The Guitar Pro metronome on Android: the click and the count-in

By machado001 · 10 October 2026

Practise your tab file with a click

This guide is about playing a Guitar Pro or MusicXML file on an Android phone, not about the desktop program that wrote it. If you have not got the file open yet, start with how to open a Guitar Pro file on Android.

What a count-in is, and how long it lasts

A count-in is a short run of clicks before the music starts, so that your hands are already moving by the first note. One or two bars is the usual length: Fender’s lesson app plays a two-measure count-in, described as time to get your hands back to the instrument, and Guitar Pro’s own rhythm material describes a count-in the same way, as one or two bars of clicks. Apple’s GarageBand offers a one- or two-bar count-in before recording for the same reason. All three read that way as of October 2026.

In Tabline it is one bar, in the piece’s own time signature. On a three-four piece, measured on a phone with the guitar muted so nothing else could sound, that came out as three clicks and then the music — one bar, at the speed being played, no more and no fewer.

That is the whole feature, and it is worth more than it sounds. The alternative is pressing play and hearing bar one go past while you are still finding the first chord.

How to turn the metronome on while a tab plays

On a phone the two controls are in different places, because the transport bar has five cells and the metronome is not one of them.

1. Open the file and look along the bottom. The transport is five equal cells: Count-in, Speed, the play circle, A–B, and the name of the track on the page.
2. Tap Count-in. It is a toggle, and the key dims when it is off.
3. Tap the track name at the right end. The menu lists every track in the score with its instrument underneath, and the last row of that menu is Metronome.
4. Tap that row, or the key at the right of it, and press play.

On a tablet both sit on the desk, either side of the play circle: Count-in to the left, Metronome to the right, next to the A–B key.

Each one is on or off — full volume or silent, with no level to set in between. They both survive turning the phone, which is pinned by a test rather than left to luck. Neither is remembered the next time you open the file: what a file remembers is the bar you left off at, the stave view, the track, the speed and the loop, and nothing else. So a fresh open always starts with the click off, and switching it on is the first thing to do if you practise this way.

Where the click gets its tempo from

You never type a number. A tab file carries its own tempo, and the Player’s header line shows it next to the artist, the time signature and the key — Anonymous · 3/4 · E minor · 96 bpm. The click is produced by the same playback that produces the notes, so it keeps the score’s time rather than a time of its own.

Two details are worth knowing, because both are read straight off the file. The tempo shown is the one the file declares for the score. The time signature shown is the first bar’s, so a piece that changes metre halfway through still reads 3/4 up there. And on a short window that whole line is the first thing dropped to make room — the title and the bar number stay.

This is the trade a score-driven click makes. A standalone metronome app lets you dial any tempo you like and this one cannot be dialled at all; in exchange it is always the right tempo for the file in front of you, including on a score you have never seen before.

Does the metronome cost anything?

No. Opening a file, reading it, playing it back, switching between the tracks of a multitrack Guitar Pro file, the count-in and the metronome are all free and ungated.

What belongs to the one-time unlock — you pay once — is the practice gear built on top of playback: the speed trainer, the A–B loop, the per-track mixer and the fretboard that follows the notes. Speed and A–B are the two transport keys that carry a PRO tag; Count-in and the track menu carry none. The click is not behind the unlock, which is deliberate: a click is how you find out whether you are actually in time, and that should not be behind anything.

What this click will not do

Four honest limits, so you know what you are getting before you install anything.

• No tempo dial, no subdivisions, no accent patterns. One click per beat of the score, on or off. If you want eighth-note clicks or an accent pattern, that is a metronome app’s job, not a tab player’s.
• No separate volume for the click. It is full or silent. Measured on a phone against a muted guitar, the clicks peaked at about −18 dBFS, so they sit under a playing band rather than over it.
• The cursor is not the click. For about the first ten seconds of playback the moving cursor runs ahead of what you hear, and then pauses once as it corrects itself. That comes from the audio engine underneath and version 1 ships with it, so for the first few bars trust your ears over the cursor.
• It cannot fix a file that is wrong. If the playback sounds off rather than early or late, the click is not the problem: check what tuning the tab is in, or why a track sounds like a piano.

How to actually practise with it

Turn the count-in on and leave it on. It costs one bar and it removes the scramble at the start of every attempt, which matters most on the attempts you repeat twenty times.

Then let the click be the judge rather than the drummer. Play the passage with it on, and the places where you and it part company are the places to work on — usually a position shift or a bar where the rhythm is denser than you had been reading it. That is the moment to slow one hard bar down and loop it until the click and your hand agree again, then let the tempo climb back.

And read the rhythm as well as the frets while you are there. Tab numbers say where your fingers go, not how long they stay; the beams and flags above them are what the click is counting. Reading both staves at once is what makes a click useful instead of annoying.

The short version

A tab file already knows its tempo, so a metronome inside a tab player needs no setting up: two taps, one before the first note and one that runs through the piece. Both are free, neither is remembered, and the click is the cheapest honest opinion of your timing you will get.