Metronome
Steady click from a lookahead scheduler, not a drifting timer
500 ms per beat
Press Space to start or stop.
How it works
- Press Start, or Space, to hear the click.
- Drag the slider or use − / + to set the tempo in single BPM steps.
- The first beat of each bar is accented, with 4/4, 3/4 and 6/4 available.
ABOUT THIS TOOL
Free Online Metronome
Keep time with a metronome that runs entirely in your browser. Set any tempo, choose a time signature, and the downbeat is accented for you — useful for practice, recording, and checking how a song feels.
- Output
- Sound, not a file. The click runs as long as you leave it running and there is nothing to download or store — the tempo, the time signature and the sound toggle are the whole state, and they live in the page.
How it works
- 01Press Start, or the spacebar, to hear the click.
- 02Drag the tempo slider or use the − / + buttons to reach the BPM you need.
- 03Pick 4/4, 3/4 or 6/4 and the first beat of every bar is accented.
Key features
- 40–208 BPM with a smooth slider and single-BPM steps
- Downbeat accent with 4/4, 3/4 and 6/4 time signatures
- Lookahead scheduling on the Web Audio clock, so the click does not drift
- Runs in your browser — free, no sign-in needed
Settings explained
- Tempo
- The tempo in beats per minute, from 40 to 208. Drag the slider for a wide sweep or use the − and + buttons for single-BPM steps; the readout also shows how many milliseconds each beat lasts, which is the number to type into a delay or a DAW's tempo field if you are matching a track.
- BPM
- The default tempo control, shown as BPM. It starts at 120 and is clamped to the 40–208 range: values outside it are not silently accepted and then ignored, they cannot be selected.
- Time signature
- The bar length, in 4/4, 3/4 or 6/4. The first beat of every bar is accented and the others are not, and the beat counter shows where in the bar the click currently is, so a 6/4 pattern is audible as a different grouping rather than just a different speed.
- Sound on
- Mutes the click without stopping the scheduler, so the tempo keeps running and the beat counter keeps advancing while you set something else up. Start and Stop are also bound to the spacebar.
- Reset
- Returns the tempo to its default and the time signature to 4/4. It stops the click first, so there is no risk of resetting a running metronome into a different bar length mid-phrase.
Why this click does not drift
A metronome built on a repeating timer drifts, because every scheduled interval inherits whatever latency the main thread was carrying when it fired setInterval. This one follows the standard lookahead pattern: a lightweight timer wakes every 25 milliseconds, looks at the Web Audio clock, and schedules every beat that falls in the next 100 milliseconds by giving the oscillator an absolute start time. The audio clock is the same clock the sound card runs on, so a beat scheduled for a precise moment plays at that moment regardless of what the page is doing in between. The visible effect is that the click stays steady while you scroll or resize the page, which a naive timer-based metronome does not manage. Background tabs are a caveat shared by every browser metronome: a hidden tab throttles the scheduler, so bring the page to the front if the click has to stay audible.
Tempo, time signature and what the accent means
Tempo is expressed in beats per minute and converted to seconds per beat internally, so a delay time or a DAW tempo field can be matched straight from the milliseconds readout. The time signature decides how many beats make a bar and therefore where the accent lands: with a bar of four, every fifth click is louder; with a bar of six, every seventh. That accent is what makes a click usable for practising in a specific feel rather than just keeping a pulse, and it is why the beat counter is shown as well — you can see the group boundary approaching instead of being surprised by it.
When to use a metronome and when not to
A metronome is at its most useful for two things: building a part against a fixed pulse, and measuring how far a performance drifts from one. For practice, start below the target tempo and raise it only once the part is clean at the slower speed, because the click exposes hesitation rather than fixing it. For recording, the click belongs in headphones and out of the microphone — bleed is far harder to remove than to prevent. What a metronome cannot do is tell you the tempo of an existing recording or whether a performance breathes; for a fixed pulse against a real track use the Tap Tempo calculator, which analyses your tapping rather than imposing a grid on it.
Common questions
Yes. The metronome runs in your browser with the Web Audio API. It needs no sign-in, costs no credits, and has no limit on how long you run it.
Clicks are scheduled ahead against the Web Audio clock instead of being fired by setInterval, which is what makes a naive metronome drift. Leave it running and the click should stay steady.
Yes. The click is a short blip that stays out of the way of the part you are playing; turn your headphone or interface volume down if you need it quieter.
Tempo runs from 40 to 208 BPM in single-BPM steps, with a slider for fast changes and − / + buttons for exact ones. Time signatures are 4/4, 3/4 and 6/4, and the first beat of each bar is accented. Tempo can be set with the slider, the buttons, or by dragging the tempo control, and Space starts or stops the click.