Sketch beats on a living mandala — up to twelve lanes, four kits, generators that surprise you. Jam free; unlock Pro once for lanes, export & polymeter. No subscription.
Orbeat is a drum machine in the round. Instead of a grid, your rhythm lives on a glowing mandala — concentric lanes of light that orbit a single play button. Tap the rings, watch the playhead sweep, and feel the groove move.
Built to be played, not programmed. Open it and you're already making beats.
A CIRCULAR SEQUENCER — UP TO TWELVE LANES
Six lanes wrap the screen as rings, and the circle can grow to twelve: the mandala opens a second page of rings in its own electric color set, so every lane keeps its full size. Tap to place hits, lock a lane you love, mute and solo as you build the groove layer by layer. The whole pattern turns as it plays.
FOUR DRUM KITS
Classic, Acoustic, Glitch, and 8-bit — one tap reskins every voice while your pattern stays put. From clean and punchy to broken and chiptune.
GENERATORS THAT SURPRISE YOU
Roll the dice for an instant pattern, or use Euclidean rhythms to spread hits evenly around a ring. Like what you hear? Tap the ring to write it in and edit by hand.
MAKE IT BREATHE, MAKE IT DRIFT
Add swing to push the feel off the grid, and draw velocity per step for accents that live. With Probability, hits fire by chance; with polymeter, each lane gets its own length so the phases drift in and out of sync.
TAKE IT ANYWHERE
Bounce any loop to a WAV you can share, or run Orbeat as an AUv3 instrument with MIDI in & out — sequence other instruments, or play Orbeat's lanes from your host's piano roll inside GarageBand, AUM, Logic, and other AUv3 hosts. Standalone, play the pads live from any MIDI controller and sync the whole groove to external MIDI clock.
PLAY FREE. UNLOCK ONCE.
The full instrument is free forever — every kit, the six-lane sequencer, Euclidean generators, swing, and velocity. Orbeat Pro is a single one-time purchase (no subscription, ever) that unlocks Probability, polymeter, WAV export, unlimited saved beats, and room to grow the circle to twelve lanes.
Made for iPhone and iPad. No account, no ads, no tracking — your beats never leave your device unless you share them.
Tap the rings. Make it move.
Really nice sequencer! I’m very much enjoying my time with it. Unfortunately for me, I have lots of sequencers already and whilst I am tempted to buy this one through the in-app purchase, I’m a bit annoyed by what - I find to be - a weird but most likely arbitrary limitation: only six lanes? Hopefully you can consider adding a system which allows us to “instantiate lanes” — I’d be ok with being able to have from 1 to 16 lanes — I understand if more is a bit annoying… but at least being able to have up to 16 lanes (and the ability to “select how many you want”) would be amazing and would definitely have me buying this immediately. Given that, and sorry if I’m being overwhelming, but as a programmer myself, I think the suggested idea shouldn’t be very hard to implement, I hope you will consider it; it would really make this sequencer a super versatile and beautiful tool. PS: thanks for the amazing, iPhone friendly layout — the UI design in this is crazy good. PS2: I did have a bug where when first trying this out, I couldn’t add notes on the sequencer under the “sequence lane as bars” view. I think in order to fix this, I had to add a note manually under the “circular sequence” view, after that all worked just fine. Great app! Please consider adding more lanes as an option 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Developer Response
Thank you for this review — it's a big part of why 1.2.0 exists. The update is in App Review now and should land within a few days: tap + to add lanes (or remove them), up to twelve, with the circle opening a second page of rings so every lane keeps its full size. We stopped at twelve rather than sixteen to keep the mandala readable and playable on a phone, but it's exactly the "pick how many lanes you want" system you described. The first six stay free; growing the circle is part of the one-time Pro unlock. The bars-view bug you hit — notes not registering until one existed in the circular view — was fixed back in 1.1.1. Thanks for the kind words about the layout, and if twelve still isn't enough, tell me what you're building: zhiii0x@gmail.com!
The circle grows — Orbeat now goes up to twelve lanes.
TWICE THE CIRCLE
You asked for more voices, so here they are. Tap + to grow your kit past six: the mandala opens a second page of rings so every lane keeps its full size, and you flip between pages with the corner chevrons. Page two glows in its own electric color set, and the new voices land ready to play — Noise, plus a second Kick, Snare, Hat, Tom, and Clap. Works standalone and as the AUv3 in your host, with existing automation untouched. The first six lanes stay free; growing the circle is part of Orbeat Pro.
A CLEANER COCKPIT ON IPHONE
Your drum kit moved up beside the tempo — a small chip that names the active kit and opens the full picker in one tap. Below the circle, editing is now a single tidy card: two clear tabs (Velocity and Generator), a taller velocity panel with real room to draw, and a lane strip that follows the circle's page — the lane you're on expands, the rest tuck in tight. Twelve lanes, way less scrolling.
Thanks for playing — this one shipped because you asked.
Tell us what you'd love to see next: zhiii0x@gmail.com
Version 1.2.0
The developer, Chih Han Lin, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Chih Han Lin
Size
4.5 MB
Category
Music
Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 13.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
