Intone

What is a cent, and why measure in them?

A cent is a hundredth of a semitone, so there are 1,200 in an octave. It is the unit that lets Intone tell you something more useful than right or wrong: most listeners stop hearing a note as in tune somewhere past about 25 cents, and under 10 cents is inside what most people can detect at all. A number moving towards zero is something you can practise against. "Close" is not.

Is my singing recorded?

No. Audio is analysed as it arrives, in memory, and thrown away — there is no recording buffer, no file, and no upload. The only things written to your iPhone are the numbers you can already see: scores, average cents, note names and dates. There is no server for anything to be sent to even if it wanted to be.

Why does it ask which voice type I am?

So the warm-ups start in a comfortable part of your range instead of a generic middle C. A bass asked to sing a five-note scale from C4 is being set up to fail. Your answer only sets the starting note, and you can change it at the top of the Warm-ups tab whenever you like — every exercise transposes immediately.

I am not sure what voice type I am.

Pick "Not sure" — it starts at middle C, which suits most people well enough to begin. Then use the tuner: sing down as low as you comfortably can and up as high, and the Progress tab records the range. Once you can see your lowest and highest notes, the voice type more or less names itself.

The tuner says I am flat but I sound fine to me.

That is the usual result, and it is the reason the app exists. Singing slightly flat is extremely common and almost impossible to hear from the inside, because you hear your own voice through your skull as well as your ears. Tap the "Hear" button next to the reading — Intone plays the true note so you have something to correct towards rather than a number to argue with.

Does it work with an instrument, or only voice?

The pitch detection is not fussy about the source and will happily read a guitar, a violin or a whistle. The warm-ups and the scoring, though, are written for singing — held notes on "ah", scored on how close you stay across the hold. If you want a guitar tuner, this will do it; if you want a guitar trainer, it will not.

What does the score actually mean?

It combines how close you were to each target note with how much of the exercise you were audibly singing at all, so you cannot score well by staying quiet. The two numbers underneath it are the honest ones and are worth more than the score: your average distance from the target in cents, and the percentage of the time you were inside 25 cents.

Does it work offline, or on a plane?

Yes, entirely. Everything runs on the iPhone. The only time Intone touches the network is when you open the subscription screen, because prices have to come from the App Store.

Intone is not hearing anything.

Check Settings › Intone › Microphone is on. If it is, make sure nothing else has the microphone — a call, a voice memo or a recording app will take priority. Bluetooth earbuds with a low-quality microphone are a common cause of a reading that will not settle; try the built-in microphone.

The note jumps around while I hold one pitch.

Usually background noise, or singing too quietly for the detector to lock on. Watch the input level under the dial: if it barely moves, sing louder or move closer. Very low bass notes are genuinely harder to track than mid-range ones, so a low note wandering is not necessarily you.

I paid but Pro is not showing.

Open the subscription screen and tap Restore purchases. That asks the App Store directly, which fixes it in almost every case — most often after restoring to a new iPhone. If it does not, email below and say which Apple Account made the purchase.