Support
How to reach us, and the questions that come up most.
Get in touch
Mail goes to the people who build the app, not to a queue. Write to songwriters-drawer@baansoftware.com and say which phone you are on and what you were doing when it went wrong; if it involves a recording, the length of the take helps more than you would think.
Questions
Do I need an account?
Not to use it. There is no sign-up to write, record, film or search, and the app opens on your drawer the first time you launch it. An account exists for one thing: a backup belongs to a person rather than to a phone, so signing in is what makes your songs come back after a phone is lost.
Does it work without a signal?
Nearly all of it. Recording, filming, writing, chords, versions, playback and search run against the database on the phone. Three things need a connection: reading handwriting from a photograph, writing down a take you spoke, and the backup if you subscribe to one.
Can I change a recording after I make it?
No, and that is deliberate. A take is a moment: it is kept as it was sung. You can name it, archive the song it belongs to, or record another one beside it, but nothing rewrites what you already sang.
Where are my recordings stored?
In the app's own storage on your phone, alongside the database that lists them. That is inside the app's documents, so your phone's own backup already carries it. Settings will also hand you every song and every recording in one file whenever you ask, free — and a subscription keeps a copy on our servers under your account.
What is sent over the internet?
Three things. A page of handwriting you photograph and a take you speak both go off to be read, and only when you ask. The app reports which features get used and crashes when it crashes, as counts and labels rather than anything you wrote. And if you subscribe, your songs, takes and videos are backed up under your account. Without a subscription nothing you write or record leaves the phone except the two you asked for.
Can I write in Hebrew or Arabic?
Yes. Each field reads the direction of the text you actually typed rather than the language of the phone, so a Hebrew lyric right-aligns itself inside an English interface, line by line.
What does it cost?
The app is free, with no advertising, and taking a copy of everything out of it is free and always will be. Reading a photographed page and writing down a take cost us money each time, so a free account gets a monthly allowance of them. A subscription lifts that allowance and adds a backup of your songs, takes and videos.
Backing up your songs
Everything the app holds lives on the phone: the database that lists your songs, the audio behind every take, the videos, and the photographs of pages you shot. All of it sits inside the app's own documents, which means your phone's own backup already carries it — iCloud backup on iPhone, or your usual Android backup. Restore a phone and the drawer comes back with it.
Two things go further. Get a copy of everything, in settings, builds a single file holding every song, every word and every recording, and hands it to you to keep wherever you like. It is free, it works offline, and it always will be free. And a subscription adds a backup on our servers, under an account you sign in to, so your songs come back after a phone is lost rather than after a phone is restored.
Deleting the app removes what is on the phone. If you have a subscription, signing in on a new phone brings it all back.
When handwriting will not read
Photograph the page flat and in even light, and expect the words the model could not read to come back marked as uncertain rather than invented. The photograph itself is kept whatever happens, so a failed reading never costs you the page.
When the words you spoke come back wrong
Speaking is transcribed by the same model, and it is transcribing a song rather than a dictation: a hummed line comes back empty, a line sung four times comes back four times, and anything it was unsure of is marked rather than invented. The take is saved on the song before a word of it is sent, so a bad transcript never costs you the recording — correct the words, or keep the take and ignore them. Reading handwriting and writing down speech are the two parts of the app that need a connection.
Recordings that sound wrong
Takes are recorded as AAC at 192 kbps, mono, 44.1 kHz, with echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain control switched off, because all three are tuned for speech on a call and flatten a sung note. If a take is much quieter than you expected, the phone was probably routing audio through a headset microphone — unplug it and record again. The earlier take stays where it is either way.
Nothing is deleted
There is no delete button for a song anywhere in the app, by design. Archiving is how a song leaves the drawer, and the archive is one tap away with unarchive on every tile. If a song seems to have vanished, look there first.
Still stuck?
Write to us. A real person reads it, and a description of what you expected to happen is worth a hundred screenshots.
Free. No account, no advertising, and nothing to sign up for.