Treatment of blank measures is not intuitive

If a measure is left blank, the player skips over it. This is non-intuitive behaviour:

(1) It departs from the standard convention of lead sheets, in which a blank measure is always understood to mean that the last specified chord is continued. An app whose screen looks so much like a lead sheet should follow that convention.

(2) For a measure to be present in the chord chart and be skipped over in playback is very bizarre behaviour.

I assume there were technical reasons for choosing this non-standard behaviour. But iReal Pro in most other respects makes the experience easy and logical for the musician user. I'm sure it would not be all that difficult for your developers to bring the treatment of a blank measure into conformity with the familiar standard. The logic is simple: "If a measure is blank, repeat the last specified chord." The repeat-measure symbol would remain valid for those who want to use it.

When non-standard spacing is used on a chart, there is often blank space remaining at the end of a system (line). Also, some blank space often precedes a 2nd ending volta enclosed by single bar-lines.
The player is (properly) programmed to ignore this blank space rather than continue a previous chord just because the space falls within some bar-lines, mid-chart.

Example
Waltz Spacing - Example

Note: 3/4 time works just fine when bars have 4 spaces instead of 3. But, that's also counter intuitive.

I've learned that computers aren’t intuitive. I’m comfortable using bar-repeat signs and slashes as necessary.

Bar Repeat Signs, Slash, N-C- - Example - Example


Thanks for sharing your opinion
:))BOB

I always use / / / / when the last chord of a bar needs to continue to the next bar. If blank bars where active, we would have to remove all spaces in the charts and it would restrict the lay out. There are situations where I only need 3 bars in one row, so I intentionally leave the last bar blank for songs that have uneven structure.