Help

Getting started

Two ways in. The extension puts Keylark in Chrome’s side panel beside your song. Without it, you use Keylark on its own page.

With the extension

1. Add Keylark to Chrome, then pin its button (see the extension’s button).
2. Open a song on YouTube and click Keylark’s button. Keylark opens on the right, beside the video.
3. Plug in your MIDI keyboard and click Use a MIDI keyboard. Chrome asks once; choose Allow (see allowing your keyboard). With no keyboard, your computer’s keys A to K play.
4. Click Listen to this tab and start the video.
5. Press keys in time with the song. The first time through, Keylark plays along by ear and learns the song. Play it again and it knows every change before it comes.

Without the extension

1. Open Keylark in your browser, in Chrome or Edge.
2. Choose how to start a song:
   • Play the demo song, a short song made for playing along. The quickest way to try it.
   • Open a song file, such as an MP3 on your computer.
   • Listen to a tab, for a song playing in another Chrome tab. In Chrome’s window choose the tab, tick Share tab audio, then press Share.
3. Plug in a MIDI keyboard, or use your computer’s keys A to K.
4. Press keys in time with the song.

A song file or the demo song is learned before it plays, so it has the full chords from the start. A song you listen to in a tab is learned as it plays, which is the first play.

Whichever way you listen, use wired headphones or the laptop’s speakers. See Bluetooth delay.

My keys sound late: Bluetooth delay

Bluetooth headphones and speakers add a delay of roughly a fifth of a second (150 to 250 milliseconds). Keylark chooses and plays each note the moment you press the key, but the Bluetooth device then holds it back before you hear it, and a note that late feels wrong whatever you play.

Keylark asks the browser how late its sound is arriving, and tells you when the delay looks like Bluetooth. The fix is to listen another way:

• Plug in wired headphones.
• Or use your laptop’s own speakers.
• Or an audio interface or a speaker on a cable.

If you send Keylark’s notes to another program through MIDI out, that program’s sound has its own delay too.

Chrome asks to allow my MIDI keyboard

Chrome asks before any web page can use a MIDI keyboard, and Keylark is no different. Choose Allow. It asks once, and remembers. Keylark reads only the keys you press. It never asks to change your keyboard’s settings.

• In the side panel, click Use a MIDI keyboard. Chrome asks in a tab of its own, which closes itself once you answer. If the panel says Chrome will not let it use your keyboard, click Open Keylark in a tab and use Keylark there. It hears the YouTube tab the same way.
• If you chose Block, click Ask again in Keylark. If Chrome does not ask, open Chrome’s settings, then Privacy and security, Site settings, MIDI devices and allow Keylark, or click the icon at the left of the address bar and allow MIDI devices there.
• If your keyboard does not show up, check that it is on and plugged in, and try a different cable or port. Keyboards can be plugged in or unplugged while Keylark is open; it notices.
• No keyboard at all? Your computer’s keys A to K play.

It can’t hear my song: Share tab audio

On Keylark’s own page, Listen to a tab opens Chrome’s picker. Keylark can only hear the tab if you do three things in it:

1. Choose the tab your song is playing in, not a window or the whole screen.
2. Tick Share tab audio.
3. Press Share.

If you leave the tick off, or share a window or the screen, Chrome sends no sound at all, and Keylark says so: That share came without its sound. Try again and tick the box. Also check that the song is actually playing in that tab and the tab is not muted.

In the extension’s side panel there is no picker: click Keylark’s button on the song’s tab, then Listen to this tab.

The extension’s button, and pinning it

Chrome hides new extensions’ buttons. To keep Keylark’s in view, click the jigsaw-piece icon at the right of the address bar, find Keylark in the list and click its pin. After that its button sits next to the address bar.

• Click the button on a tab to open Keylark beside that tab.
• After YouTube loads a page afresh (a reload, or a link opened in the same tab), click the button again before Listen to this tab. Chrome lets Keylark hear a tab only after a click on its button there.
• Closing the panel stops the listening and gives the tab its sound back.

Which browsers

Keylark works in Chrome and Edge on a computer (Windows, Mac or Linux). Edge can add extensions from the Chrome Web Store.

It does not work in Safari or Firefox, or on an iPad or a phone, because it needs things only Chrome and Edge give a web page together: a MIDI keyboard, the sound of a tab, and a side panel for the extension.

The tab goes quiet, and Keylark plays it back

In the side panel, Chrome stops the tab playing its own sound while Keylark listens to it, so Keylark plays the song to your speakers as it hears it, beside your keys. This is Chrome’s own way of letting an extension listen to a tab.

• If you hear nothing, click Listen to this tab again.
• Closing the panel gives the tab its sound back.
• A YouTube advert is not learned. Keylark says so, and waits for the song.

A note sounded wrong

The honest answer: the first time through a song, Keylark is working out its chords by ear while it plays, and listening by ear is weakest just after a chord changes. For a moment it can still be on the old chord. It tries to play safer, simpler notes when it is not sure.

What helps:

• Play the song again. The second time Keylark knows every chord change before it comes.
• Use a song file or the demo song. They are learned before they play, so they start with the full chords.
• Tap along. If the chord seems to come a little early or late, use Tap along to eight beats to line Keylark’s timing up with what you hear.
• Expect less in quiet passages. A quiet part of a song is harder to follow by ear.
• If you use MIDI out and your keyboard also sounds its own notes, turn its Local Control off, so it plays Keylark’s notes and not your keys as well.

Nobody can promise every song is followed correctly: it depends on the recording, and on Chrome. If a song keeps going wrong, tell us which one.

Your songs

Each song Keylark learns is kept in your browser, on your computer, so the next play knows it. What is kept is the names and times of the chords, where the beats fall, the song’s key, and the file’s name or the video’s title. Nothing of the sound is kept, and nothing is sent anywhere.

• Your songs lists them. Click Forget beside a song to forget it, or Forget every song for all of them.
• A song that is playing is kept again as it plays. To forget it for good, forget it once it has stopped.
• Songs learned in the side panel are kept apart from those learned on the page.
• Clearing your browser’s site data forgets the songs too.

Keys, computers and offline

• Your key is shown on Polar’s confirmation page when you buy, and emailed to you. In Keylark, open Your plan and paste it in.
• Computers. One key works on up to 3 computers. To free a place, remove the key from Your plan on a computer you no longer use.
• Offline. Keylark checks the key with Polar now and then. With no connection it keeps working for 30 days. It never stops a song in the middle.
• Lost the key? It is in the email from Polar, and in Polar’s customer portal.

Cancelling, refunds and receipts

• Cancel any time in Polar’s customer portal. Your plan then ends when the period you have paid for ends.
• Receipts are emailed by Polar when you pay, and are in the same portal.
• Money back within 30 days of your first payment, no questions asked. Read how to ask.

iPad and phones

Not yet. Keylark needs Chrome or Edge on a computer. We have no iPad or phone version, so please don’t buy it for one.

Still stuck?

Write to support@keylark.app, or use the feedback page. It helps to say which browser and computer you use, what keyboard (if any), and what you heard.