FL Studio for iPhone, iPad in development

Anyone who's used FL Studio before will be familiar with the mobile version's step sequencer.
Anyone who's used FL Studio before will be familiar with the mobile version's step sequencer.

Image-Line has posted teaser screenshots of FL Studio mobile, a new version of the company's DAW for iOS.

The software is still very much in the development phase, but it represents the first time that one of the major contemporary desktop music making apps has been ported to the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. FL Studio, of course, has never appeared on an Apple platform before, having been Windows-only since its FruityLoops days.

All that said, it does seem that FL Studio mobile is very much a watered-down version of the software. It will enable you to create multi-track projects that can be loaded into the PC version, but as Create Digital Music reports, it appears to offer just a small taste of its big brother's feature set (the familiar step sequencer being the most notable inclusion).

In fact, it appears that it's actually being developed by a third-party rather than Image-Line; namely, Xewton, which already offers the Music Studio app for iOS.

This being the case, we have a suggestion: why not just call FL Studio mobile FruityLoops? This name still carries a lot of clout (it was the software that many computer music makers cut their teeth on) and we'd be willing to bet that a simple, affordable beat maker that carried FruityLoops branding would shift a considerable number of units in the App Store.

The FL Studio mobile moniker is out there now, though, so it probably won't happen. More details as we get them, but for now, here's that collage of screenshots.

FL studio mobile

FL studio mobile
Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.