What's new

Colorful notes:

We’ve added the ability to colour notes independently in a chord. In earlier versions of Sibelius, the color applied to any note would affect the whole chord, but with Sibelius 8.3, the notes can be coloured independently. This feature is useful not only for educators to help students learn music in more vibrant and engaging ways, but it’s just as useful in contemporary scores or even for simply marking up a score for editing.

We’ve updated the ManuScript Plug-in language in Sibelius (the built-in scripting language for automating tasks in Sibelius) to take advantage of the new coloring features. As part of this, the Color Pitches and BoomWhacker plug-ins that ship with Sibelius have been updated to use these new methods as well.

These changes have been added without any change to the file format version, so you can can open files saved in Sibelius 8.3, in 8.2 and 8.1. However, when opening scores in 8.2 and earlier, the colors you have applied to notes will be stripped out as those older versions won’t know how to handle the new coloring attributes.

Improvements to Note sliding:

In Sibelius 8.2, we introduced an innovative feature to allow you to move notes left and right in the score with two simple keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Alt+Left and Right, and Cmd+Alt+Left and Right). This handy little feature speeds up editing and note entry and saves valuable time where preparing a score. With Sibelius 8.3, rests that are created and left behind by moving notes, are now cleaned up nicely, so you aren’t left with a trail of rests.

Miscellaneous improvements:

To track down the problems some users have reported with scrolling and zooming on Macs when using a Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad or a trackpad on a MacBook or MacBookPro, we’ve given the feature an overhaul to resolve these issues. As a result, you should find scrolling and zooming on Mac smoother and generally more responsive. Gestures with three-fingers are now better supported, allowing you to switch windows more easily, for example.
A problem where Sibelius 8.2.0 could crash on quit after first launch on a clean system has been fixed
Start and end repeat barlines would sometimes appear too thick when written together. These are now lined up correctly as before.
Some users reported a problem where note input would stop working when switching scores. This has been fixed.
The Sibelius License Server is now supported on Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan
When using Reset Design in the score, it no longer affects accidentals in the part. This is a change in behavior from Sibelius 8.2 where resetting the design on a note or larger selection would reset the accidental in the parts too.