Supported Features
-
Dark Interface
TapeDesk: 4-Track Tape Studio
Synth, samplers and sequencer
$4.99
TapeDesk is a four-track tape with a synth beside it, for iPhone and iPad.
A song can start on the phone's mic and leave the app as a mixed file.
tape
A take goes onto the armed track when you press rec. The speed fader runs from 0.25x to 2x and the pitch moves with it, so at half speed the whole song sits an octave lower. With loop on, each pass adds a layer over the last one. For recording alone there is a threshold on rec, and the take waits for the first sound. A tape holds ten minutes on four or six tracks, and each take becomes a region you can cut or reverse from the edit bar. A reversed region wears a small ◁. Dragging the tape, you feel a light tap at each ruler mark and a firmer one at bar numbers and region edges. A cut can be found almost without looking.
With sources, one pass records several tracks at once. The synth can go to one track and your voice to another, or each channel of an audio interface to a track of its own.
synth
The synth has eleven engines, from drift, a slow swarm of detuned voices, to dx, a six-operator FM engine that loads .syx cartridges. Two more engines play samples. sample spreads one sound across the keyboard, and kit is a drum machine with 24 pads that take a file, the mic, a track from the tape or the sound of a video. The factory kits include an orchestral one with timpani and a junk one made of anvils, brake drums, a flexatone and a wine glass. On kit, chop slices one sound across the empty pads. The tape remembers which sound each track was recorded with, for the day you forget.
seq
keys only plays the notes of the scale, and chords puts a whole chord under each finger. How loud a note sounds comes from how the finger lands, read from the touch and the accelerometer, or from the pressure of an Apple Pencil. The sequencer has an arpeggiator and a 16-step mode, and the die re-rolls the pattern inside the scale, with one swipe to take the roll back. In ping, balls bounce between bells on a pool table, and every bounce plays a note. Fair warning, it is hard to stop watching. eucalyptus is a piano roll that loops until you print one pass of it to tape.
mix
The mixer has two effect buses with seven effects and room for any AUv3 effect you have installed. On tapesat, the age knob takes the tape from new to an old cassette, hiss and wow included. The master eq has four bands, drawn with a finger.
plugin
Inside a host such as AUM, the tape and the synth open as AUv3 plugins, TapeDesk: Tape and TapeDesk: Play. The tape plugin records when the host plays and takes up to six of its inputs. Whatever it records is waiting in the app afterwards.
It runs on iPhone in portrait and on iPad in any orientation, in fifteen languages. There is no account, and no data is collected.
Tracks · 4 or 6, 10 minutes, 128 regions per track
Speed · 0.25x to 2x, pitch follows
Recording · wav, 48 kHz, 24 or 16 bit
Synth · 11 engines with 4 macros, 2 LFOs and an effect each, sample, kit with 24 pads
Mix · 2 buses, 7 effects plus AUv3, 4-band eq, drive
Export · mix or stems, wav or m4a
Sync · Ableton Link, MIDI clock in and out
MIDI · USB, Bluetooth, network, learn
Plugins · TapeDesk: Tape and TapeDesk: Play, AUv3
Devices · iPhone in portrait, iPad in any orientation, iOS 17 or later
Languages · 15
Data · none collected, no account
fix: the bluetooth button closed the app on ios 27
fix: midi keyboards skipped the arp and the sequencer
fix: some plugins opened blank or cropped
fix: the synth went silent after some plugin preset changes
The developer, Pablo Sanchez Bermejo, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Pablo Sanchez Bermejo
- Size
- 140.2 MB
- Category
- Music
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 14 more
- English, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Pablo Sánchez
