About BeatDig
BeatDig is a metronome and tap tempo tool that runs in your browser with nothing to install or sign up for, together with practice guides on how to get the most out of it.
Why it exists
There are plenty of online metronomes, but many of them drift or stutter the moment you switch to another tab to read a score or play a backing track. Browsers deliberately slow down timers in tabs you are not looking at.
For a metronome, losing the beat breaks the one promise it has to keep. BeatDig started as an attempt to solve that problem properly, and new features are only added when they do not put that at risk.
Who runs it
BeatDig is a personal project run by one person. The operator reviews the tool and the practice guides before anything is published, and reads bug reports and questions personally.
- Operator: Jung Byung Su
Principles
- No server — everything runs inside your browser, and nothing about your playing or settings is sent anywhere.
- No accounts — there is no screen asking for your name or email, and settings are stored only in your own browser.
- Language by address only — you are never redirected based on your location or browser language. Korean lives at beatdig.com and English at beatdig.com/en/.
- No ads next to the controls — advertising is kept apart from the start, stop and tap buttons so nobody hits an ad by mistake.
How the timing stays accurate
BeatDig does not fire each click from an ordinary timer. It schedules upcoming beats ahead of time against the audio device's hardware clock, and the scheduling runs in a background thread (a Web Worker) separate from page rendering. Even when the browser throttles timers because you are looking at another tab, beats that are already scheduled play at exactly the right moment.
The clicks are synthesised in the browser rather than loaded from audio files, so there is no download delay. The credits page describes how each voice's waveform is built.
Before every release, automated tests check the beat interval arithmetic, the accent cycle for each time signature, and that no beats are lost when scheduling is throttled to once per second in a background tab.
How the practice guides are written
The guides focus on what to actually do with the metronome running. Instead of general encouragement they give concrete numbers: what tempo to start at, when to move it up, and how to set subdivisions and accents.
The English guides are written separately for English-speaking players rather than translated line by line from the Korean ones. If you spot a mistake or know a better method, get in touch and it will be checked and reflected in the article.
Contact
Feature ideas, bug reports and comments on the guides can be sent to the email address on the contact page. What information the site handles, including advertising cookies, is set out in the privacy policy.