musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Playback cursor: move by beat (instead of smoothly / by tick)

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#18,809 1 comment 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@EricManiez is already working on this.

Since Mar 4, 2026.

community feature request good second issue
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Description

Your idea

Personally, I like the ability to have the playback cursor move by the tempo beat. In MuseScore 3, the notes on the score get highlighted while playing, so the need for a cursor is in a sense diminished because of the visual feedback already present. Because of this, I gave myself an option to have per-beat updating which adds a certain sort of informational playback. I like it, so I figured I'd put it on github as a potential suggestion that the team could accept or not for MuseScore 4 in the future. It almost acts like a visual metronome during playback.

I also think having per measure highlight like on the .com side would be nice for users

Demonstration

Here's a demonstration for instance in MS3:

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/assets/7139517/6b26205b-e437-4fdb-a496-6f63626e590e

The idea was to provide this in the advanced preferences (MS3 style):
cursorChoice

And here's a demonstration of per measure like the .com style:

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/assets/7139517/9d2052ac-7dc8-43fe-a688-4797c66e0dbc

I'd imagine general users would be thankful to have the options, but not sure...

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