Hello, this is my first time interacting. I have been using the lessons and song app for about three months. Do I need to download or get other items? If so, please tell me what they are. I have downloaded the metronome. Should I download the tabs? Please tell me everything I need to purchase so I can just get it over with. Thank you.
Welcome to the forum Slick
You don’t need to buy or download anything. The lessons and songs are free on the website. That being said there are optional lessons and app that you can purchase but the are not necessary to learn to play the guitar.
Some people prefer the app for it’s karaoke song lessons(not available on the website) others prefer the website lesson because their more detailed and have a written description for each lesson.
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Like Rick says, you don’t need to buy or download anything if you don’t want to. On the website, all the lessons in the grades are free (with very good descriptions below the video), and the song lessons are all free and there’s loads of other free material on the Justin website with tps and advice. It’s a fantastic free resource.
However, Justin has to make money too, otherwise none of this free material would be available to us and the website and community couldn’t be nicely presented and curated. So, having said that, there are other things I paid for that I found very helpful. One was the Strumming SOS course and I also subscribe to TABS. Neither are absolutely necessary. The strumming course is really good but if you go through the lessons there are also loads of strumming explanations and tips, as there are in the song lessons. I found the TABs particularly helpful when singing and playing at the same time as the chords are shown in the place in the song where the lyrics are sung and they scroll at the desired speed. They may be less useful if you don’t want to sing along as well.
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Welcome, Slick. The primary value of the App is to aid you in playing songs. The lessons to a point are available, but I’d recommend you work from the website. I think the information provided, the videos and the structure make for a more effective learning programme.
There is material that one can purchase but it is not necessary, certainly not for the first period of learning. There are the three Beginner Grades and then thre Intermediate Grades which will get you to a level where you can play songs for an informal audience should you choose to do so (and have followed the course dilligently in terms of the learning, practice and guidelines as to when you have reached the appopriate level of proficiency to move on.
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Hi Slick and welcome to our Community 
Good advice has been given already, I will add you might think of purchasing products when you’ll feel you need them.
I highly reccomend the PMT (Practical Music Theory) Course on the website, if you want to dig into Music Theory the initial grades are free. There’s also a PMT interactive App but I don’t use it at the moment and I can’t tell much about it…it might also depend on each one learning style to choose the traditional course or the App.
Among the Apps from the Play Store you can find also a Ear Training App and a Note Training App, which are great tools for learning as well, but again you should decide for yourself if and when you need them.
There are other useful products on the website you’ll find out along the way, like the Jam Backing Tracks and more Courses, but as a beginner I would stick to the Beginner Course and the Beginner Songs App.
Thank you
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I found the songs app to be very helpful at first with playing along to songs and learning how to actually use the overly-common songsheets that only provide chords and lyrics. Once I got past that point, I found the songs app to be unnecessary, as I could pull up a songsheet and an original recording and play along to things myself. And have a much wider selection of songs to boot.
After that I started to find other things more helpful. I subscribe to the tabs because I prefer seeing things written down rather than watching videos. Before I subbed to tabs, I would sit down for a couple of hours and write down the things Justin would show in the vids. I still have to do that occasionally, but usually not when I can see everything already written down.
I have purchased a couple of Justin’s premium lessons for the focused attention. I bought the Strumming SOS lesson and used that to help me a lot in the time I spent focusing on little other than rhythm. I also purchased the Solo Blues course because it’s a style of music I want to play. I rotate between the various lessons nowadays and go fairly slowly. There was a period of time where I was trying to do too many different lessons all at once in person and I burned myself out. I was working on pre-recorded lessons, a live online class, private lessons, and also trying to figure out how to play in a group setting (campfire strum style jam group). I do suggest avoiding that kind of scenario.
My two bits from an advancing beginner:
I like the app for the play along songs ability, but use the Web for the community discussion. Note that tracking of your progress on one is not reflected on the other.
The app’s main plus for me is the play along songs–although they can promote dependency on the chord prompts, rather than memorizing them yourself.
The only other app I use is a metronome app that will gradually increase the BPM. I use Tempo by “Frozen Ape”–in the Mac world it has never crashed, and has quite a bit of functionality for me to grow into. It is designed for iOS, but I also use it on my Mac laptop w/out issue: ‎Tempo - Metronome with Setlist App - App Store – don’t know if it exists in the Windows/Android world.
There are LOTS of metronome applications out there (many free).
I purchased Tempo because it was inexpensive ($3), and had the incrementing beats/minute functionality.
Though, by far, the most important application is how you apply yourself to learning guitar.
Bon voyage,
Bruce