A flamenco metronome — compás y palmas.
Palmas plays the compás of more than fifty palos with real palmas, cajón and jaleos, and draws it as you listen. This page covers the questions that come up most. Inside the app, nearly every setting has a ? beside it that explains it in place.
This is almost always Bluetooth. Wireless headphones and speakers add roughly 100 to 300 milliseconds of delay that the device does not report, so the dot lights before you hear the beat. Palmas already corrects for the delay it can measure; the rest you set once. Open App settings (the gear) and raise Audio/visual delay until the dot lights as you hear the beat. The setting is remembered. The built-in speaker and wired headphones rarely need it.
Usually that is the music rather than a fault. The compás is the pulse of the palo; the palmas are one way of playing against it, and the two often disagree. In abandolaos the pulse falls on 6, 2 and 4 while the palmas claras strike 1 and 3. The red discs mark the accents of the compás; the blue rings mark where the instrument you are following strikes. Choose which instrument is drawn in the Instruments mixer.
In the dots view, tap a beat to silence it, and tap it again to bring it back. Nothing sounds on a silenced beat, but the compás goes on showing where it falls, so you can count through the gap. While anything is silenced, a count appears under the pattern: its ✕ restores every beat at once, and Rhythm options shows the same count with a Clear button. Silences are kept per pattern. Off-beats can be silenced too, when the instrument being drawn plays eighth notes.
The iPhone and iPad app works fully offline — the sounds are part of the app. The browser app works offline once installed: in Safari on iPhone or iPad, use Share → Add to Home Screen; other browsers offer an install button. The steps are on the home page. The one thing that needs a connection is the Wikipedia article in a palo's help.
Open App settings (the gear) and choose Restore default parameters. You can reset only the pattern you are on, or every pattern. A reset returns tempo, instruments and silenced beats to their defaults. It leaves the app's own preferences alone — the light or dark theme, the view you use, and the Audio/visual delay — so a delay you have calibrated survives a reset.
Palmas collects no personal data, has no accounts, and shows no ads. See the Privacy Policy for details.