Need help with Orpheus? You’re in the right place!
Exciting things are coming in 2025! Orpheus is getting a major upgrade with some big new features. We’re also launching on iOS and Web.
Leave your email address below if you’d like to be notified when we launch!
The release is currently around 80% complete, aiming to launch in March.
Orpheus has been an Android-only app for 10 years, famous for it’s simplicity and ease of use. That’s been a great place to be. However, not a month goes by when I don’t get requests for Orpheus on iPad and Windows tablets. The time has come to support those platforms. Under the hood, this is a major rebuild as a cross-platform Flutter app. It’s been fun building with this technology! Flutter is a modern, open-source application development framework, supported by Google, used for building natively compiled, multi-platform apps from a single codebase. It’s fast, stable and reliable. I’m excited to be able to bring Orpheus to more musicians on different platforms via the use of Flutter.
Rest assured, the Orpheus core philosophy has not changed. It will always be a minimalist sheet music reader, with the simple, user-friendly design that you know and love. The new version has an identical UI, with some much-requested features added, and a slight modernisation of the app logo/icon.
There are a couple of interesting challenges to conquer as part of the remaining 20% work to get to release. Migrating users smoothly between versions is the most important. This is quite tricky because of the change in underlying codebase and PDF library. Another head-scratcher has been working out how to communicate the changes with existing users! I’ve never collected email addresses (I’m not a fan of email marketing, and in the past there’s been no need to tie functionality to a user account). So it is all the more important to ensure that the upgrade is handled in a non-disruptive manner. Still, these are interesting technical problems to tackle, and I am relishing the challenge – it’s a privilege to be working on a passion project.
So, there you have it! A small insight into the Orpheus roadmap for 2025 and the current state of development. As always, I welcome questions and feedback from musicians in our community. Thanks for your support, and I look forward to sharing the new version of Orpheus with you all very soon.
Maeve Lander is a software developer by day, trumpeter and arranger by night. She created Orpheus ~10 years ago, when Android was first born. It has gone through iteration over the years, but has always held true to the original vision; a minimalist sheet music reader that just does one thing, really well.
Comments are for discussing this post with other visitors. For technical support please submit a request here.