A desktop guitar tab player. Drop in a Guitar Pro file (GP3, GP4, GP5, GPX) and you're playing — no account, no ads, no install-a-launcher, no "upgrade to premium" wall.

Why this exists

We all got tired of Songsterr. Features that used to be free ended up behind a paywall, including things that run entirely client-side, and the experience kept getting worse while there wasn't a real alternative to switch to. So I built one.

TabEngine is free, and it's staying that way — no paywalled updates, no premium tier, ever. It's licensed under GPLv3 specifically so nobody can fork it, slap a price tag on it, and ship it as a closed-source product. If anyone improves it, that improvement stays free for everyone too.

What it does

• Opens GP3 / GP4 / GP5 / GPX files and renders synced tab + standard notation, powered by alphaTab
• Real mixer — per-track volume, mute, solo, pan
• Loop sections, metronome, and tempo shifting for the parts you need to slow down
• Works fully offline once you have a file
• No local file? Search and pull tabs straight from Songsterr without leaving the app — including copyright-restricted songs, via a built-in fallback downloader

Screenshots

Good to know

• This is an early project — functional day-to-day, but still rough around the edges. Expect some bugs.
• Songsterr browsing will break. TabEngine talks to Songsterr's site directly, and they change things on their end without warning. When that happens, browsing/fetching will stop working until I patch it — it's outside my control, but I'll fix it as fast as I can.
• Copyright-restricted tabs load a bit differently, but still work. Songsterr blocks some songs from being fetched the normal way. For those, TabEngine falls back to an in-app downloader/converter automatically — just hit "Load via Downloader" instead of "Load in Player." No manual steps needed anymore. That converter is adapted from Metaphysics0/songsterr-downloader — credit to that project for the original conversion logic.
• TabEngine isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or in any way connected to Songsterr. It just talks to their public site to fetch tabs, same as your browser would.

Found a bug or something feels broken? Open an issue. Want to fix it yourself? PRs are very welcome.

Installation notes

Prebuilt binaries (Windows, macOS, Linux) are attached to each release. Working as of v0.1.7. Heads up: they're unsigned — I don't pay for a Windows code-signing certificate or an Apple developer account ($99/year), so your OS will flag the app as coming from an unverified developer. Don't worry, that's expected, not a red flag. Here's how to get past it:

• Windows (.exe) — SmartScreen will show "Windows protected your PC." Click More info → Run anyway.
• macOS (.dmg) — Gatekeeper will block the app as from an unidentified developer. Right-click the app in Applications and choose Open, or clear the quarantine flag manually:

  xattr -cr /Applications/TabEngine.app

• Linux (.AppImage) — no signing required. Just mark it executable and run it:

  chmod +x TabEngine_0.1.7_amd64.AppImage

  Requires glibc ≥ 2.39 (Ubuntu 24.04+, Fedora 40+, or any rolling-release distro). On older distros, build from source instead.

Building from source

npm install        # installs deps, also copies alphaTab's runtime assets into public/
npm run tauri dev   # starts the real app: Vite + the Tauri window

That's it — you're up and running. Use this route until the GitHub binaries are fixed.

A few other scripts, in case you need them:

npm run dev    # just the Vite dev server, no Tauri window — useful for quick UI iteration
npm run build  # type-checks then builds for production
npm run check  # svelte-check, run this before committing any .svelte changes
npm run sync-songsterr  # pulls the Songsterr-tab converter source from its upstream repo — only needed if you're touching that code

How it's built

• Frontend — Svelte 4 + TypeScript, with alphaTab doing the heavy lifting for rendering and audio playback.
• Backend — Rust via Tauri 2. All filesystem access (reading/saving/scanning tabs) and the Songsterr network calls happen here, not in the webview.

Tauri keeps the app small — no Electron/Chromium bundled in, just your OS's native webview.

License

GPLv3 — free forever, and any derivative work has to stay free too.