SongCharter
Guide › Pedals

Hands on the guitar, foot on the page.

Bluetooth page-turner pedals show up to the iPad as tiny keyboards — each button types a key. SongCharter listens for all the keys the common pedals send, so the rule of thumb is simple: if a pedal can turn pages in a PDF reader, it can turn pages here.

What each key does

Pedal sendsSongCharter does
Page Down · → · ↓ · Space · Enter Next page — and past a song's last page, the next song in the set
Page Up · ← · ↑ Previous page — and back off page one, the previous song's last page

That covers the iRig BlueTurn (verified here by measurement — clean single events, no auto-repeat, no bounce), AirTurn's keyboard modes, and the flood of two-button pedals that ship in arrow or page-key modes. If your pedal has mode switches, any mode that types the keys above works.

Setup, once

  1. Pair the pedal in iOS Settings › Bluetooth — pairing lives in iOS, not in the app.
  2. Open a song or set in SongCharter.
  3. Step on it. The page turns and a subtle flash confirms it.

Pedal taps are ignored while you're editing or typing in a field — the pedal can't page you away mid-fix.

The one quirk every pedal owner meets

iOS treats a paired pedal as a hardware keyboard, so the on-screen keyboard may stop appearing while the pedal is connected. That's iOS, not the app — every charting and reading app lives with it. If you need to type a lot, tap the keyboard key on the pedal if it has one, use the keyboard button iOS shows in the corner, or flip the pedal off for a minute.

No pedal? You don't need one to go hands-mostly-free — the left and right edges of the screen are tap zones, and a knuckle between phrases is quieter than a binder ever was. The iPad gig guide covers the rest of the stand setup.