New in 1.5 · watchOS 11 or later
MagicBPM on Apple Watch taps the beat straight onto your wrist. No click, no speaker, nothing for the room to hear: it works on a loud stage, in a quiet house at midnight, and under in-ear monitors where a click has nowhere to go. It comes with the iPhone app, and it is free.
On the wrist
The tempo is the tap pad, the crown is the fine adjustment, and the button at the bottom is where your thumb already is.
You use a haptic metronome with your hands on an instrument, not with a watch held up in front of your face. MagicBPM asks watchOS for an extended runtime session when you press Start, so the beat carries on after the screen goes dark. If the system refuses the session, the caption tells you it is screen-on only rather than letting you find out mid-take.
Tapping a small button four times in rhythm is not something anyone does accurately, so the target is the entire tempo display. It uses the same averaging as the iPhone app, which tolerates a mistap and a skipped beat instead of lurching.
One BPM per detent, 30 to 300, and it keeps working while the metronome runs, which is exactly when you want it. Turning it mid-beat slides the grid instead of restarting it, so there is no doubled or swallowed beat at the moment you change tempo.
watchOS gives no volume control for the Taptic Engine, so strength is a choice between two taps rather than a slider. Light is crisp and quiet; Strong is the default, because the lightest tap loses against a drum kit. Tapping an option plays it, since no label can tell you how something feels.
Every beat is scheduled from a fixed anchor on the system clock rather than by adding an interval to "now" each time. A timer that accumulates its own delay wanders audibly inside a minute. This one cannot, whatever the watch is doing between beats.
The watch app ships inside MagicBPM for iPhone, so installing the iPhone app is the whole setup, and it costs nothing. It is not a separate download, not a separate App Store listing, and not part of Pro.
Why a tap beats a click
The trade is real and worth stating: the watch plays one steady pulse, and time signatures, accented downbeats, subdivisions and the thirteen click sounds all stay in the iPhone app. The Taptic Engine has one tap, not a loud one and a quiet one, so an accent you could reliably feel apart from the beat is not something the hardware offers.
First run
Need the tempo of a song before you can practise against it? The iPhone app hears it through the microphone and hands you the number, and the how-to guide covers the awkward cases. No watch to hand? The browser metronome runs anywhere.
Free, and already in the app
One download covers iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. Detection, the metronome, tap tempo and one-shot song identification are free; Pro is a single purchase, never a subscription.
Download on the App StoreGood to know
Neither. It ships inside MagicBPM for iPhone, so installing the iPhone app puts it on the paired watch, and it is free. There is nothing extra to buy and nothing extra to find in the App Store.
No, and that is the point. Every beat is a tap from the Taptic Engine, which is what makes it usable on a loud stage, in a quiet room, or under in-ear monitors. If you want a click, the metronome in the iPhone app has thirteen of them.
Yes. A haptic metronome is used with the wrist lowered, because your hands are on an instrument, so the app asks watchOS for an extended runtime session and keeps tapping after the screen turns off. If watchOS refuses the session, for example in Low Power Mode, the caption under the tempo reads “screen on only” so you know before you rely on it.
Two ways. Tap the number in time with the music and it takes the tempo from your hand, using the same mistap-tolerant averaging as the iPhone app. Or turn the Digital Crown, which moves it one BPM at a time and keeps working while the metronome runs. The range is 30 to 300 BPM.
Which of Apple's haptics plays on the beat. watchOS has no volume control for the Taptic Engine, so strength is a choice between two taps rather than a dial: Light is crisp and quiet, Strong is the default because a light tap loses against a drum kit. Tapping an option in Settings plays it, so you choose by feel rather than by name.
Not yet. Live tempo detection needs the microphone and the full detection engine, and it lives in the iPhone app. The watch is the metronome half: you bring it a tempo, by tapping or by crown, and it keeps it.
watchOS 11 or later, paired with an iPhone running MagicBPM. It is a companion app rather than a standalone one, so the iPhone app has to be installed.
Not on Wear OS. On the phone itself, MagicBPM for Android has vibrate-on-beat in the metronome, which is the same idea through the phone's own vibration motor.
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