Yames — Free Desktop Metronome for Musicians

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

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Table of Contents

• Why does this exist?
• Designed for Practice
• The Metronome
• Speed Drill
• Pocket Check
• Zen Mode
• Floating Widget
• Hands-Free Control
• Practice Coach (coming soon)
• Screenshots
• Install
• Built With
• Development
• Contributing
• License

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Because most metronome apps out there feel outdated — clunky interfaces, too many taps to start, or just not something you want staring at you for an hour of practice.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.

• 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.

  

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.

  

Pocket Check

Practice keeping tempo by tapping along. Yames tracks your accuracy — how consistent your taps are — so you can see your internal clock improving over time.

  

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.

  

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.

     

Hands-Free Control

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

Key	Action
Space	Play / Stop
K / J	BPM +5 / -5
Shift+K / Shift+J	BPM +1 / -1
I / U	Subdivision +/-
L / H	Time signature +/-
Z	Zen mode (fullscreen visuals)
F	OS fullscreen
W	Toggle floating widget
1 / 2 / 3	Switch tabs (Metronome / Drill / Pocket Check)
S	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.

Practice Coach (coming soon)

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.

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

Found a bug? Want a feature? Open an issue. PRs welcome.

License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.