List of feature requests

With Dorico 6 on the horizon, I thought I’d take a moment to share a few of my most desired feature requests. To my knowledge, none of these is currently possible, though I suspect some folks have found creative workarounds of which I am not aware.


Option to automatically end voice at next measure when exiting note entry. I spend an enormous amount of time hiding rests, and then sometimes re-hiding them if I make a change to a part that makes rests reappear. This is particularly daunting with rhythm section parts.

Set scale default to something other than normal. If I am using the “scale” property, it is almost always to make the scale of something other than 100%. It would be great if I could set that to automatically default to, say, cue size, when I engage it. If I want to make something 100%, I could manually enter that.

Allow advancing selection on multiple staves. With concerted passages, I would like to be able to select notes across staves and advance the selection left or right on ALL staves to add things like articulations or slurs.

Automatically align rehearsal mark and tempo. Often one of the two of these will move to avoid a collision. Ideally, they would both move in lock step.

Easy adjustment of chord symbol slash size and any other chord symbol elements. I know chord symbol feature requests are quite popular, so consider this one more vote for making all things chord-related as customizable as possible. Having said that, there are so many things I appreciate about Dorico’s handling of chord symbols that it’s hard to complain.

Fully adjustable numbers in multi bar rests. I like to get the multi bar rest count inside the staff, in the middle of the H-bar, so that it prevents collisions with stuff above the staff. In Dorico 5 I have to select each of them individually to adjust, one flow at a time.

Tuplet numbers allowed in staff. Again, this prevents collisions with things like dynamics and chord symbols. I like the Kurt Stone approach.

Ability to set distance of text, tempo, system width, etc. from staff exactly (not relative from current position); this way, one could select a series of elements and set them all at the same exact distance from the staff. I find it frustrating to have to select handles and use keystrokes to stretch and move things around. Even the ability to mouse-drag would be an improvement for me.

Change context menu for page templates and overrides to allow changes for currently selected page ONLY, not ALL pages. When I right-click on a page to change a template or override, I get a series of options like “remove page template, remove page template for all pages, etc.” If I’m clicking on one page, I’d like my action to apply to only that one page. I find it so hard, especially on a large monitor with small resolution, to differentiate between all of these options and I frequently choose the wrong one which destroys edits I have already made on pages that do not appear in the window.

When filtering staves, make the hidden staves inactive. If I have three staves, hide the middle one, and then try to move music from the first staff down to the third staff, it goes first into the hidden staff. If I am hiding staves, it’s often because I want to do some concerted work across staves that are non-contiguous on the full score. The only way to do this now (that I know of) is to create a new score layout, which eats up processing power.


I know there are probably other things I could add to this list, but I thought this might be the time to share. Many thanks to all of you forum folks, and the Dorico team, for making Dorico an overwhelmingly good experience to use.

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When you first toggle on the Scale property, I think what’s being shown is not the default value, but rather the current value. It’s the same with a property like Custom Scale – when you toggle it on, it shows 100%, even though the only reason you’d be activating the property would be to set it to something other than that.

@jjm_335 I’ve taken the liberty of respacing your points, so the paragraphs are more distinct.

My eyes completely glazed over at the original wall, so hopefully this is easier for others to parse!

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That does make sense. I suppose then my request would be for a separate option—perhaps via a context menu—to change directly to cue size.

Lillie (or other Steinberg staff), would this thread be a good place for other people to post feature requests for v. 6?