How to Add Finger Hints to Synthesia (the Easy Way)

Synthesia's falling notes teach you *which key* and *when* — but not *which finger*. On a fast run that is exactly the missing piece. Synthesia can show a finger on every note, but entering those hints by hand, note by note, is where most people give up. Here is the fast way.

Why Synthesia fingering is fiddly

Synthesia reads finger hints from a small "metadata" file that sits alongside the song, matched to it by a content hash. Editing that by hand means typing a long string where each character is one note, in the exact order the notes occur — miscount once and every finger after it lands on the wrong note. It works, but it is not something you want to do for a whole piece.

The easy way: generate, then export

Instead of typing hints, generate them from the score and let the tool build the file for you.

Option A — MusicXML (simplest)

Newer versions of Synthesia open MusicXML directly, and the finger numbers already appear on the falling notes. One file, nothing else to install. If you can use MusicXML, this is the least-effort path.

Option B — Synthesia package (for playing from MIDI)

If you play from MIDI files in Synthesia, export the Synthesia package. It is a zip with two files that share a name:

A plain MIDI has nowhere to store finger hints, which is why the .synthesia sidecar exists. Drop both files into a folder Synthesia watches for songs, (re)start Synthesia, and it attaches the hints automatically — no metadata editor needed.

A finger on every falling note

Either way, when you play the song the finger numbers appear above the notes for both hands, so the video teaches the *hand* as well as the pitch. And because you set your hand size first, the hints fit your reach rather than a stranger's — see why fingering is personal.

No score yet?

You can turn a YouTube piano cover into a file first, then finger it and export for Synthesia. Start with the free Piano Fingering Generator.