How to open a MusicXML or .mxl file on Android

By machado001 · 18 September 2026

Open your tab file with Tabline

What MusicXML is for

Every notation program has its own native format, and none of them read each other's. MusicXML is the common tongue: a plain-text XML description of a score that virtually every program can export and import. If you want a score to survive the trip between two pieces of software, this is the file you send.

.xml and .mxl are the same thing

.musicxml or .xml is the raw text. .mxl is that text zipped — often a tenth of the size, which is why exporters default to it. Both hold the same score; a reader that handles one should handle the other. Tabline opens both.

Getting one onto your phone

1. Export from your notation program: File → Export, then choose MusicXML (compressed is fine).
2. Put it somewhere the phone can see — Drive, Dropbox, or email it to yourself.
3. On the phone, tap the file and choose Open with → Tabline.

What comes across, and what does not

Notes, rhythms, tuning, tempo, repeats, lyrics and most articulations travel well. Page layout usually does not — a phone re-flows the music to its own width anyway. Guitar-specific detail depends on what the exporter wrote: a MusicXML file from a notation program often has no tablature staff at all, only pitches, in which case you read it as standard notation.

One honest caveat

A MusicXML part that declares several instruments inside a single part — a percussion kit, for example, or a combined "ensemble" part — can play back at the wrong pitch in Tabline. It draws correctly, and the common case of one instrument per part is fine. Files exported from Guitar Pro and from Songsterr are not affected.