Metronome with Tap Tempo & Time Signatures
Keep time with a precise, steady click. Set any tempo from 30 to 240 BPM, tap the tempo, and choose a time signature with an accented first beat, right in your browser.
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A metronome is the most fundamental practice tool in music: a device that marks time with a steady click so you can develop an even, reliable sense of rhythm. This online metronome runs entirely in your browser and covers every common practice need. Set any tempo from 30 to 240 beats per minute with the slider or type an exact number, choose a time signature (1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 or 6/8), and press Start. The first beat of each bar can be accented with a higher-pitched click, and a row of pulsing dots shows exactly where you are in the bar, which is especially helpful when practicing with headphones at low volume or in a noisy room.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use this online metronome?
What does BPM mean?
What is tap tempo and how does it work?
What do the time signatures (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8) change?
What do the Italian tempo names like Adagio and Allegro mean?
How accurate is a browser-based metronome?
What is the best way to practice with a metronome?
Why does the first beat sound different?
Does this metronome work offline and is it private?
About Metronome with Tap Tempo & Time Signatures
If you know how a piece should feel but not its exact tempo, use the Tap tempo button: tap it in rhythm a few times and the metronome calculates the BPM from your taps. The current tempo is also labelled with the traditional Italian tempo marking (Largo, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Presto and so on), so you can connect the number on the dial with the terms printed on sheet music.
Timing accuracy matters in a metronome, and browser timers alone are not precise enough: JavaScript timers can drift by tens of milliseconds when the browser is busy. This tool instead schedules every click ahead of time on the Web Audio API's dedicated audio clock, the same technique used by professional web audio applications. The result is a click that stays sample-accurate at any tempo, even at 240 BPM, without drifting or stuttering.
Everything happens locally on your device: no account, no installation, no data sent anywhere, and it keeps working offline once the page has loaded. Whether you are a beginner learning to keep quarter notes even, a drummer tightening up fills, or a guitarist slowly working a difficult passage up to speed, a steady click is the quickest route to solid timing.
The Metronome: A Stolen Invention That Beethoven Made Famous
The metronome's origin is one of music history's better scandals. Around 1812, the Amsterdam inventor Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel discovered that a pendulum weighted on both sides of its pivot could tick at musically useful speeds while staying compact. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, a showman and builder of musical automata, visited Winkel, saw the mechanism, and patented a refined version under his own name in 1815 as the "Maelzel Metronome". Winkel protested and a Dutch commission later agreed the idea was his, but by then Maelzel's name was stamped on thousands of pyramid-shaped boxes. That is why classical scores still carry markings like "MM = 120": Maelzel's Metronome.
Maelzel's masterstroke was marketing: he convinced Ludwig van Beethoven to adopt the device. Beethoven, whose deafness made communicating tempo increasingly difficult, published metronome marks for all eight of his symphonies to date in 1817 and became the machine's most famous endorser. Curiously, his markings have puzzled musicians ever since, as many seem almost unplayably fast. Scholars have proposed everything from a broken metronome to misread scales; a 2020 mathematical study suggested Beethoven may simply have read the pendulum scale at the wrong point. Most modern conductors split the difference and take his numbers as spirited suggestions.
The metronome has had a surprisingly rich life outside the practice room. Composer György Ligeti wrote his 1962 Poème symphonique for exactly 100 mechanical metronomes, wound up and released together on stage until the last one winds down alone. In 2005, the artist collective behind Punkt Ω synchronized public metronome installations across European cities. And a strange physics demonstration keeps going viral: place several mechanical metronomes on a light movable platform, start them out of phase, and within minutes they spontaneously synchronize, a phenomenon called entrainment first described by Christiaan Huygens in 1665 when he noticed two pendulum clocks on the same beam ticking in step. The humble click, it turns out, likes company.