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Sceneboard — getting started & guide

Sceneboard is a private, custom soundboard for iPhone and iPad. You bring your own sounds — import a file, pull the audio out of a video, or record one in the app — trim and polish it, drop it on a big pad, and fire it the instant you touch it. Nothing is bundled, nothing is uploaded, and there is no account: everything lives on your device.

First launch

On first launch Sceneboard opens a starter board and shows a short set of tips explaining the loop: add a sound → trim it → tap to play. You can skip the tips at any time, and replay them later from Settings → Show the first-run tips again.

The board opens in Live mode — the mode where pads play. A brand-new board has no sounds yet, so instead of an empty grid Live shows one short line — “Add your first sound” — and one button that takes you straight into Edit. Pads get their sounds in Edit mode (next section).

The first time, a small hint sits beside the Edit control in the toolbar and points the way. A hint is always the lowest-priority thing on screen: it never covers a pad, never covers the page tabs, and never pushes a control out of the way. It disappears for good the first time you enter Edit mode — replaying the first-run tips from Settings → Show the first-run tips again brings it back if you want it.

Add your first sound

1. Tap Edit in the toolbar. The whole board visibly changes to editing — a banner says pads won't play while you edit.
2. Tap an empty pad (Add sound).
3. Choose how to get the sound in:
   • Import — pick an audio file from Files. You can also pick a video: Sceneboard extracts just the audio track, on your device. The import screen tells you which file types are supported and shows progress for big files (you can cancel).
   • Record — record with the microphone. The first time, iOS asks for microphone permission. You'll see the elapsed time and a live level meter; stop and keep the take, or discard it.
4. Keep the take (or the file you picked) — you're back in the pad editor with the sound in place. Add a label, colour or icon if you like, then tap Save: the pad is created in one step. Open the saved pad again and trimming and normalizing are one tap away.

A new pad always needs a sound. You can fill in the label, colour, icon and playback mode first, but until the pad has a sound Save stays off and the editor says why — “Add a sound to save this pad.” Nothing is attached to the board until you tap Save: back out at any point and the board is exactly as it was (if you had typed or picked anything, the editor asks before discarding it).

Two imports work slightly differently, on purpose. Picking one file from a pad's own editor goes straight onto that pad — the pad you started from is the answer, so Sceneboard doesn't ask again. Picking several files at once, or starting an import from the board rather than from a particular pad, means the destination isn't obvious: Sceneboard asks where each sound should go, and then opens the clip editor for the sound it saved.

Your original files are never modified, and no copy ever leaves the device.

Trim & normalize

• Trim — drag the start and end handles on the waveform to keep just the part you want. Trimming is non-destructive: the full original audio is kept, and you can re-trim later from the pad editor at any time.
• Normalize — one switch makes a quiet clip as loud as the rest of your board, without distortion or clipping. It's non-destructive too — toggle it off any time.
• Preview the trimmed (and normalized) result before saving.

Make the pad yours

In Edit mode, tap any assigned pad to open the pad editor. There you can:

• change the label, pick a colour and an icon (the icon scales with the pad, so it stays in proportion on big iPad pads and on small dense ones);
• replace the sound (your previous trim/normalize settings are cleared for the new sound — the editor tells you and reopens trim for the new clip);
• clear the pad (with confirmation). The pad becomes an empty cell and the sound file stays on your device — but once no pad on the board uses a sound, it no longer appears in the sound list. Tapping that cell later starts a fresh Add sound pad, exactly like a cell that was never used;
• set the playback mode:

When you're done editing, tap Done to return to Live mode.

Playing

In Live mode a pad fires the moment your finger touches it — no delay, no confirmation. A short haptic tick confirms the touch (you can turn haptics off in Settings). A playing pad glows so you can see what's sounding.

A few things that are deliberate:

• The live grid never scrolls and has no hidden gestures — nothing can move under your finger, so a tap in the dark always means play.
• Multiple pads can sound at once — fire an ambience loop and one-shots over it.
• Sceneboard plays even when the ring/silent switch is silenced — it's a playback app, like a music player.
• Press length doesn't matter: a quick tap and a long press are the same single trigger.

What Live mode shows — and what it leaves out

Live shows your board, not a grid of empty boxes:

• The space after the last pad on a page is not drawn at all — the page simply ends there, on plain background. There is nothing to tap in that space, and a touch there does nothing at all.
• A gap between pads — left by clearing a pad or moving one elsewhere — stays visible as a quiet, muted socket, so nothing shuffles up and the pad you reach for keeps its place. Tapping a socket plays nothing and opens nothing; it just blinks briefly so you know the tap landed.
• Because of this, a board shows the same pads and the same gaps in portrait and in landscape. Rotating rearranges them; it never adds or removes anything.
• Edit mode is deliberately different: it shows the whole grid, every empty cell included, because there an empty cell is something you can tap, fill and drag onto.

Stopping sounds

• Loop pads stop when you tap them again — the pad itself is the on/off switch.
• Stop all in the toolbar smoothly stops everything on the board, from any page, in one tap. It's always there, in Live and Edit mode.
• The Playing counter in the toolbar shows how many pads are sounding. Tap it to open the Playing tray: one row per sounding pad (with its page name), each with its own stop button — so you can stop just the tavern ambience without touching the thunder, even if it's playing from another page. Tapping a row (not its stop button) jumps to that pad's page.

All stops are smooth fades — never a click or a pop.

Loops, background playback, and interruptions

• Looping sounds keep playing when you switch apps or lock the screen. Start your ambience, put the device to sleep on the table — it keeps going. When you come back, the Playing tray shows exactly what's still sounding.
• If a call, Siri, or an alarm interrupts playback, Sceneboard stops cleanly and shows “Sound paused — Resume”. Nothing ever starts playing again by itself — tap Resume and the loops that were playing start again from the top. One-shot sounds that were cut are simply gone (they were momentary anyway).

Arranging pads and pages

Everything below happens in Edit mode:

• Reorder — drag a pad to a new spot. Positions are saved per device and orientation, so the pad you reach for is always where you left it.
• Pages — a board can have multiple pages (up to 8, with the full unlock; the free board has one page), each with its own name and colour, switched from the page strip alongside the board — by tab, or a swipe on the strip itself. Move a pad to another page by dragging it onto that page's tab. Sounds keep playing across page changes. Pages you're not looking at show a small indicator when something on them is sounding.
• Managing pages — in Edit, the + at the end of the page strip opens the Pages screen. There you can add a page, and for each page: rename it, pick its colour, move it up or down to reorder the strip, or remove it. Removing a page never deletes a sound — the confirmation states exactly where its sounds go (they move to the end of a neighbouring page). A board always keeps at least one page, and at the 8-page maximum the add control says so instead of doing nothing.
• Pad size — pick a grid density preset (e.g. fewer, bigger pads) per device and orientation. Sceneboard only offers presets that keep pads big enough to hit reliably; changing density never deletes or unassigns a pad. If a board is using only a small part of its grid, Edit shows a quiet line next to the density control — for example “This board uses 8 of 30 cells — change density for larger pads”. It is a suggestion, never a warning: ignore it and nothing happens, or tap it to open the density picker.
• Rotating and resizing — each orientation has its own arrangement. If a page holds more pads than that orientation can show at once, the rest continue onto a further screen you reach from the page strip; nothing is dropped, and turning the device back restores the arrangement you set. In an iPad Split View that gets narrow, Sceneboard temporarily uses a less dense arrangement rather than shrinking pads below a size you can hit — your own density setting is left untouched.

Boards

Open the board switcher from the toolbar to create, rename, duplicate, switch, or delete boards.

• The free tier includes one active board with one page and up to 8 pads — with the full import, record, trim, normalize, and playback feature set. No ads, no time limits, no degraded audio.
• On the free tier, tapping New board (or Duplicate) shows the unlock screen right away — before you're asked for anything, so there is never something typed to lose. Close it and nothing is created; unlock, and you continue straight into naming your new board.
• With the unlock you get unlimited boards (and unlimited pads across pages).
• Deleting a board asks first and tells you exactly what's removed. A board replaced during a bundle import is archived, not deleted — you can bring it back any time, free.

Sharing boards (bundles)

• Export (part of the unlock): share a whole board — pads, colours, modes, trims, and the audio itself — as a single bundle file (a .sceneboard file), via AirDrop, Messages, or Files. It goes device-to-device; there is no server and no upload.
• Import (free for everyone): when you receive a bundle, Sceneboard shows the whole board exactly as it was built — every pad, with preview listening — before anything is applied. On the free tier you pick any 8 pads to make live (the sender may have suggested 8; you can change the selection freely). The rest aren't lost — they stay in a “Not activated” list and you can swap them in whenever you like, free, forever. With the unlock, the whole board imports live.
• Importing never overwrites your existing board without asking, and your current board is archived — never deleted.

Keyboard shortcuts (with the unlock)

With a hardware keyboard attached, the current page's pads map to keys in reading order — 1–9, 0, then Q W E R T Y… — with ← / → for pages and Esc for Stop all. Key caps appear on the pads while a keyboard is connected. Keys trigger with the same instant path as touch; they're inactive in Edit mode.

Audio output

Settings → PLAYBACK → Output shows the standard iOS route picker: built-in speaker, wired, USB, Bluetooth, AirPlay.

• The built-in speaker (and wired outputs) are the instant routes.
• Bluetooth works, but adds a delay that depends on your speaker/headphones.
• AirPlay is fine for ambience but not suited to split-second triggering.

Sceneboard is honest about this in the UI, and unplugging an output never blasts the built-in speaker.

The free tier and the unlock

Free, forever: one active board (one page, up to 8 pads), full import/record/trim/normalize, all four playback modes, output routing, Stop all and the Playing tray — no ads, ever.

A single one-time purchase (no subscription) unlocks exactly four things:

1. unlimited boards,
2. unlimited pads per board (across up to 8 pages),
3. hardware keyboard shortcuts,
4. board export & sharing.

Wherever you meet the unlock screen, it names the specific limit you just reached, always lists the same four things, and shows the price from the App Store in your local currency — the app never quotes a price of its own.

Bought it before, new device, or reinstalled? Settings → Restore purchases brings it back with the same Apple ID.

Privacy

Your clips never leave your device. Sceneboard has no accounts, no ads, no analytics, and no tracking; the only network connection it ever makes is Apple's own App Store system for the purchase and restore. Board sharing moves files only through channels you choose (AirDrop, Messages, Files). Full details: Privacy policy.

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