Fender Tune vs JustATuner

Fender Tune is a mobile tuner for guitar, bass, and ukulele, available on Android and iOS. Its free tuner provides Auto-Tune, Manual Tune, and Chromatic modes, plus 26 alternate tuning presets. Users can create custom tunings and save them to a Fender Connect profile, and offline mode is listed. Tune Plus adds an interactive guitar chord library with more than 5,000 shapes and variations, as well as a dynamic scale library for six-string guitar. Practice tools include 60 drum rhythms across six genres, tempo controls, a practice timer, time-signature customization, and a metronome. Tune Plus also provides real-time visual tuning feedback and 65 non-standard tuning references from A=420Hz to A=460Hz. Access to Tune Plus requires signing in or creating a Fender account. Fender describes the app as suitable for musicians from beginners to professionals. The listed Fender Tune plan is free; Tune Plus requires a Fender account.

JustATuner is a free, open-source desktop tuner for musicians, combining a stroboscopic tuner with a just-intonation drone. Its chromatic tuner has 12 wheels for the pitch classes, each with seven concentric rings. Users can set reference pitch and instrument transposition, and adjust cents bias for each wheel and octave bias for each ring. The drone plays root, root-plus-fifth, major-triad, or minor-triad voicings in a pure sine or harmonic-stack sound. A live meter reports the just-intonation interval and cents difference, marking LOCKED within 5¢ of just intonation. A Lissajous display shows interference between the played note and drone, with adjustable color, trace thickness, trail count, and resolution. The app detects pitch through a microphone; its maker recommends a quality microphone and strongly recommends headphones while the drone is on. It is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS on Apple Silicon M1, M2, M3, and M4. Linux requires PortAudio, and the downloaded binary may need executable permission. The maker says the app is unsigned, so an operating-system warning may appear.