Help

Draw a line, hear a boop. The ? button inside the app has the whole idea in a minute; this page is for when something is not behaving.

I can't hear anything

Turn the media volume up (not the ringer volume), and press Play once: phones only let an app make sound after you have touched it. On an iPhone, if it is still silent, flip the silent switch off. In Studio, Output, check the Volume slider, and in Effects check that the layer is not muted.

The sound crackles or clicks

First try Safe audio: Studio, Output, tick Safe audio, then close the app and open it again. It gives the phone a bigger sound buffer, which stops the crackle on phones that are struggling or on Bluetooth headphones, at the cost of a touch more delay between a tap and its sound. If it still crackles, very busy drawings with long reverbs can be too much for an older phone: try a shorter reverb or fewer effect slots in Studio, Effects, and close other apps that are playing sound. The 8-bit, 16-bit and 12-bit eras crunch the sound on purpose; Modern and Analogue are clean. The Vinyl pad and the Vinyl switch (Studio, Sound FX) crackle on purpose too: some demos have Vinyl on, and you can switch it off there.

The sound keeps going after I press Stop

That is the echo and the reverb dying away, the way a room rings on after the band stops. It fades out on its own in a few seconds. To silence everything at once, use Kill all sound: in Studio, next to the loop and the tempo (on a phone, tap the tempo read-out).

How do I change the look?

Press the palette button at the top of the screen, beside the globe and the ?. It is there in Doodle and in Studio, on every page: seventeen skins, and a CRT filter at the bottom of the list. Nothing about the sound changes.

Where did the note lines go? And the buttons?

Doodle's canvas is bare paper. Guides (next to Grid) brings the note lines and the beat lines back; it changes nothing about the sound. Pull the dock down by its handle for a bigger canvas: a slim row keeps your colour, Play, Stop, Pen, Rubber and Undo, and pulling it back up brings everything back. Look (up top) has six papers to draw on under Canvas colour.

How do I make the loop longer or shorter?

In Doodle, press the metronome button (the little tag on it is the loop length in seconds) and drag Loop length. In Studio the Loop slider is along the top of the screen with the tempo next to it; on a phone, tap that read-out, or the metronome on the bottom bar, to type an exact tempo. Shorter is faster, and everything you have drawn keeps its place.

How do I play a melody over my loop?

Press Jam: in Doodle it is on the bottom row, in Studio it is a page next to Draw. The drawing fades back and you get a second page to draw on, anywhere you like, with the loop going underneath; you always hear the pen there as you draw. It opens just jamming: each line fades away a moment after you lift, and nothing is added. Light up Keep it and what you draw stays on the jam page and loops with the rest, and Undo takes back one line at a time. Every time you open Jam it starts with Keep it off again. Press Jam again (or Draw, in Studio) to get back to the drawing: a kept jam keeps playing there, and a dot on Jam says so.

My drum taps land late

In Studio, Drums, Tap, pull the Timing slider towards minus until taps land where you played them. Bluetooth headphones and some phones delay the sound more than they tell the app, and wired headphones or the phone's own speaker are tighter. The setting is remembered on that device.

Where is my drawing kept?

On your device, saved as you go, and so are the drum patterns you save on the Drums page. Tap the song's name at the top (under or beside Scribble Loop) to save it as a project, open another, or start a new one; your projects stay on this device. Save to a file there to move a song to another phone or computer, or to keep a copy somewhere safe, and Open a file to bring one in.

Where do recordings go?

Record and Bounce hand the finished file to your phone: on Android it lands in Downloads (or opens the share sheet in the store app), on an iPhone it opens the share sheet so you can save it to Files or send it somewhere. A bounce takes a moment to make, and by then the iPhone may want one more tap before it opens the share sheet: when the app says a file is ready, tap Save.

I cleared everything by accident

Press Undo straight away: Clear all keeps a copy until the next thing you do.

Still stuck?

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