MuseScore 4 on Macs

Maybe I'm the only one who finds MuseScore 4 very difficult to work with on Macs.

There are a number of issues. Firstly, when converting a file from MuseScore 3, the display size will probably change. It will most likely get larger, so a page size image will be scaled up by a factor of around 3. However this may not always be the case, as it may also depend on the hardware configuration and state. If a scroll wheel mouse is used the size seen may depend on a scroll wheel state. The scroll wheel can be used to resize the appearance of the score. If a scroll wheel mouse is not being used this probably still happens, and may be hard to spot and fix. To resize the display use the buttons at the bottom right of the display panel - though these may have been moved off the screen, so the first thing to do is to get the whole MuseScore panel back on the screen, then use the buttons to reset the scaling for the score.

Another issue concerns the management of scores. In MuseScore 3, it is possible to have a large number of scores open at once in one instance of MuseScore 3. In MuseScore 4 different scores are loaded up into separate instances of MuseScore. This takes time, and slows things up. Also it makes it much harder to know which score is which, as the Mac operating system doesn't distinguish easily between the scores.

An added complication is that MuseScore may try to do a one way conversion of MS3 files to MS4. Some of us are trying to keep MS3 files as they are until MS4 is a lot more stable. It can be hard to keep this regime, as as far as the OS is concerned, before loading the scores into programs all the MuseScore files look the same - with the .mscz extension determining which application program they load into.

In MS3 different files were accessible via tabs within the MuseScore program. It wasn't always ideal, but overall it worked well enough. It was possible to copy sections from one tabbed instance to another and make a lot of edits that way. In MS4 it is still possible to do file to file copy, paste and edits, but it's much harder. Firstly it takes longer as files have to be opened, and secondly it's very much harder to keep track of which files are open etc. Users who do not use Macs may not realise this. Suddenly MuseScore seems to have got very much harder to use, even though some of the features - probably better sounds etc. - are improvements.

I hope the developers can pay attention to some of this, and improve the way the program works in the macos environment. It is unlikely that Apple will change its OS to suit MuseScore, and the ways that program applications work in different versions of the Mac OS are unfortunately different, and version specific. It is possible to change the way windows and displays work within macos but different ways may not suit all users. For example, a recent development in Ventura is the introduction of Stage Manager - which changes the ways that windows are used. It may not help - but just adds to the mix. It may be easier to use applications without using Stage Manager, but then different approaches will be needed. Issues like this at least need to be looked at if there isn't going to be any easy way to have different scores loaded up within an instance of MuseScore 4.

For me this is starting to become a deal breaker about whether I should continue to use MuseScore or switch to some other system, or give up and learn to play golf - which I really don't want to do!