Growth · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)
Hello HN, this has been my personal project for quite some time now. It has been a slowly evolving project over the years and its core function is for users to expose themselves to progressively more difficult lessons of music notes. NOTE: It is free and there are no ads. There is an in app purchase but most of the app doesn't require it.
This iOS app helps musicians practice sight reading through progressively more challenging music note lessons. Designed for anyone learning to read sheet music, it offers a free experience without advertisements, with… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
I always found sheet music way too hard to read - and I literally spent a year at a company building a sheet music rendering engine. I wanted an app that would display music like the tutorials on YouTube, but not be focused on upselling lessons etc. like most current apps, and also would let me import my own files This works on MIDI files. If it’s a valid midi it probably plays. Since releasing, I did add a subscription for classical music - on a theory that most normal users don’t know what a midi file is. It changed about a month ago from an up front price to in app purchases and/or a…
2023 · jacobdoescode.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Computer generated music for sight reading practice
2016 · its alternatives →
- 3SM
Hi everyone, my name is Kevin Lin, and this is a Show HN for my sheet music smart glasses project. My video was on the front page on Friday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43876243, but dang said we should do a Show HN as well, so here goes! I’ve wanted to put sheet music into smart glasses for a long time, but the perfect opportunity to execute came in mid-February, when Mentra (YC W25) tweeted about a smart glasses hackathon they were hosting - winners would get to take home a pair. I went, had a blast making a bunch of music-related apps with my teammate, and we won,…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 4
- 5
LightNote▲242An interactive site to learn the basics of music theory 🎶
2016 · lightnote.co · its alternatives →
- 6
Better Notes▲357Simple notes app that ties notes together with #hashtags
2016 · betternotesapp.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Pocket Listen▲425Reading is hard. Listen to articles instead.
2015 · getpocket.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Spit Notes▲198Hey HN, I finally made Spit Notes, a purpose-built iOS app for songwriters that seamlessly connects your audio to your lyrics, ensuring you never lose a song idea again. For years, my own songwriting process caused my phone to be filled with hundreds of untitled voice memos (e.g., "New Recording 142") and a completely separate notes app held my lyrics. This forced a clunky, fragmented workflow that allowed for sparks of song ideas to be forgotten or slip through the cracks. Spit Notes is the app I wished existed to solve this. What it does: Unites melodies and lyrics: You can record audio…
2025 · getspitnotes.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Mozart for iOS▲258Make a song and a music video while you're on the go
Feb 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Notebag▲298A keyboard-focused note-taking app that gets out of your way
2020 · notebag.app · its alternatives →
- 11
Melodic Mind▲134Intuitive touch-based Mobile DAW with Integrated Music theory. Audio effects & Toolkit. Ear training. Songwriting. Start creating music now.
Nov 2025 · melodic-mind.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Hello HN, I just released this music theory and ear training mobile app for guitar which I've been working on for a bit more than a year on the side. The idea was to make something for the eternally "intermediate" guitarist (myself included). There are a lot of beginner apps which rely on learning songs, toolkits which give you a bunch of stuff with no explanation but not many in-between apps to actually learn and practice more generic and somewhat advanced stuff. The app contains short lessons, recaps and most importantly challenges (visual, audio and pure theory) along with a very complete…
2025 · cadenceguitar.com · its alternatives →
- 13
Backstory: I have a kid learning to play the clarinet in a music conservatory, which involves compulsory sight reading classes. Teaching for sight reading is done on books. The idea for this app is to port the method online, so that it's easier to practice and follow one's progress. It should also be more fun, and, for those so inclined, competitive. The learning method is based on landmarks: for each clef one first learns the position of 2-3 landmarks, and then each note is in relation to a landmark. So for example, if you know where the middle G is on the treble clef, then you can learn…
2022 · babeloop.com · its alternatives →
- 14
A simple and free note taking app for iOS devices.
2021 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 15
- 16RI
I'm launching something that started as a side project publicly today: ReadToMe, which is an iPhone app that turns paper books and other printed text into audio. Originally this was a Christmas present for my fiancée, who loves books but has an eye problem that makes it hard for her to read more than a few pages at a time. She mostly listens to audiobooks while following along with the paper book, but some books aren't available in audiobook or even e-book form, and all of the existing apps we tried were surprisingly bad at scanning paper books into audio — they make lots of mistakes,…
2024 · readtome-app.com · its alternatives →
- 17
- 18
ReadHero▲149ReadHero 2.0: New Look, Smarter AI, Widgets & Book Search!
2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 19
PlayScore 2 takes traditional music scanning to the next level. Using the latest techniques in Optical Music Recognition (OCR for music).
2019 · playscore.co · its alternatives →
- 20
Thank you for your comments, just some context: - The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, and the Web. - The Web version is implemented as a Progressive Web Application that is very responsive, local first, offline first, can be installed, and is entirely free to use. - Native (hybrid) versions do not require subscription fees and have small one-time payment. - You can store your notes in Git using any Git provider such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. However, it has the best built-in integration with GitHub. Self-hosted scenarios like Gitea are also…
2024 · about.noteshub.app · its alternatives →
- 21AP
2019 · dpapavas.github.io · its alternatives →
- 22
Modern tools for music learning and teaching
2025 · notewize.com · its alternatives →
- 23
I built this app because I realized that I forgot about a song for a while and therefore got a lot worse at that song. The app will make you play your lowest-proficiency songs (something you just started learning) daily. Medium-proficiency songs (you can play them, but you have room for improvement) get played several times a week. High-proficiency songs (you have mastered them) are cycled through at the rate of approximately one-two per day. This app is in no way complete and probably contains bugs. With that being said, I have been daily-driving it in its current state for several days…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24OI
Hello HN community! I'm excited to introduce a project I've recently launched: Oration, an iOS app designed to convert PDFs into audiobooks. This idea was inspired by my experiences as an engineering student with ADHD, struggling to engage with dense academic papers. Relying on Text-to-Speech tools, despite their robotic quality, was a workaround for me and others with similar learning preferences or challenges, such as Dyslexia. Recognizing the limitations of existing tools—difficulty with complex formats, inability to skip over citations or footnotes, and inadequate handling of tables,…
2024 · oration.app · its alternatives →
Also compare
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →