longer added to fretboard diagrams when masked by barrés
  • Fixed spacing of minimum length ties, glissandos, and frets
  • Fixed adding and masking of parentheses around fret number in TAB staves
  • Import TablEdit v3.00+ files — thanks to Leon Vinken (PR author) and Matthieu Leschemelle (TablEdit creator)

Chord symbols

  • Chords galore! New individual scaling, offset, and alignment options for extensions and modifiers, plus the ability stack and parenthesise modifiers
  • Ability to create polychords with the pipe "|" character (N.b. playback support is planned for a future release)

New style options

  • Volta alignment relative to key signatures and barlines
  • Partial slur shape across repeats and breaks
  • Minimum header distance (used when clefs are only shown on first system)
  • Show barline before key & time signatures at start repeats
  • Tuplet bracket position

Text

  • New text formatting popup appears when characters are selected in a text element
  • New editing shortcut Ctrl+Delete (Mac: Cmd+Fn+Backspace) to delete entire word after caret
  • Square brackets and multiplication signs are allowed in time signatures
  • New lyrics styles for hyphens/dashes
  • Lyric extender lines no longer extend over rests
  • Fixes to header, footer, page number & copyright styles
  • Fixed overlapping '6' and '9' characters in chord symbols

Workflow improvements

  • New welcome screen enables quick access to tutorials, free MuseSounds, and other relevant information
  • Selection filter now enables selection of individual notes in chords
  • New mouse shortcut Alt+click to paste the current selection elsewhere
  • Improvements to 'Repeat selection' command when used with 2 or more voices
  • Fixed issue preventing diatonic shifting of enharmonically equivalent notes
  • Slurs entered from the palettes can now be resized
  • Joining/splitting measures no longer corrupts ties at the measure boundary
  • Durations are better accounted for when merging rests
  • Pasting notes near a page break no longer spoils engraving of slurs that span the break
  • Fixed crash on closing score after undo of dragging a measure with partial tie
  • Fixed crash on range selection over multi-measure rest

Percussion

  • The number of drumpad columns in the Percussion Panel can now be modified
  • Added Handbells palette and playback with MuseSounds
  • Added Handchimes instrument

UI

  • Removed delay in showing three-dots (...) context menu icon when switching panel tabs (Palettes, Layout, Properties, etc.)
  • Element colors are now inverted in the palettes when score color inversion is enabled via Preferences > Appearance
  • Improved appearance of rounded corners on popups and dropdown lists

Import/export

  • Support for importing TablEdit files (v3.00+ only, see Guitar section above)
  • MIDI: Exported lyrics now have a space appended after each word
  • MEI: exported title page receives func="first" attribute to show it's the first page
  • MusicXML
    • Import for string mute element, harp pedal diagrams, colors for more element, various other fixes
    • Export fixes for TAB & percussion clefs
    • Import & export support added for guitar tapping, hammer-on, pull-off, hairpin styles

Accessibility

  • Screen reader announcements for more in-score actions (e.g. adding articulations, changing voices)
  • Fixed input and viewing announcements in the Braille panel

Linux

  • VST3 support (please raise an issue on GitHub if a specific Linux VST is not working for you)
  • Enabled fractional scaling (previously disabled to avoid an element offset bug—possibly in Qt—that appears to be fixed now)
  • Fixed Linux-only crash on Alt+Left/Alt+Right navigation in continuous mode
  • Distributions released prior to Ubuntu 22.04 can no longer run the AppImage due to an outdated GLIBC version

Performance

  • Significant performance gains when saving and loading large scores
  • Changes in Page settings dialog are more efficient and properly undoable (press Ctrl+Z after closing dialog)

Plugins

  • Retrograde: Fixed handling of consecutive ties
  • Plugin API: Now includes all new elements and properties added between MuseScore 4.0 and 4.6 (thanks @XiaoMigros!)

Qt fixes

Updating to Qt 6.9 has resolved these issues:

See our GitHub Project for more details.

Upcoming

  • Support for online MuseSounds added for Windows & macOS (will become functional when applicable sound libraries are released)

Comments

• Sep 30, 2025 - 21:42

Amazing!!!! I am using Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon and it works!!!! My vst plugins that I have installed was recognized without any my touch! Just it is! All is working now! How beautiful!! I LOVE Musescore Studio!!! Thank you so much. I can't believe it ;)

Reply

• Sep 30, 2025 - 21:48

Thank you all for working so hard on this amazing update! I work a lot with orchestral and choral music and the customizable hiding of empty staves is a total game changer for me. If you don't mind, I have a few questions regarding your eventual plans for 5.0.

First, I saw on your blog post about your near-term plans that you're planning to more easily allow for multiple instrument parts (for example Flute 1 and Flute 2) to be condensed onto a single staff in conductor's scores. I wonder how customizable this will be? For example, will I be able to write each individual part on its own staff from the get go, then have it automatically condense when I'm ready to engrave and publish the score?

Second, I wonder if you've thought of implementing a divisi feature similar to Dorico's. I believe in Dorico, you can create divisi passages in string and choir parts and have the part split into any number of staves, including separate solo and section staves when needed. If there's any tutti material on the same system before the divisi starts or after it ends, all staves automatically show the same part. I find this feature really intriguing and I think if it were implemented in MuseScore in the future, it would save me and many others a load of time on engraving large ensemble music.

(Currently, I have to add staves to the instrument that span the entire length of the score, hide them everywhere except the systems where the divisi is, and manually copy and paste any tutti material that comes before and after. This last part is especially tedious because I have to manually reconfigure the tutti measures every time the starting or ending measures of the system change, and of course the systems will line up completely differently in the part itself and I have to do the same thing again there.)

Third, have you considered making it easier to add ossia staves? Currently you have to create a cutaway staff that spans the whole score, much like the workaround for divisi passages. This isn't as important an issue in my opinion, but maybe still something to work on!

Fourth, concerning cutaway staves in general, it might be helpful to have an option to include the instrument name, clef and key signature directly at the start of a cutaway staff when it starts mid-system (currently the staff just starts without any of this crucial information and it can be potentially confusing). Also, if a divisi feature like the kind I described above were to be added, it would be nice to include an option to make the divisi parts cutaway staves (probably an on/off toggle for each individual staff), as some professional scores are engraved in this way (for example, I've seen a published edition of Rachmaninoff's 1st Symphony that does this).

I know this is a whole lot to ask about and that every improvement and new feature takes a huge amount of work to implement. But I think it's really amazing how receptive your team has always been to user feedback, and I think these features would be incredible and would make this software even more professional than it has already become with all your hard work on the updates 4.0 and since.

Best regards to you all,

A grateful composer

Reply

• Oct 1, 2025 - 09:17

Thank you for your hard work once again!

The select notes feature inside chords is a game changer for me, as well as the new alt + click paste feature, this one is also amazing.

please note that there is a bug when using the alt + click and then directly explode after it, it does irreversible bugs and will not go back to it's original state and will do problems in saving the file also. Good thing I hadn't saved it yet when it was done, so I closed the software and entered back into it so I can go back to its original state. (sorry for my OK english)

Thank you again

Reply

• Oct 1, 2025 - 19:35

A big thank you to anyone involved! <3

I absolutely love the new stop-and-select-last-played-note shortcut! This helps so much! I am excited and looking forward to try out more of the new features!

(I would have loved to finally see a light theme for the muse hub application on macOS, but then again, I am fine with only using it to upgrade MuseScore Studio for now)

Reply

• Oct 1, 2025 - 19:43

"Engraving support for hammer-on, pull-off, and tapping techniques (playback supported in MuseSounds Guitars Vol. 2 and upwards)".

So... no hammer-on and pull-off playback for free. Quite disappointing.

Reply

• Oct 3, 2025 - 17:53

Tip for Linux users using the AppImage - AppImageLauncher - V3 (beta) available. .
MuseScore v4.6 wasn't installing successfully.
Installing v3 of AppImageLauncher fixed that problem. I confess that I didn't notice it was a beta !
https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
This is under Ubuntu 25.04 i3 window manager and SDDM display manager.

Jon Hind

Reply

• Oct 4, 2025 - 22:08

Waiting for 4.6. Is it at last possible to export to midi and get the instruments, pan and level as configured in the mixture or will I have to continue to use 3.7 to do this?

Reply

• Oct 6, 2025 - 14:17

Greate job!
I wonder if the published plan is still in effect, according to which after version 4.6 (and perhaps version 4.6.1 and similar ones that fix bugs), comes version 5, which deals with more ambitious/innovative functionalities that are still missing (such as automation and piano-roll)?

Reply

• Oct 12, 2025 - 11:51

Musescore Studio 5 will include key features such as "piano roll," "virtual instrument (VST) mapping," and "MIDI channel assignment." Musescore Studio 5 was originally scheduled for a release later this year, but it was postponed to next year for unknown reasons. As things stand, I think the launch of MuseScore Studio 5 will probably be around the end of 2026.

Reply

• Oct 12, 2025 - 16:19

https://musescore.org/en/4.5-and-beyond

I've referenced some of that in this section. Actually, the automation feature may not be fully reflected. However, according to the Playback section of this document, there is an official development opinion that a similar feature will be introduced. The main features won't be known until the program is released, but anyway, I hope Musescore Studio 5 comes out soon.

Reply

• Oct 14, 2025 - 23:05

Hi, after updating to MuseScore Studio 4.6, all sharp (♯) and flat (♭) symbols in chord names are now showing up as empty squares (□), no matter which text font I use. I’ve already tried switching through about 20 different fonts — including both default MuseScore text fonts and external system fonts — but the problem remains the same. This issue did not occur in previous versions, so it seems related to the new SMuFL font handling or chord symbol rendering changes introduced in 4.6.

Also, I usually create lead sheets with chord symbols, and in older versions (like MuseScore 2), after entering a chord, I could simply press the Tab key to move directly to the next measure and continue typing the next chord. Now, in the latest versions, I have to move manually with the arrow keys after each chord, which slows down the workflow. It would be great if the Tab key behavior could be restored or made optional again.

Reply

• Oct 14, 2025 - 23:22

I'm not sure if this works for chord symbols, I've never needed to input chord symbols, but for the figured bass that I put in for basso continuo parts in the classical music I input into MuseScore, I use Ctrl + number to move to a specific part of the measure, like Ctrl + 4 to move an eighth note forward. So maybe you could use Ctrl + 7 to move a whole note or in other words a full 4/4 measure forward to add another chord?

Reply

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.