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Yames — Free Desktop Metronome for Musicians

Yet Another Metronome Everyone Skips — except this one, you won't.

Website  ·  Download  ·  Request a Feature  ·  License: GPL v3


Yames — metronome with practice coach

Zen mode — Velvet theme   Speed drill — Aurora theme


Table of Contents


Why does this exist?

Because most metronome apps out there feel outdated — clunky interfaces, too many taps to start, or just not something you want staring at you for an hour of practice. Yames exists because musicians deserve a metronome that looks great, sounds precise, and gets out of your way the moment you hit play.

The goal is simple: reduce the friction between you and your practice. Open it, hit play, and disappear into the music.

Built with Rust for sub-millisecond precision. No drift. No jitter. No Electron. Just a native app that runs quietly and sounds exactly when it should.


Designed for Practice

Yames is built around one principle: your hands stay on the instrument. Everything is designed so you never have to break your flow to interact with the app.

  • Practice coach — an AI-powered companion that listens to your playing, gives real-time feedback, session reports, and adaptive tempo coaching. Runs fully local — no internet, no data sent anywhere.
  • MIDI controller & footswitch support — map any MIDI CC, note, or program change to play/stop, BPM adjust, subdivisions, and more. Assign a footswitch and control everything without looking up.
  • Full keyboard shortcuts — every action has a hotkey. Rebindable in settings.
  • Presets — save your exercise configurations (BPM, subdivision, time signature) and switch between them instantly. No setup time between exercises.
  • Zen mode — fullscreen immersive visuals. No UI, no distractions. Just rhythm.
  • Always-on-top floating widget — sits over your DAW, tabs, or sheet music. Draggable, minimal, out of your way.

The metronome is a background tool. You should be focused on playing, not on the screen.


The Metronome

The classic view. BPM control, subdivisions, time signatures, and a clean visual pulse that tracks every beat. Pick from 10+ handcrafted themes — dark, light, vibrant, minimal — and make it feel like yours.

Yames metronome — Obsidian theme    Yames metronome — Aurora theme


Speed Drill

This is where it gets serious. Set a start BPM, an end BPM, and how many bars to hold each step. Hit play and the metronome auto-ramps for you — pushing your technique incrementally without breaking flow. No more fiddling with the tempo dial mid-practice.

Choose your ramp strategy: Linear (steady climb), Zigzag (push and pull), or Adaptive (coming soon — the app adjusts tempo based on how you're playing).

If you're working on a passage, building speed on scales, or training endurance, Drill is the single best reason to use Yames.

Yames speed drill mode    Yames drill mode — Neon theme


Practice Coach

An AI-powered practice companion that listens to your playing and gives real-time feedback — without you ever looking at the screen.

  • Live coaching during practice — audio notifications (chime or natural voice) when the coach has feedback. Comments appear in a chat-like feed for you to read when you pause.
  • Automatic detection — the coach knows if you're doing grid exercises or playing freely. Feedback adapts: timing accuracy for exercises, groove and tempo stability for musical playing.
  • Session reports — timeline-based breakdown of your practice with stats per segment. Not just numbers — natural language summaries that tell you what to work on.
  • Adaptive drill mode — set a start BPM and a target (or no ceiling). The coach adjusts tempo based on your accuracy: pushes you when you're comfortable, backs off when you struggle.
  • Preset history — track your progress on specific exercises over weeks and months. See how your comfortable BPM and accuracy improve over time.
  • Conversational — ask the coach questions about your session: "How was my timing?" "What should I focus on?"
  • Fully local — runs entirely on your machine. No internet required, no data sent anywhere.

Zen Mode

Press Z and everything else disappears. Fullscreen immersive visuals that pulse with the beat — particles, waves, cosmos. No UI chrome, no distractions. Just rhythm and breath. This is where deep practice happens.

Yames zen mode — Obsidian Cosmos    Yames zen mode — Neon Cosmos


Floating Widget

A tiny always-on-top mini-player that sits over your DAW, sheet music, tabs, or whatever you're reading. It's draggable, transparent, and gets out of your way. Toggle it with W.

Yames floating widget — Neon    Yames floating widget — Obsidian    Yames floating widget — Aurora


Hands-Free Control

Everything is a hotkey. MIDI controllers and footswitches are first-class. You never have to reach for the mouse during practice.

Metronome

Key Action
Space Play / Stop
BPM +5
BPM −5
Shift+↑ BPM +1
Shift+↓ BPM −1
] Subdivision +
[ Subdivision −
1 Quarter notes
2 Eighth notes
3 Triplets
4 Sixteenth notes
T Time signature +
Shift+T Time signature −

View

Key Action
Z Zen mode
F OS fullscreen

Navigation

Key Action
W Toggle floating widget
B Toggle presets sidebar
C Toggle practice coach
Cmd+1 Metronome tab
Cmd+2 Drill tab
Cmd+, Settings

All keyboard shortcuts are rebindable. MIDI bindings are fully customizable — connect any controller and map CC, Note, or Program Change messages to any action.


Screenshots

Browse the full gallery →

Metronome themes

Drill themes

Floating widgets


Install

Platform Download
macOS (Apple Silicon) .dmg
macOS (Intel) .dmg
Windows .exe installer
Linux .AppImage / .deb

Homebrew (macOS):

brew install --cask --no-quarantine turutupa/tap/yames

Winget (Windows):

winget install turutupa.yames

Or build from source:

npm install
npm run tauri build

Built With

Rust · Tauri v2 · React · TypeScript · cpal · rodio

Development

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Requires Rust (stable) and Node.js 18+.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Here's where help would make the biggest impact:

  • Practice Coach — LLM inference pipeline, session analysis, adaptive tempo logic
  • New themes — add your own visual style to the theme system (CSS variables + a name in settings)
  • Bug fixes & platform polish — especially Windows and Linux edge cases
  • Tests — Rust unit tests for the audio engine; TypeScript tests for UI logic

Getting started:

npm install
npm run tauri dev   # requires Rust stable + Node.js 18+

Run npm run tsc -- --noEmit after changes to catch type errors. See AGENTS.md for the full dev workflow.

Found a bug or have a feature idea? Open an issue. PRs are welcome — keep them focused and include a short description of what changed and why.

License

GPL-3.0 — free to use, modify, and distribute. See LICENSE for details.

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Yet Another Metronome — musician-grade floating desktop metronome

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