MuseScore

What's new in this version:

Playback:
- Realtime note preview now supports duration and velocity control, as well as the sustain pedal, allowing an intuitive playing experience with a connected MIDI keyboard
- Count-in is back! (Playback toolbar > Playback settings cog)
- MuseSounds playback no longer fades-in when pressing play
- Play count for repeated sections can be controlled in Properties, with options to add appropriate text to score (e.g. "Play N times")
- Fixed regression where instruments were muted after undoing their deletion with Ctrl+Z

Engraving:
- A comprehensive new system allows localised control over showing and hiding empty staves
- Any SMuFL-compliant music font can now be applied
- Measure numbers are now treated as system markings and can also be shown below the system, with many new options for customisability in Styles
- All system markings can now go below the bottom staff
- Better alignment options for repeat & jump markers, voltas, etc.
- Better alignment of rests in multiple voices
- Better rhythmic grouping of rests and beams in local time signatures
- New properties for frames to control padding to notation above & below
- Harp pedal diagrams can be anchored at arbitrary beat positions (not just on notes and rests)
- Enharmonic spelling: new options added in Tools menu
- Fixed regression where slurs from grace notes were placed incorrectly and not saved in the MSCX file
- Fixed issue saving and loading of scaling/spatium size in parts
- Fixed regression in placement of whole measure rests in secondary voices
- Adding breath marks no longer hides courtesy clefs in cutaway staves
- Barlines are no longer masked by invisible text lines
- Ties are no longer shortened by chord symbols that contain a slash
- Hairpin ending on final beat of final measure is no longer excluded from parts
- Collision avoided between dynamics and left barlines
- Collision avoided between arpeggios and clefs
- Added 19th century French tenor clef (G clef ottava bassa with C clef)
- Repeat-dot position in these fonts was tweaked for better SMuFL compliance: Gootville, MuseJazz, Emmentaler

Guitar:
- Engraving support for hammer-on, pull-off, and tapping techniques (playback supported in MuseSounds Guitars Vol. 2 and upwards)
- Fretboard diagrams now auto-fill based on their associated chord symbol
- Fretboard diagram legend can be automatically generated based on chord symbols in score
- Any text font can now be used for tab numbers
- Improved engraving and playback support for bends to grace notes after main notes
- Fret number in fretboard diagram is not repositioned unnecessarily when text is edited
- Circular markers are no longer added to fretboard diagrams when masked by barrés
- Fixed spacing of minimum length ties, glissandos, and frets
- Fixed adding and masking of parentheses around fret number in TAB staves
- Import TablEdit v3.00+ files — thanks to Leon Vinken (PR author) and Matthieu Leschemelle (TablEdit creator)

Chord symbols:
- Chords galore! New individual scaling, offset, and alignment options for extensions and modifiers, plus the ability stack and parenthesise modifiers
- Ability to create polychords with the pipe "|" character (N.b. playback support is planned for a future release)

New style options:
- Volta alignment relative to key signatures and barlines
- Partial slur shape across repeats and breaks
- Minimum header distance (used when clefs are only shown on first system)
- Show barline before key & time signatures at start repeats
- Tuplet bracket position

Text:
- New text formatting popup appears when characters are selected in a text element
- New editing shortcut Ctrl+Delete (Mac: Cmd+Fn+Backspace) to delete entire word after caret
- Square brackets and multiplication signs are allowed in time signatures
- New lyrics styles for hyphens/dashes
- Lyric extender lines no longer extend over rests
- Fixes to header, footer, page number & copyright styles
- Fixed overlapping '6' and '9' characters in chord symbols

Workflow improvements:
- New welcome screen enables quick access to tutorials, free MuseSounds, and other relevant information
- Selection filter now enables selection of individual notes in chords
- New mouse shortcut Alt+click to paste the current selection elsewhere
- Improvements to 'Repeat selection' command when used with 2 or more voices
- Fixed issue preventing diatonic shifting of enharmonically equivalent notes
- Slurs entered from the palettes can now be resized
- Joining/splitting measures no longer corrupts ties at the measure boundary
- Durations are better accounted for when merging rests
- Pasting notes near a page break no longer spoils engraving of slurs that span the break
- Fixed crash on closing score after undo of dragging a measure with partial tie
- Fixed crash on range selection over multi-measure rest

Percussion:
- The number of drumpad columns in the Percussion Panel can now be modified
- Added Handbells palette and playback with MuseSounds
- Added Handchimes instrument

UI:
- Removed delay in showing three-dots (...) context menu icon when switching panel tabs (Palettes, Layout, Properties, etc.)
- Element colors are now inverted in the palettes when score color inversion is enabled via Preferences > Appearance
- Improved appearance of rounded corners on popups and dropdown lists

Import/export:
- Support for importing TablEdit files (v3.00+ only, see Guitar section above)
- MIDI: Exported lyrics now have a space appended after each word
- MEI: exported title page receives func="first" attribute to show it's the first page
- MusicXML
- Import for string mute element, harp pedal diagrams, colors for more element, various other fixes
- Export fixes for TAB & percussion clefs
- Import & export support added for guitar tapping, hammer-on, pull-off, hairpin styles

Accessibility:
- Screen reader announcements for more in-score actions (e.g. adding articulations, changing voices)
- Fixed input and viewing announcements in the Braille panel

Linux:
- VST3 support (please raise an issue on GitHub if a specific Linux VST is not working for you)
- Enabled fractional scaling (previously disabled to avoid an element offset bug—possibly in Qt—that appears to be fixed now)
- Fixed Linux-only crash on Alt+Left/Alt+Right navigation in continuous mode
- Distributions released prior to Ubuntu 22.04 can no longer run the AppImage due to an outdated GLIBC version

Performance:
- Significant performance gains when saving and loading large scores
- Changes in Page settings dialog are more efficient and properly undoable (press Ctrl+Z after closing dialog)
- Plugins
- Retrograde: Fixed handling of consecutive ties
- Plugin API: Now includes all new elements and properties added between MuseScore 4.0 and 4.6

Qt fixes:
Updating to Qt 6.9.1 has resolved these issues:
- Right-aligned text is not properly aligned
- Some toolbar buttons don't work with pen / touch input on Windows
- Menus appear on wrong monitor on Windows
- Transparent UI on second monitor on Windows
- Score draggable behind Staff/part properties dialog
- Changing UI accent colour breaks Qt Widget dialogs
- Crash at launch on macOS Sonoma