Dorico 6.0.22 extends proofreading capabilities [updated]

This article has been updated:

July 2, 2025 with information about the discount for Finale users to obtain the crossgrade to Dorico.

July 10, 2025 with information about the 6.0.22 hotfix.

Steinberg has released Dorico 6.0.22, an update to Dorico 6, which extends the proofreading feature introduced in Dorico 6 by allowing the user to mark an identified item as ignored. This update also brings to the proofreader better handling of user-defined playing techniques, and more improvements to the fingering checks for stringed instruments.

Dorico 6.0.22 also brings a number of improvements in the area of chord symbols, polishing the features introduced in Dorico 6 in the areas of chord symbol positioning and collision avoidance, taking into account the new capabilities to display multiple lines or rows of chord symbols, and for chord symbols to show extender lines, along with other updates to chord symbol appearance and kerning pair editors.

Dorico 6.0.22 includes support for the nascent vocal singing synthesis VST plug-in Cantai, which itself is still in development.

Additionally, more than 70 bugs have been fixed in Dorico 6.0.22. This is the second update to Dorico since the release of Dorico 6 on April 30, 2025.

Finally, MakeMusic announced that Finale users can get an additional 15% off the special $149 crossgrade to Dorico Pro 6 by using the code DORICO15 at checkout. The crossgrade must be purchased from MakeMusic and is only available to registered users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic.

The version history documentation for this release thoroughly documents the improvements as well as the bug fixes.

Here’s what’s new in Dorico 6.0.20, and the subsequent Dorico 6.0.22 hotfix, as provided by Steinberg.

New features

Proofreading

Ignoring issues by location. It is now possible to mark issues in the Proofreading panel as ignored, which temporarily stops them from appearing in the list. When you hover the cursor over an issue, a small eye icon appears in the bottom right-hand corner: click this to ignore the issue and temporarily remove it from the list.

To see all the issues you have ignored, activate the Show ignored checkbox immediately above the list. Ignored issues then appear in the list in a dimmed color. To un-ignore an ignored issue, click the eye icon again.

To un-ignore all ignored issues, click the Clear button immediately to the right of the Show ignored checkbox. If there are no ignored issues in your project, the Show ignored checkbox is disabled. The list of ignored issue locations is saved in the project, so ignored issues will not reappear when you next open the project.

It’s important to understand how this mechanism works, since due to the dynamic nature of Dorico’s proofreading feature, when you mark an issue as ignored, you are not ignoring a specific issue, but rather ignoring the combination of the location where the issue has been identified and the type of reported issue.

For proofreading, the location is the combination of flow, instrument, and rhythmic position (or range of rhythmic positions) where the issue is found.

Each of the proofreaders that combine to produce the many categories of issues shown by Dorico report many different types of issues. Broadly speaking, each different textual description in the panel corresponds to a different issue type. Ignoring an issue will not prevent issues of other types being reported at that same location, but it will prevent another issue of the same type being reported there.

Every time you edit the score, Dorico runs all the proofreading steps again, and there is no connection between the issues discovered on this check and the previous one. Dorico filters out combinations of locations and issue types that have previously been ignored, so it is possible for a new issue of the same type to be discovered but for it not to appear in the list, because it is at a location that has previously been ignored.

This also means that large-scale edits to the musical content or structure of the project – for example, adding or removing bars – can result in previously ignored issues reappearing, because the relevant music now appears at a new location.

Conversely, issues that previously appeared may disappear from the list because they now fall at previously ignored locations.

It is therefore advisable to ignore issues only when you are towards the end of the preparation process for your project. If you make large-scale changes to the flow, consider clearing ignored issues to make sure you don’t miss details that arise because of those changes.

Keyboard navigation. New commands have been added to the Setup category in the Key Commands page of Preferences to allow you to interact with the Proofreading panel using the keyboard. Commands for navigating to the previous and next issues, ignoring an issue (or un-ignoring it, if ignored issues are shown), and clearing ignored issues are provided.

Cantai support

Dorico 6.0.22 provides initial support for the Cantai vocal synthesis plug-in in development by Turing Opera Workshop. To use the Cantai plug-in, add one instance to the VST and MIDI panel in Play mode for each voice instrument you want to be played by Cantai. In the Track Inspector panel, use the controls in the Routing section to connect each Cantai instance to the appropriate voice. The final step is to open the Cantai interface by clicking the Show Instrument button (which looks like a lowercase e) and choosing the appropriate instrument from the drop-down in the plug-in interface.

When you edit the music or lyrics on an instrument assigned to Cantai, Dorico updates a data file in the shared location that is automatically read by Cantai, and which then updates the vocal synthesis.

Improvements

Barlines

Wings on repeats. A new Show wings property has been added for repeat barlines, allowing you to override on a per-barline basis whether wings should appear.

Bar numbers

Bar number ranges below multi-bar rests. Bar number ranges below multi-bar rests are by default positioned below the staff using the Bar number range distance below staff option on the Rests page of Engraving Options. If you want to show bar number ranges at the same position relative to the staff as bar numbers shown on every bar, this presents a problem, as of course engraving options are global and apply to all layouts.

To address this, a new Distance for bar number range below staff option has been added to the Multi-bar Rests section of the Rests page of Engraving Options. This can now be set to Layout Options, which means that Dorico will then position bar number ranges using the Minimum distance from staff option on the Bar Numbers page of Layout Options.

Position relative to clef. A new option Minimum gap above treble G clef with 8 above n spaces has been added to the Clefs section of the Bar Numbers page of Engraving Options. This option also applies to a treble G clef with 15 above. Relatedly, the existing option Minimum gap below treble G clef with 8 below n spaces now also applies to a treble clef with 15 below.

Chord diagrams

Ukulele chord diagrams. The default chord shapes for chord diagrams for the standard ukulele tuning now more closely match the recommendations of the Ukulele Society of Great Britain for commonly used chords.

Editing chord diagrams. In previous versions of Dorico, editing an existing factory chord shape would always add a whole new chord shape to the project’s library, which could quickly lead to a very large number of diagrams in the library. Now, when you edit a factory chord shape, Dorico effectively replaces the factory shape with your edited shape, so you will see your preferred version instead of the factory one. You can revert to the factory shape by clicking the Revert to Factory button in the action bar in Library > Chord Diagrams.

Chord symbols

Capo chord symbols. A new option Scale factor for capo chord symbols n% has been added to the Capo section of the Chord Symbols page of Engraving Options. This allows you to specify that capo chord symbols should be made smaller than the corresponding main chord symbols. It is also now possible to specify that capo chord symbols should be neither shown in italics nor shown in parentheses if desired.

Alignment and collision avoidance. With the addition of multiple lines of chord symbols, and chord symbols themselves being able to show extender lines, it was necessary to revamp collision avoidance for chord symbols and chord diagrams in this release.

Chord symbols and their extender are now treated as a single unit – previously, it was possible for extender lines to become detached from the chord symbols to which they belong – and when Align chord symbols across the width of the system is activated, Dorico aligns all lines of chord symbols across the width of the system together. When alignment across the system is not activated, Dorico instead performs collision avoidance for chord symbols at the same rhythmic position, and at any other rhythmic positions affected by chord symbols’ extender lines. A new Avoid collisions option has been added to the Position section of the Chord Symbols page of Engraving Options, allowing you to determine whether chord symbols should avoid collisions with the staff and objects protruding from the staff by default; this can be overridden for individual chord symbols using the corresponding Avoid collisions property.

Crosshair. The position of the crosshair for a selected chord symbol in Engrave mode has been improved. It is now correctly aligned with the baseline of the lower chord symbol (or the bottom of the chord diagram, if one is shown). This makes it easier to check the alignment of chord symbols across the width of the system.

Vertical placement of extender line. When main and transposed chord symbols are shown, extender lines appear only once, on whichever chord symbol is closest to the staff. Similarly, when a chord diagram is shown, the extender line is centered vertically on the chord symbol immediately outside the extender line. Resetting kerning edits. In Library > Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs, the Reset and Delete buttons now show a warning before carrying out the expected actions.

Cues

Ornaments. Jazz articulations and glissando lines are now included or excluded in cues according to the engraving option and property for the inclusion of ornaments in cues.

Filters

Filtering by pitch. A new Edit > Filter > Notes by Pitch submenu has been added, where the existing Notes by Pitch dialog is now called Specific Pitches. Additional commands for filtering notes expressed as triple sharps, double sharps, double flats, and triple flats have been added alongside the existing filters for all sharp and flat notes.

Fonts

Updated font families. Splentino version 1.1 and Nepomuk version 2.6 both now include tabular figures, which can be enabled via OpenType features.

According to the font’s designer Ben Byram-Wigfield, “The Tabular numerals in Splentino and Nepomuk have been added to improve the vertical alignment of numerals in Staff Labels. If you include the Tabular figures in the OpenType features of the Staff Labels (Inner) Paragraph Style, you should find that 1 and 2 in Condensed staves align better.”

(For an interesting digression about the making of Splentino, see this post by Ben Byram-Wigfield.)

Lyrics

Custom hanging punctuation. A new option Extra punctuation to ignore has been added to the Spacing section of the Lyrics page of Engraving Options. This allows you to specify additional characters that Dorico should treat as punctuation when aligning lyrics.

Note input

Multi-paste. When the caret is extended across multiple staves, Dorico now pastes across all the staves within the span of the caret; previously, material would be pasted only on the top staff.

Pedal lines

Offset of Ped. text. A new Offset for start of pedal line with text n spaces option has been added to the Advanced Options section of the Horizontal Position section of the Pedal Lines page of Engraving Options. This allows you to specify a horizontal offset for the Ped. text at the start of a pedal line, to allow fine positioning of the vertical stroke of the initial P, analogous to the existing option for offsetting the ornate P.

Playback

Playback updates. After each edit that changes the musical content of the flow, Dorico recalculates the playback information for the affected instrument or instruments. This normally takes only a fraction of a second, but in long flows, or flows with many changes of playback technique, or when your playback template uses complex expression maps with many switches, it can take a little longer. This can result in Dorico feeling a little less responsive when inputting and editing in such projects. To address this, Dorico now delays the recalculation of playback information until the application is idle for a moment, reducing the impact on the responsiveness of the application.

Project templates

Barbershop quartet template. The Barbershop quartet project template in the Choir category on the Create New page of the Hub has been improved to more closely match the notation guidelines published by the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS), the leading organization for the promotion of barbershop singing in the US. The template now uses the expected two-staff short score instead of an open score written on four staves, and follows as closely as possible the recommendations for frequency of bar numbers, choices of fonts, and so on.

Choral templates. All templates in the Choir category in the Hub now create projects with only a full score layout, and no part layouts, since these are normally not required. If you want to create part layouts in such a project, use Setup > Create Default Part Layouts.

Bug fixes

The version history documentation for this release documents more than 70 bug fixes; many of them fall into categories where Dorico 6 saw new features or improvements, such as chord symbols, proofreading, tempo, text, and the user interface.

Dorico 6.0.22 hotfix

On July 10, 2025, Steinberg released Dorico 6.0.22, a small “hotfix” update to Dorico 6.0.20, with the following fixes:

• Fix a problem with chord symbol positioning instability when editing in galley view
• Ensure that an empty text frame with background fill still appears properly when printing/exporting graphics
• Ensure that Propagate Properties works correctly with chord symbols
• Enable proofreading commands in Elements/SE
• Ensure the Key Editor is correctly populated immediately after opening a project
• Fix a crash after, e.g., importing a MIDI file into an existing project

Dorico 6.0.22 is available via the Steinberg Download Assistant.

Other news

Today MakeMusic announced that Finale users who have not already purchased the special crossgrade to Dorico Pro 6 can get an additional 15% off the exclusive $149 price by using the code DORICO15 at checkout. This special offer is available exclusively and directly from the MakeMusic online store, and requires the customer to log into their MakeMusic account and to be a registered user of Finale or Finale PrintMusic to complete the purchase.

MakeMusic told Scoring Notes that the offer “will last through the end of August”.

Further updates

In the official blog post announcing the update, Steinberg product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury said, “The team is hard at work on further improvements in proofreading, chord symbols, and other areas. But team members are looking forward to a bit of a break over the summer months, so we anticipate there being a pause before our next free Dorico 6 update.”

Availability

Dorico 6.0.22 for Windows and Mac desktop is a free update for current registered users of Dorico Pro 6, Dorico Elements 6 and Dorico SE 6 users, and is available now via the Steinberg Download Assistant.

For full coverage of Dorico 6, please read our comprehensive review of Dorico 6, and listen to our podcast episode featuring an interview with Daniel Spreadbury.

Dorico 6.0.22 for iPad is available in the App Store. If your device hasn’t already automatically downloaded and installed the update, you can find it in the Updates section of the App Store app on your iPad.

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For the latest information about compatibility for Sibelius, Dorico, and MuseScore, as well as links to the latest news and reviews about product releases, please see the Scoring Notes Product Guide.