PDF & photo scanning: what's new

Flat's sheet music scanning, powered by optical music recognition (OMR), keeps getting better. We improve it continuously; this page records updates to PDF and photo import, newest first - major releases in detail, plus periodic notes on smaller notation and recognition improvements.

July 24, 2026

A new version of our model

An improved version of Flat's in-house model now powers every PDF and photo import, in particular:

• Multi-voice passages with shared rests and invisible rests are now supported.
• Barlines and repeat endings (voltas) are now placed correctly within measures.
• Beams are recognized more reliably.
• Time signatures drawn across several staves, as on orchestral scores, are now recognized.
• Fixed some chord symbols that were exported to MusicXML with a non-standard chord type.

July 21, 2026

Opuscan for Windows

Opuscan - our standalone scan-to-score app - is now available on Windows, alongside macOS, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Scan a page or open a PDF, and get an editable, playable score you can export to MusicXML and MIDI - no Flat account required.

Notation and recognition improvements

• Clef changes in the middle of a measure are now recognized.

July 15, 2026

Opuscan for iPhone and iPad

Opuscan - our standalone scan-to-score app - is now on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, joining the macOS and Android apps. Photograph a page or open a PDF, and get an editable, playable score you can export to MusicXML and MIDI - no Flat account required.

July 10, 2026

Dedicated Opuscan apps for macOS and Android

Opuscan - our standalone scan-to-score app - now has dedicated apps for macOS and Android. Built on the same in-house OMR engine as Flat, it lets anyone turn a PDF or photo of sheet music into an editable, playable score and export it to MusicXML and MIDI - no Flat account required. It's made for people who just want the scanning technology to feed their favorite music software, from notation editors (MuseScore, Dorico, Sibelius, Finale) to DAWs (GarageBand, Logic Pro, Ableton Live). Get it on the Mac App Store or Google Play.

OMR is now available as a developer API

Flat's OMR engine is now available programmatically through the developer API. Send PDFs or photos, follow recognition progress, review the detected instruments, then import the result as an editable score in a Flat library or export MusicXML or MIDI. It's the same in-house model that powers PDF and photo import in the editor, now available at scale for your own apps and workflows.

Notation and recognition improvements

• Courtesy (cautionary) accidentals are now recognized.
• Fixed some multi-voice passages where the two voices share a rest.

June 23, 2026

Sharper page analysis for complex layouts

We've improved how scanning reads the layout of a page. Imports of PDFs and photos now produce cleaner, more accurate scores, especially on complex layouts:

• Dense pages now split correctly. Pages with many short systems stacked on top of each other are no longer merged together - each system is detected separately.
• Better on orchestral and large-ensemble scores. Multi-staff instruments such as piano and organ, and large scores with many staves, are recognized more reliably.
• Wide, landscape, and booklet layouts. Landscape pages no longer clip the left edge (which could cut off clefs), and multi-page and booklet scans are handled correctly.
• Fewer stray detections. Spurious elements near page footers and margins are no longer picked up as music.

Notation and recognition improvements

• Custom beaming patterns are now recognized and preserved on import.
• Beams that span rests (for example, note / rest / note) are now supported.
• Jazz scores, when correctly detected, now apply a jazz chord style and handwritten jazz music font automatically.

June 15, 2026

A more accurate model

Every PDF and photo import is now processed by Flat's own in-house model. This release is a major new version focused on transcription accuracy: musical correctness (the notes, rhythms, ties, and accidentals that determine whether a score is right) improves across every test set, with the largest gains in:

Text, dynamics, and layout placement are also more precise: lyrics, chord names, and dynamics attach more reliably to the correct notes, including on complex layouts such as piano grand staves and parts with clef changes.

June 1, 2026

Our own AI model starts rolling out

We're rolling out Flat's own AI model for PDF and photo import, designed and trained in-house to replace the third-party engine used at launch. Owning the technology end to end lets us push accuracy further, broaden what we recognize, ship improvements far faster, and align results with Flat's own notation format so imports fit naturally into the rest of the product. This first release already reads much more of your music:

Broader notation coverage. Newly recognized:

• Chord symbols, properly encoded with their musical meaning as editable chords, not just plain text
• Measure repeats and rhythm slashes
• Tempo and metronome markings (with BPM)

Lyrics and text in more languages. Lyrics, rehearsal marks, and other text are recognized in Latin-script languages by default, plus Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

Truer to the original layout. Imports now follow the source score's layout much more closely, matching the number of measures per line, systems per page, and overall structure. This makes a real difference on large, complex scores such as orchestral works and multi-staff instruments like piano. It also supports more page formats, including landscape pages that weren't supported before.

September 1, 2025

PDF import launches

PDF import is now available, letting you turn a PDF of sheet music into an editable score. It's powered by third-party optical music recognition technology.