Boring Guitar Tuner

Boring Cat

About this app

A guitar tuner that does the job and then gets out of the way. No ads, no
sign-up, no internet connection, no tracking — just an accurate tuner, a
metronome, a chord library and a set of ear training drills.

TUNER
• Reads your string in real time and shows how far off it is, in cents, on a
dial you can follow with your peg hand.
• Automatic string detection: play any string and the tuner works out which
one it is. Or lock onto a single string when you are miles out and want to
stay there.
• Chromatic mode for anything that is not a guitar — mandolin, violin, brass,
voice, whatever you point it at.
• Reference pitch is adjustable from 415 Hz to 466 Hz, so you can match an
ensemble, a piano that has drifted, or a period instrument.

TUNINGS
• Guitar: Standard, Drop D, Drop C#, Drop C, Half Step Down, Whole Step Down,
Open D, Open G, Open E, Open A, DADGAD, and more.
• 7-string guitar, 4-string and 5-string bass, ukulele, banjo, mandolin,
violin, viola and cello.
• Build and save your own tuning, string by string, if the one you use is not
in the list.
• Tap any tuning to hear a reference tone for each string.

METRONOME
• 20 to 300 BPM, sample-accurate timing that does not drift.
• 2, 3, 4 or 6 beats per bar, with quarter, eighth, triplet or sixteenth
subdivisions.
• Accent on the first beat, and a tap-tempo button for when you know the feel
but not the number.

CHORDS
• Fingerings for every root and chord type — major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, 6, m6,
sus2, sus4, 7sus4, add9, 9, m9, maj9, dim, dim7, m7b5 and aug.
• Shapes are worked out for the tuning you are actually in, not looked up from
a table of standard-tuning diagrams. Switch to Drop D and the shapes change
with you.
• Several playable voicings per chord, each one checked for whether a hand can
really hold it.
• Hear any chord played back.

EAR TRAINING
• Intervals: hear two notes, name the distance between them.
• Chord types: hear a chord, say whether it is major, minor or something
richer.
• Pitch match: hear a note, play it back, and the tuner grades how close you
got.
• Tune by ear: match a string to a reference tone with the meter hidden, then
see how you did.

THE QUIET PARTS
• Works fully offline. There is no server, no account and no analytics.
• The only permission it asks for is the microphone, and that is used solely
to hear the note in front of it. Audio is analysed on the device, in memory,
and never recorded, stored or sent anywhere.
• Optional history of every string you brought into tune, kept on the phone,
so you can see which pegs keep slipping.
• Keeps the screen awake while you tune, so it does not go dark mid-string.

Suits acoustic guitar, electric guitar, classical guitar, bass, ukulele and
banjo — whether you have been playing a week or twenty years.

What’s new

First release.

Tuner with automatic string detection and a chromatic mode, alternate tunings
for guitar, bass, ukulele and more, a metronome, a chord library that follows
whatever tuning you are in, and four ear training drills.