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👏BPM counter

✓ Tested & verified Updated: How this works

Tap tempo

—BPM

—

  • Taps0
  • Steadiness—
  • Half / double—
  • Beat every—
  • Four bars—

Tap along at least four times.

Space taps too — most people are steadier with a key than with a mouse.

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How many taps does a BPM reading need?

The Timerdial BPM counter gives a usable number from four taps and a settled one from eight, because it reads the median gap between taps rather than the average. With a mean, one hesitation drags the answer several beats per minute and the reading gets worse the longer you tap; with a median, a single late tap is simply outvoted.

Alongside the tempo is a steadiness figure, which is the part that tells you whether to believe the number. Above 95 per cent the gaps barely moved. Below 85 the taps were uneven enough that the tempo is a guess, and the fix is to keep tapping through a whole phrase rather than to tap harder.

Half and double are shown as well, since a tempo of 140 and one of 70 fit the same music and which one is right depends on where you feel the beat.

Typical tempo ranges, for when the number needs a sanity check:

StyleUsual BPM
Ballad, slow blues60–80
Hip hop80–100
Rock, pop100–130
House, disco118–128
Techno125–150
Drum and bass165–180

If your reading lands near the edge of one of these, check the half and double figures before believing it — most disagreements about tempo are really disagreements about where the beat is.

Once you have a number, the metronome will hold it, nudge it by one or five, and add subdivisions for practice. For timing the length of something rather than its tempo, the stopwatch takes laps, and the seconds to minutes converter turns a running time into whatever unit the rest of the job wants.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my reading exactly double or half what I expected?

Because both are correct and only convention separates them. Tapping the backbeat of a track that is 140 gives 70; tapping every eighth note gives 280. Dance music is conventionally counted at the four-to-the-floor kick, and much rock and pop is written at half the rate people clap. The half and double figures are on screen for exactly this, so the right one is a glance away rather than a calculation.

Is tapping with the keyboard better than clicking?

Slightly, and it shows up in the steadiness figure. A key press has a shorter and more consistent travel than moving and clicking a mouse, and a hand resting on the space bar is doing the same motion every time. Tapping with a finger on a phone screen sits in between. Whichever you use, the tempo is taken from the gaps rather than from any absolute moment, so a consistent lag does not affect the result at all.

Can I find the BPM of a song without tapping?

Not from this page, and it is worth knowing why. Analysing audio for its tempo means having the audio, which would mean uploading it or asking for microphone permission, and both are a great deal of machinery for something a hand does in four seconds. Streaming services publish tempo in their own metadata, and DJ software analyses files it already holds.

What does the steadiness percentage measure?

How far your taps sat from their own median, on average, expressed so that identical gaps give 100 per cent. It is a measure of your tapping rather than of the music: a rock-steady track tapped by a distracted hand scores badly, and that is the honest signal, because the tempo is only as good as the taps it came from.

How this works

Every tap records a timestamp, and the gaps between consecutive taps are the raw data. Gaps under eighty milliseconds are treated as double presses and gaps over three seconds as pauses, so neither enters the calculation; the tempo is sixty thousand divided by the median of what remains. The median is used rather than the mean because tapping error is not symmetrical — a late tap is far more common than an early one — and a mean therefore drifts slow. Steadiness is the mean absolute deviation from that median, divided by the median and expressed as a percentage subtracted from a hundred, so perfectly even taps score a hundred. Half and double tempos are shown because they are equally valid readings of the same taps. The last sixteen taps are kept, so the figure follows a tempo that changes rather than averaging the whole session. Nothing is recorded, and no audio is captured at any point.

Sources:

Where a tap tempo is enough

Setting a delay pedal. Beat interval in milliseconds is on screen, which is the number a delay wants.

Matching a rehearsal to a recording. Tap the recording, then set the metronome to that number.

Checking a video edit. Four bars in seconds is shown too, which is what a cut has to line up with.