Guitar to Ukulele Tab Converter
Found a great tab for your next song but it was written for guitar instead of ukulele? Paste it in below and the UkuTabs guitar to ukulele tab converter gives you back a playable ukulele version in seconds. Unlike simple converters that just rename the strings, this one resolves every fret to its real musical pitch and then chooses the best matching position on the ukulele, so the output actually sounds like the song instead of just looking like it.
Paste the whole song page: chords, lyrics, section markers and repeat signs come through untouched and aligned. Capo sheets convert to true sounding pitch with the chord names transposed to match, and eight guitar tunings (drop D, half step down, DADGAD and more) are detected automatically. Five ukulele tunings, and a play button on both panes so you can hear the guitar original and the ukulele version before you ever pick up the instrument. 100% free, no signup, nothing uploaded, the whole conversion runs in your browser.
Paste a guitar tab, get back a playable ukulele version. Pitch-correct, not just visually correct.
Whole-page pastes, capo sheets, drop D and more. Chords and lyrics preserved. Free, no signup.
- 100% freeFree
- Pitch-correctPitch-correct
- Capo supportCapo
- 8 guitar + 5 uke tunings13 tunings
- Whole-page pastesFull pages
- Hear it playedPlayback
Guitar tab in, ukulele tab out
Runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded- Paste the whole song page. Chords, lyrics, headers and repeat markers all survive, and chord rows above tabs stay aligned with the converted columns.
- Capo and tuning lines like
Capo 3orhalf step downare detected automatically. The controls above always win if you change them. - Tab blocks need 4 or 6 string lines. Labels like
e|,e :,Eb|or none at all are fine; a blank line between systems helps grouping.
- Pitch-correct, not arrangement-correct. Bass lines shifted up an octave can muddy the voicing on a small instrument; low-G helps.
- No ukulele chord shape diagrams. Chord names pass through (and transpose with a capo) as text only.
- Unusual guitar tunings outside the eight presets are interpreted from their string labels by nearest octave. Double-check those results by ear.
- Playback knows the notes, not the rhythm. Tabs don't record timing, so Play follows the tab's spacing at a steady tempo. Great for checking pitches, not for learning the groove.
Common tab notation, decoded
Every symbol you'll find inside a guitar tab, what it means, and how the converter handles it on the way to ukulele. New to reading tab in the first place? The read ukulele tablature guide covers it from scratch.
- 0 1 2…
- Fret numbers.
0is the open string. - -
- Padding or silence. The string isn't being played at that beat.
- |
- Bar line (end of a measure).
- (2)
- Ghost or optional note. Softer, or only played sometimes.
- 0h2
- Hammer-on: play fret 0, then hammer onto fret 2 without picking again.
- 2p0
- Pull-off: release a finger to sound a lower fret without picking.
- 7b9
- Bend the string from fret 7 up to the pitch of fret 9.
- 11br13
- Bend up to fret 13, release back to fret 11.
- 5/7
- Slide up from fret 5 to fret 7.
- 9\7
- Slide down from fret 9 to fret 7.
- 5~
- Vibrato. Wiggle the note for expressiveness.
- x
- Muted note. Strike the string while damping it.
High-G vs Low-G: which should I pick?
The two most common ukulele tunings. The dropdown above also includes baritone and re-entrant variations, but these two cover most ukuleles in the wild.
High-G
Defaultg4 · C4 · E4 · A4
What every ukulele ships with out of the box. If you've never swapped the 4th string yourself, you have high-G. Best default for chord strumming and traditional ukulele repertoire.
Low-G
LinearG3 · C4 · E4 · A4
Requires a dedicated wound low-G string. Best for fingerstyle arrangements and songs with low melody lines. The extra 5 semitones of low range let the converter keep more guitar bass notes in their original octave.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers to the questions players ask most about converting tabs between the two instruments.
Is this guitar to ukulele tab converter free?
Yes, completely free. No sign-up, no app to install. The converter runs entirely in your browser, on whatever device you're already holding.
How does the guitar to ukulele tab converter actually work?
It treats each fret on the guitar input as a real MIDI pitch, then searches all four ukulele strings (using each string's actual open-string note) for the position that produces the same pitch. For notes below the ukulele's range, meaning anything on the guitar's low E or A strings, the pitch is octave-shifted up by 12 or 24 semitones until it fits. The result is musically correct, not just visually similar.
Nothing is uploaded. The text you paste, the options you pick, and the output you get never leave your browser.
Does it work on iPhone and Android?
Yes. The converter works on any phone, tablet, or laptop with a modern browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or Edge). Paste your tab, pick a tuning, tap convert.
What ukulele tunings does it support?
Five common tunings, pickable from the dropdown: standard high-G (gCEA, what most ukuleles ship with), low-G (GCEA, linear), baritone (DGBE, same as the top four guitar strings), English D / D6 (aDF♯B, re-entrant), and Canadian low-A (ADF♯B, linear).
What's the difference between high-G and low-G?
High-G (G4 = 392 Hz) sits above the C string. This is re-entrant tuning, and it produces the classic ukulele jangle.
Low-G (G3 = 196 Hz, one octave lower) gives the ukulele a deeper range. It's useful for fingerpicking and solo melodic playing. To switch, swap your G string for a wound or thicker fluorocarbon version.
How does it decide where each note goes on the neck?
The converter arranges rather than just mapping. Melodic phrases that dip below the ukulele's range fold up as one line so their shape survives, drone notes under a moving voice keep the same position every repetition, strummed guitar chords come out as the standard ukulele voicings (a guitar G becomes 0232) and passages that live entirely below the uke's range move up a clean octave in one piece. Positions favour low frets and a steady hand, so there is nothing to configure.
Why are some notes octave-shifted in the result?
Guitar's low E string sits at roughly 82 Hz, about an octave below the lowest note a standard ukulele can play. Any note below the uke's range (roughly anything played low on the guitar's three thickest strings) gets nudged up an octave or two until it fits, and melodic phrases are folded together so their contour survives. The rare note above the uke's 15th fret folds down instead of disappearing. The notices under the tool tell you when octave shifts happened.
If your guitar tab has a lot of bass content and the result feels muddy, try switching to low-G tuning. The linear bottom string gives the converter 5 extra semitones of low range to work with.
The result sounds different from the original guitar. Is that normal?
Yes, and it's mostly because of the high-G ukulele's re-entrant tuning. A descending guitar line that walks string by string can't be reproduced exactly on a high-G uke, because the high-G string sits between the C and E strings in pitch (it's "out of order"). Switching to low-G fixes this for many songs because the tuning becomes linear like a guitar. Coming to the ukulele from guitar? The ukulele vs guitar guide covers the bigger differences in feel and tone.
What about non-standard guitar tunings like drop-D or DADGAD?
Fully supported. The guitar tuning dropdown covers standard, drop D, half step down, full step down, drop C, DADGAD, open G and open D. Every fret is resolved against the real open-string pitches of that tuning, so a drop-D bass riff comes out at the right pitches instead of a tone too high.
Even better, you usually don't have to touch the dropdown: when a tab spells its own string letters (a low D| line, Eb| labels) or says "half step down" in the text, the converter detects the tuning and tells you what it found.
The sheet says "Capo 3". Can it convert that?
Yes, and this is something no other converter does. A capo sheet writes chord shapes and tab frets relative to the capo, so played as written without one it sounds a minor third too low. Paste the sheet and the converter detects the capo line, converts the tab to true sounding pitch and transposes the chord names above it to match (Am at capo 3 becomes Cm). Play the result on your ukulele with no capo and it matches the recording.
Prefer the easy shapes as written? Set the capo control to None and the frets stay untouched, then put a capo on your own ukulele at the same fret to match the recording.
Can I paste a whole song page with chords and lyrics?
Yes. That's the whole point. Other converters tell you to strip a tab down to bare riff lines first; here the tab blocks convert while chord rows, lyrics, section headers, strumming hints and repeat markers pass through untouched. Chord rows sitting above a tab block are even re-anchored so each chord still lines up with the right beat after conversion.
Can I hear the tab before I play it?
Yes. Both panes have a Play button: the top one plucks the original guitar tab (capo and tuning applied), the bottom one plays the converted ukulele version with a brighter string voice. The sound is synthesized right in your browser, so you can A/B the two and hear that the conversion really is the same music before you pick up your instrument.
One honest caveat: tab notation doesn't record rhythm, so playback follows the tab's spacing at a steady tempo. The pitches and their order are exact, but the feel of the song isn't, and repeat markers play once. It's a checking tool, not a backing track.
Does it preserve hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, and slides?
Yes. Articulation chains like 0h2p0, 7b9, 11br13, 5/7, 9\7 and 5~ are converted note by note and kept on a single ukulele string, as they physically must be. The converter picks a string where the whole chain fits, so a pull-off never collapses into two identical frets. Parenthesised ghost notes like (2), muted x strums and repeat signs like |: all survive too.
What about section headers like [Intro] and [Verse 1]?
They're rewritten in UkuTabs canonical form (Intro:, Verse 1:) so they bold automatically when you paste the converted tab into a UkuTabs song page. Strumming hints, free text and repeat markers pass through unchanged, including a trailing x3 at the end of a tab line, which stays glued to the same line in the output.
Will it handle a really long tab?
Yes. There's no length limit beyond what your browser can hold in a textarea. A full multi-page tab with dozens of sections converts in well under a second.
Can I convert ukulele tabs back to guitar?
Not yet in this version. We focused on making guitar to ukulele conversion as good as it can be, since that's the more common direction. Most online tabs are written for guitar. Ukulele to guitar is on the roadmap.
What does work today: paste a 4-line ukulele tab and it converts between ukulele tunings, for example gCEA to baritone.
Is the converted tab copyright-clean?
The tool performs a mechanical transformation, it doesn't add anything new musically. Whatever copyright applies to the original tab carries through to the converted version. Use the output for personal practice, not commercial publication.
Output from this tool is for personal, non-commercial use only. The converter performs a mechanical transformation of whatever you paste; copyright in the original tab and the underlying musical work remains with the respective rights holders. To request removal of any content shared elsewhere on UkuTabs, see our Legal & Copyright page.