Time & date
Metronome
Set a tempo with the slider, the number field or by tapping, pick a time signature, and press Start or the Space bar.
Allegro · fast and bright
Press a beat to cycle it: normal → secondary accent → accent → muted.
Time signature
Subdivision
Space starts and stops · ↑ ↓ change tempo by 1 (Shift: 10) · T taps the tempo
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is this online metronome?
Clicks are not fired by a JavaScript timer. A timer only wakes a scheduler every 25 ms, which books the next clicks on the Web Audio clock a fraction of a second ahead, so each click starts at an exact sample position. In a simulated hour at 97 BPM the computed click times drifted by less than a microsecond. Changes of tempo take effect from the next click that has not been booked yet — at most about 0.12 seconds later.
Does it keep time when I switch tabs or lock my phone?
Switching tabs, yes: the scheduler runs its timer in a background worker and books clicks 1.5 seconds ahead while the page is hidden, which covers browsers that slow hidden-tab timers to once a second. Locking a phone is different — mobile browsers usually suspend web audio when the screen turns off, so keep the screen on while you practise. On iPhone the tool asks Safari to play as media, so the Ring/Silent switch should not mute it on recent iOS versions.
How are 6/8 and 7/8 counted?
In the eighth-note time signatures (5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8 and 12/8) every click is an eighth note, and the BPM counts eighth notes. The beats are grouped with a secondary accent: 6/8 as 3+3, 7/8 as 2+2+3, 5/8 as 3+2, 9/8 as 3+3+3 and 12/8 as 3+3+3+3. If your piece groups 7/8 as 3+2+2, press the beat circles to move the secondary accents. To feel 6/8 in two, set the tempo to three times the dotted-quarter speed.
How does tap tempo work?
Tap the Tap button or press T at least twice in time with the music. The tempo is the average of the gaps between your last six taps, so it settles as you keep tapping and one uneven tap has less effect. A pause of more than two seconds starts a new measurement. Tapping also works while the metronome is running.
What do the Italian tempo names mean?
They are the traditional words composers write above the music. This tool labels the tempo using these ranges: Grave from 25, Largo from 40, Larghetto from 60, Adagio from 66, Andante from 76, Moderato from 108, Allegro from 120, Vivace from 156, Presto from 176 and Prestissimo from 200 BPM. Published ranges differ between sources and eras, so treat the label as a guide and let the metronome marking in your score decide.
About this tool
This metronome is built for practice: a tempo range of 20 to 300 BPM, eleven time signatures from 1/4 to 12/8, subdivisions of eighths, triplets or sixteenths, and a tap-tempo button for finding the speed of a recording. The display shows the current beat number in large type and counts bars, so you can glance at it from a music stand, and the current Italian tempo name — Adagio, Andante, Allegro and so on — updates as you change the speed.
Each beat of the bar can be set independently. The first beat is accented by default with a higher, louder click, and the eighth-note meters add a secondary accent at the start of each group so compound and odd meters are easy to feel. Pressing a beat circle cycles it through normal, secondary accent, accent and muted. Muting the second and fourth beats of 4/4 leaves clicks only on 1 and 3; a muted beat is silent, but any subdivision clicks after it still play.
Timing uses the Web Audio clock rather than a timer per click. A lightweight scheduler looks a short way ahead and books each click at an exact time on the audio clock, which is what keeps it steady when the page is busy or the tab is in the background. The clicks are synthesised in the browser when you press Start — there are no sound files to download — and the beat display is delayed by the output latency the browser reports, so it lines up with what you hear even through Bluetooth headphones.
For keyboard use, Space starts and stops, the up and down arrows change the tempo by 1 BPM (hold Shift for 10), and T taps the tempo. Shortcuts are ignored while you are typing in the BPM field. A useful practice routine is to find the tempo at which a passage is clean, then raise it by 2 to 4 BPM at a time — the − and + buttons and the arrow keys make those small steps quick.
Updated · Novpix LLC
Related tools
- All time & date tools
- Guitar tuner
- Stopwatch
- Pomodoro Timer
- Add or Subtract Days from a Date
- Countdown Timer
- Time calculator