Help

Get started

1. Open EarFret and tap Get started.
2. Under What do you play?, choose your instrument and Right-handed or Left-handed. Left-handed mirrors every neck so the head is on the right, the way you see your guitar.
3. Under How much do you already know?, say roughly how far along you are, then tap Continue. EarFret skips what you know and checks it now and then instead.
4. Tap Allow the microphone so EarFret can hear you play. (Tap Not now to answer by tapping for now.)
5. On the Practice tab, tap Start on Today's practice for a mix of everything you're learning, or tap any drill.

A few minutes a day is plenty. To change your daily goal, open Settings › Daily goal. To choose which topics Today's practice draws from, tap Change next to “Learning” on the Practice tab (or Settings › What I'm learning).

Practice with your guitar

1. Tune up first: tap Tune up at the top of the Practice tab (see Tune up).
2. Tap Start on Today's practice, or pick a drill. Not sure what a drill wants? Tap its ? button for How it works.
3. Play your answer. Each note you play lights up on the neck as it's heard.
4. Read the verdict: right, One fret too high (or low), Right note, wrong octave, or the note you actually played. You get a few tries; after two misses a hint shows one spot of the answer.
5. In ear drills, tap Hear it again as often as you like.

Headphones keep the app's own notes out of the microphone. You don't need to mute other strings: EarFret listens for the note you just played, even while others ring.

Practice without your guitar

1. On the Practice tab, switch from Instrument with me to No instrument.
2. Start a drill. Notes you'd play are answered by tapping the neck or the note names, and the notes you tap still sound.
3. Drills that need your instrument are hidden until you switch back to Instrument with me.

Other ways to practice away from the guitar: Listen, the Apple Watch quizzes, and quick quizzes in your notifications. They all count toward the same progress and streak.

Practice without looking at the screen

1. Open Settings and find Practice without the screen.
2. Turn on Say each question aloud to hear every question.
3. Turn on Hands-free mode and EarFret also tells you how each answer went, moves on by itself, asks again if you go quiet, and keeps the screen on.
4. Turn on Voice commands to say “next”, “again”, “answer” or “stop” between notes. Voice commands are in English and are understood on your device.

Listen and answer out loud

Ear training with no screen and no instrument: EarFret asks, plays, and listens for your answer. Good for the commute, a walk or the dishes. It keeps playing with the screen locked.

1. On the Practice tab, open Listen, pick a Length (5, 10 or 20 minutes) and tap a topic: Intervals, Chord Sounds, Up or Down?, Scale Degrees or Major or Minor?
2. After each question is played there's a short pause. Say your answer out loud, like “perfect fifth”, “minor” or “up, down”.
3. You'll hear “Right!” or “Not quite.”, then the answer. Say nothing and you just hear the answer.
4. At the end you hear your score. Your answers count toward your progress in that drill, and the time counts toward your daily goal.
5. To answer in your head instead, turn off Answer out loud in Listen.

Pause, skip or go back with your AirPods, headphone buttons or the Lock Screen controls. The first time, allow the microphone and speech recognition. EarFret only listens during the pauses, on your device: nothing is recorded or sent.

Free: the 5-minute Up or Down? session (marked Free). The other topics and lengths are part of EarFret Pro.

Tune up, one string at a time

1. Tap Tune up at the top of the Practice tab, or open Tools › Tuner and choose Guided.
2. Play the string it asks for (it starts with the string nearest your face) and let it ring.
3. Turn the peg the way it says: “tune up” makes the note higher, “tune down” lower. 100 cents is one fret, so 10 cents is a small turn.
4. When it's in tune, keep it ringing for a second: the string turns green and the next one comes up by itself.
5. Tap any string to tune it again. When every string is green you see All in tune.

Played a different string? It tells you which one it heard. Free mode shows any note you play, for odd tunings or other instruments. Tuned to another concert pitch on purpose (432, say)? Set it with Concert pitch in Settings and the tuner and drills follow.

“Your notes are coming in flat”

During practice, if the right notes keep coming in sharp or flat by the same amount, your instrument has probably drifted out of tune. EarFret mentions it at most once a session.

1. Tap Open the tuner. Practice waits.
2. Tune each string (see Tune up).
3. Tap Back to practice. Or tap Not now to carry on as you are.

Check intonation

Shows whether notes up the neck are in tune: each string's 12th fret should sound exactly an octave above the open string. If not, chords and solos up the neck sound off even when the open strings are in tune.

1. Open Tools › Tuner and tap Check intonation (or tap it on the All in tune screen), then Start.
2. Tune the string it shows. Already in tune? Tap It's already in tune.
3. Pluck the open string two or three times, letting it ring.
4. Play the same string at the 12th fret two or three times. Press just hard enough for a clean note, and fret it rather than playing the chime.
5. It moves on to the next string by itself. Tap Skip this string to leave one out, or Finish to stop early.

Each string gets Good (within 5 cents), Slightly off (5 to 15) or Needs a setup (more than 15), with what a guitar tech would do about it. Your last check is shown alongside as Before, so you can see what a setup or new strings changed. Tap Check again to repeat it.

Apple Watch

1. If EarFret isn't on your watch yet, open the Watch app on your iPhone, find EarFret under available apps and tap Install.
2. Open EarFret on your watch and pick a quiz: Notes on the neck, Intervals, Notes in chords or Keys and signatures, or one under Ear training (these play sound through the watch speaker or your headphones).
3. Choose how many Questions: 5, 10 or 20.
4. Tap your answer. In ear quizzes, tap Hear it again to replay. The flame counts your answers in a row.
5. At the end, tap Again or Done. Answers count toward your reviews and streak on your iPhone.

The watch uses the same instrument, tuning and hand as your iPhone. Changed them? Open EarFret on your iPhone once and the watch follows.

Your reminders are on the watch too: scroll to the bottom of the menu and tap Reminders to see each one (when it comes and what it does) and switch it on or off. Your iPhone picks up the change. Add or change reminders on your iPhone.

Widgets, including CarPlay

Two widgets: Practice (your streak, today's practice and what to review next) and Skills (how well you know the neck, the theory and your ear). Tap one to jump into the app.

1. iPhone or iPad Home Screen: touch and hold an empty spot until the icons jiggle, tap Edit › Add Widget, search for EarFret, choose Practice or Skills and a size, then tap Add Widget.
2. Lock Screen: touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, choose the Lock Screen, tap the widget area and pick EarFret.
3. Mac: Control-click the desktop, choose Edit Widgets, search for EarFret and drag a widget onto the desktop.
4. CarPlay (iOS 26 or later): small widgets can appear on the CarPlay dashboard. Add EarFret's widgets to your iPhone first, then turn on widgets for your car in the iPhone's CarPlay settings (Settings › General › CarPlay, then your car).

Reminders and quick quizzes

The daily nudge

EarFret nudges you at 1 pm on days you haven't practiced yet. Any practice counts: a drill, Listen, or a quiz on a notification or your Apple Watch. On a day you've practiced, it stays quiet.

1. Tap the reminder, or press and hold it and tap Start practice, to go straight to today's practice.
2. Press and hold it and tap Change reminders to open Settings › Reminders at that reminder, where you can change its time or days.
3. To stop it, switch off Daily nudge in Settings (one tap). On your Apple Watch: open EarFret, scroll down and tap Reminders, then switch it off.
4. Not getting it? If Settings › Reminders says notifications are off, tap Open notification settings and allow them for EarFret.

Any reminder you make can work the same way: turn on Only if I haven't practiced today when you edit it.

Your own reminders and quizzes

1. Open Settings › Reminders and quick quizzes.
2. Under Add, tap a starting point and allow notifications when asked.
3. Choose what it does: Reminder to practice, Quick quiz (answered right in the notification, on your iPhone, Mac or Apple Watch) or Ear quiz (tapping it opens a short listen-and-choose quiz).
4. Under When, choose At set times, Repeating or At random times (different times every day, spread out between two times you pick), and which days.
5. Under Ask about, choose the topics, then tap Done.
6. Want to see one now? Tap Send a quiz in 5 seconds and lock your phone.

Reminders go quiet for the rest of the day once you've met your goal. The Weekly report switch on the same screen sends a summary every Monday at 9:00, leading with what improved. Open a report and tap Email this report to send it to yourself or a teacher as a colourful, easy-to-read email; it goes from your own mail app, and EarFret keeps no copy.

Sync between devices

1. Sign in to the same Apple Account, with iCloud on, on your iPhone, iPad and Mac.
2. Make sure EarFret is allowed to use iCloud (in your device's Settings, under your name › iCloud).
3. Open EarFret on each device. Settings shows iCloud sync and when it last synced.

Progress, settings, reminders and maps follow you; practice on each device all counts. Microphone sensitivity, the input you chose and No instrument stay set per device.

EarFret Pro and restoring purchases

1. Open Settings › EarFret Pro and tap See what Pro includes (or tap any drill marked Pro).
2. Choose yearly (starts with a free trial) or lifetime (one payment), and confirm with your Apple Account.
3. New device or reinstalled? Tap Restore purchases in Settings › EarFret Pro. Have a code? Tap Redeem a code there.

One purchase unlocks Pro on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and it's shared with your family through Family Sharing. To cancel the yearly subscription, open your device's Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions.

Not hearing you?

1. Allow the microphone: on iPhone or iPad, Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone and turn on EarFret; on a Mac, System Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone.
2. In EarFret, open Settings › Microphone › Check the microphone and play a few notes, soft and loud, low and high. Each should show up.
3. Tap Set sensitivity for this room and stay quiet for three seconds with your strings muted. EarFret measures the background noise and ignores it.
4. Still missing quiet notes? Turn Sensitivity up. Hearing notes you didn't play? Turn it down.
5. Using an audio interface? Choose its input under Channel in Check the microphone.
6. Tune up. A string far out of tune can be heard as the next note.

If it hears the wrong note, harmonics and heavy distortion can confuse it: try a cleaner tone. In a drill, if nothing has been heard for a while, a Not hearing you? card offers Check the microphone or Tap instead for the rest of that session.

Send us a listening log

1. Open Settings › Troubleshooting and turn on Keep a listening log.
2. Play a few drills where it mishears you.
3. Back in Settings › Troubleshooting, tap Export listening log…, save or share the file, and email it to [email protected] with a line about what you played.
4. Tap Clear listening log when you're done, and turn the switch off.

The log is text: the pitches and notes it heard and how answers were graded. It never contains sound, and it leaves your device only if you share it.

Listen isn't hearing my answers

Allow both the microphone and speech recognition (Settings › Privacy & Security › Speech Recognition). If your device can't recognize speech in your language on the device itself, Listen says so: answer in your head instead.

Security & Privacy

Your playing and your voice stay on your device: EarFret listens only while you practice, works out the notes right there and never records or sends the sound. Spoken answers and voice commands are understood on the device too. There's no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and your progress syncs only through your own private iCloud, which we can't read.

Turn off the microphone or speech recognition

1. Open your device's Settings, then Privacy & Security (on a Mac, System Settings › Privacy & Security).
2. Choose Microphone or Speech Recognition and switch EarFret off.

You can still answer every drill by tapping, and in Listen you can answer in your head.

Delete your data

1. Reset all progress (at the bottom of Settings) erases your progress here and on your other devices.
2. To remove EarFret's data from iCloud, open your device's Settings, tap your name, then iCloud › Manage Storage, choose EarFret and delete its data.
3. Deleting the app removes everything it kept on that device.

The listening log (Settings › Troubleshooting) is off unless you turn it on, holds pitch readings as text, never sound, and leaves the device only if you export it. Every protection is listed on Security & Privacy.

Contact

Email [email protected] (or Settings › Help › Email [email protected] in the app). A person reads every message, usually within a day.