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?
Because most metronome apps out there feel outdated — clunky interfaces, too many taps to start, or just not something you want staring at you for an hour of practice.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 13 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.
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.
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.
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 →
Install
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.
