What’s new
A dated list of what has changed in Octotune, newest first: in late September 2026, games and activity boards, players whose profile decides Kids or Adult, Sign in with Apple, studios for teachers, the teacher report, painted notes and our own songbooks.
What has changed in Octotune, newest first. Small fixes are left out; the changes you would notice are here.
September 26, 2026
- The Kids grown-ups' button opens with one tap. It used to need a press and hold. What needs a grown-up beyond it still asks the grown-ups' question first.
- "Who's playing?" is quiet. Picking a player no longer plays a note.
September 25, 2026
- A player's profile decides Kids or Adult. There is no Kids and Adult switch any more: each player is one or the other, and the app follows whoever is playing. A new device makes its first player during setup; to change who is playing, tap the picture at the top of the screen. Existing progress became players, so nothing was lost.
- Games. A third tab beside Learn and Songs, with four games played at the piano: Note Rain (reading), Copycat (listening and memory), Duet (the family game: two players at one piano, or one with Octo) and Moss's Parade (rhythm). They use only the notes the path has taught.
- Activity boards. An Explore shelf of fourteen touch toys, each teaching one idea without the piano: among them Color by Note, Songbook Jigsaw, Music Box Maker, Long and Short Boats, Chord Builder, Key Wheel, Note Sticker Book and Octo's Band. Nothing on them can be lost or failed.
- Pearls from games have a daily limit. The games can still be played after it.
- Sign in with Apple on the web, beside Google. Signing in stays optional, and for grown-ups only. See privacy.
- Studios for teachers. A teacher can start a studio and invite adult students with a code or a link. Each student chooses what their teacher sees, and sharing starts switched off. Children can't join a studio. See the FAQ.
- The sheet music shows its marks: dynamics, accents and staccato dots, slurs, pauses, repeats and endings, tempo words and pedal marks.
- How long a note is held counts, where the music asks for it: in Songs, and on the grown-ups' path (half notes and longer only, before Unit 7 teaches note lengths). Children are never marked down for it.
- Scrolling the on-screen piano is easier on touch screens, with octave arrows, a small map of the keyboard, and keys that follow the song.
- Find it on the staff now shows how it works the first time, with a gentle hint.
- An Octotune app for iPhone and iPad is being tested through Apple's TestFlight.
September 24, 2026
- Up to six players, each with their own book: their own place on the path, their own pearls and their own friend to dress, from a little octopus to a whale in a bow tie.
- Painted notes. In Kids mode the notes are now dabs of paint in their own colors, each with its letter, and Octo's reef friends, Pim, Moss, Luma and Gilly, take on the jobs the notes used to do.
- A practice report for a teacher. A grown-up can make a one-page report of a player's practice. It is made on your device, and Octotune sends it nowhere; you share it yourself if you want to.
- Our own songbooks, Reef Songs and Harbor Songs: short original songs, each with its own picture, several of them now stops on the path.
- The curtain call. For grown-ups, a song or a sitting ends on a program card: your accuracy, your time, and a piece's best shown as a tempo mark, from Adagio up to Allegro. Checkpoints ask for real mastery, and the help (lit keys, finger numbers) fades as you learn.
- A new mark and app icon: Octo peeking over three piano keys.
- Every sheet of music is drawn by Octotune's own engraver, the same pen everywhere.
- New sounds. A grand piano sampled from a Steinway, and seven more instruments, all served from Octotune's own site. See the credits.
September 23, 2026
- octotune.com: the app moved to /play, and the rest of the site became pages to read, with guides to reading music and a page for every song.
- A short setup on a new device: who is learning, their experience, their instrument and their goal.
- The two-bar sheet: the music shown two measures at a time, in Paper or Ink.
- No spoken voice. Octotune doesn't talk; it shows, plays and waits.
Before that
The first versions built what Octotune still is: the 12-unit path for grown-ups, the Kids path, the Songs library with Wait for me, Play along, the falling notes and the sheet, and the classical pieces from the Mutopia Project.
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