Why this exists
Preview stops at two pages and demands a mouse. Browsers wrap your music in toolbars. Score apps live on a nine-inch tablet clipped to a wobbling stand — while a sixty-five-inch screen hangs on the rehearsal-room wall, showing nothing.
You own a foot pedal. You own the biggest music stand in the building. In 2026, no Mac app would just show the score.
So we wrote one.
WhatThePDF renders your PDF edge to edge in true macOS full screen — no toolbars, no scrollbars, no cursor, no page gaps unless you want them. A pedal tap glides the music exactly one page. That's the whole app. That's the point.
What ships today
Small app. Stage manners.
One tap, one page
Any pedal that types a key works with zero setup — arrows, page keys, space, all bound. Key-repeat is ignored on purpose: a held pedal can never runaway through your chart.
The strip
Pages flow left to right the way music does, scaled to fill the screen's height. On a wide display the next page is already beside the one you're playing — the turn never surprises you.
It reads the chart before you do
Coda, Segno, D.S. al Coda, Fine — found in the score automatically and pinned to the number keys. 2 and you're at the Coda, with a small pill telling you where you landed. Repeat signs are graphics, not text, so mark those yourself with m — once.
Stage invert
Dark pit, bright screen? i flips the score to white-on-black. (It works on this page too.)
It remembers the gig
Every score reopens exactly where you left it — after a break, after a reboot, after a month. Markers persist per chart.
The display never sleeps mid-tune
While a score is up, macOS is told to keep the screen awake. Twenty minutes into the slow movement, the music is still there.
Built for the big screen
whatthepdf --screen 1 score.pdf sends the music straight to the TV, full screen, while your Mac stays yours. Finder's “Open With” works too.
The program
Every key, one hand — or one foot.
| → ↓ PgDn Space Return | Next page |
| ← ↑ PgUp ⌫ | Previous page |
| 1 – 9 | Jump to marker |
| m / M | Set a marker · reset to auto-detected |
| Home / End (g / G) | First / last page |
| i | Invert colors |
| b | Page separator line on / off |
| f + − 0 q | Full screen · zoom · quit |
AirTurn, PageFlip, Donner — any pedal in any keyboard mode maps to something above. No configuration screen exists, because none is needed.
Set two · in the works
Where this is going
- Pedal & MIDI, hardened
Learn any switch, per-device profiles, performance lock — nothing on stage can quit, scroll, or surprise you. - Smart crop & scanned-score OCR
Margins trimmed automatically and consistently; Coda and Segno found even in scans. - Band mode — every stand follows
Your Mac hosts the rehearsal; the band joins from any phone, tablet, or laptop browser. Page turns sync across the room — nothing to install, nothing to subscribe to. - Setlists with preflight
Queue the night's book; every chart verified present, downloaded, and renderable before downbeat. - Annotation layers
Pencil, fingerings, cuts — in layers that never touch the source PDF, synced live to every stand in the room. - MusicXML editing
When the source is real notation, edit real notes.
No subscriptions. Buy once — every update through 2.x is included.
Founder's price
$14.99
One-time. Rises as Set Two lands — early buyers keep every update through 2.x. Try the whole app free for 14 days first.
Checkout and the trial download open shortly — the notify list gets founder's pricing first.
macOS 12 Monterey or later · Apple silicon & Intel · your PDFs never leave your Mac