The song file format

The promise: you can read your songs without Bridge. Every song exports as plain text, in a format that predates every app in this category — and that any text editor, on any computer, will still open in thirty years. Bridge’s PDF export is the pretty one; this is the durable one. Neither ever requires a subscription, a login, or the app itself.

The format

A exported song is a single UTF-8 plain-text file:

Golden Hour
Key of C · 96 BPM · capo 2

Chords
    C  x32010
    G  320003
   Am  x02210

Verse
C          G
Coffee in the morning light
Am
Steam against the window

Chorus
C  G  Am  F

Notes
Second verse still needs a bridge into the turn.

Reading it:

  • The first line is the title. The second line lists only the facts the song has — key, tempo, capo — separated by “ · “.
  • The Chords block lists each chord the song uses with its fingering: six characters, low E string to high E, where x is muted, 0 is open, and a digit is the fret. Shapes above the 9th fret use dashes (“8-10-10-9-8-8”).
  • Sections (Verse, Chorus, …) are announced by their label on its own line. A line of chord names directly under the label is the section’s progression.
  • Chords above lyrics: a line of chord names aligned over the words they land on, in a monospaced column — the convention guitarists have traded songs in since long before smartphones. Open the file in any monospaced font and the chords sit over the right syllables.
  • Notes at the end carries anything the writer kept with the song.

Why this matters

Every songwriting app’s reviews contain the same story: a subscription lapsed or a company folded, and a catalog of songs went dark. Bridge is built so that story cannot happen here. Export is never gated — not by the free tier, not by a lapsed subscription — and the format above contains no Bridge-specific anything. Your songs are yours, in a file your grandchildren’s computers will open.