MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 is now available!

Hi everyone,

As work on MuseScore Studio 4.5 continues at full pace, we've prepared a small extra update in the meantime: MuseScore Studio 4.4.4.

This update brings stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as some smaller features that we felt were suitable to include in a patch.

Engraving

• All combinations of dynamics and expression text are now properly centred between staves (#25451)
• Offset applied to lyrics is now taken into account when positioning other elements around them (#25485)

Usability

• Pressing an arrow key while nothing is selected in the score will select the note or rest nearest your previous selection instead of jumping to the beginning or end of the score (#24157, #25371)
• After pressing Esc to exit fingering input, the fingering element stays selected, so that you can (for example) use the arrow keys to move it around if desired (#25413)
• Scroll wheel & scroll gestures are now solely used for scrolling, i.e. not for changing the values of sliders and knobs (e.g. in the Mixer) (#11128)
• Muse Sound libraries can have now have nested categories of sounds for easier navigation in the Mixer (#25546)

Import & export

• MusicXML: Certain score titles are no longer incorrectly identified as subtitles (#24553)
• MEI: Various fixes and minor improvements (#25557)

User interface

• Incorrect size calculations, resulting in the undo/redo buttons falling off the screen, were fixed. (#24344)
• Toolbar buttons no longer cut off after relaunch with small window size (#24344)
• Tab names (e.g. 'Home', 'Score', 'Publish', etc.) are no longer truncated when viewed in certain fonts (#25502)
• Lilypond Lyrics plugin dialog is fixed (#25482)

Miscellaneous

• Parts are now saved correctly for display on MuseScore.com
• Links to more sounds are displayed on the Home screen and Mixer
• Advanced users can now disable the creation of backup files when saving scores, via Preferences > Advanced (#14973)

Keyboard shortcuts on macOS

The following shortcuts are now working, which were broken for some users in 4.4.3:

• T shortcut for ties (#25321)
• Delete key (#25373)
• Shortcuts involving multiple modifier keys, such as Shift+Option (#25314, #24497)

Stability improvements

Crashes are fixed that used to occur when:

• Attempting to edit part scores immediately after creating a score from a custom template that contains part scores with measure numbers on every measure (#25169)
• Interacting with corrupted measures in certain very old scores imported from MuseScore 1 and 2 (#25031)
• Navigating around vertical frames using the arrow keys in horizontal continuous mode (where vertical frames are of course not visible) (#24234)
• Dragging a range selection containing guitar bends (#25424)
• Pasting notes after replacing an unpitched percussion instrument with a different instrument (#25657)
• Viewing a score after certain spanner elements have been added and then removed (#25708)
• Opening a MusicXML file that contains a measure-layout tag in the first measure (#25710)
• Changing the tempo of a score while the Pianoteq VST plugin was loaded (#25579)

Mitigation for score file corruption

Over the years, we've received a handful of reports from Windows users about corrupted score files that contain only binary zeros, or are zero bytes in length. This could be caused by any combination of factors, including:

• MuseScore Studio's code
• Qt or other software libraries
• Windows or its filesystem (usually NTFS or FAT)
• Specific hardware or drivers
• Other software on the computer (including viruses)
• User error (e.g. overwriting a file, or unplugging a flash drive without unmounting it first)

Unfortunately, we've never been able to reproduce the problem ourselves in order to understand and fix it.

While we can't stop the problem happening, community member @krasko78 came up with a clever idea that will help to mitigate it if it does occur. According to his implementation, every time you save a file, MuseScore Studio will perform a quick check to see whether the saved file is valid. If not, a warning dialog will appear with the option to "Try again" at the same location, or "Save as..." at a new location. If this is unsuccessful then the dialog will pop up again and again until the score is successfully saved, or you choose to "Cancel".

This means MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 does everything it possibly can to protect your data from corruption. However, corruption can still occur after the file is saved for reasons that are outside of MuseScore Studio's control. As always, we recommend that you keep a backup copy of all important files in the cloud, for example via the Save to Cloud feature in MuseScore Studio.

What's next

You can install this update via MuseHub today, or via MuseScore Studio's built-in update notification in a few day's time.

If you haven't seen it yet, you may be interested in our upcoming changes to the MuseScore Studio Handbook.

Soon, we will publish a blog post about our progress on version 4.5 and beyond.

Thank you for using MuseScore Studio!