10 Apps Like Chrome Music Lab for Kids and Classrooms

The closest apps to Chrome Music Lab are Incredibox and Bandimal on iPhone and iPad, and the closest websites are BeepBox for Song Maker-style composing and Groove Pizza for rhythm. Chrome Music Lab itself has no app, and nothing below charges a subscription: each pick is free, a single purchase, or free with one optional unlock. Two of the ten are ours, marked (ours), and prices for the other apps are from the US App Store in September 2026.

Is there an app for Chrome Music Lab?

No. Google makes no Chrome Music Lab app. Chrome Music Lab runs in the web browser on phones, tablets, laptops and Chromebooks, needs no account, and suggests Chrome if a page has trouble loading. On an iPhone or iPad, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, and you get an icon that opens it like an app.

Most people looking for an alternative mean Song Maker, the grid where every square is a note. Its Settings panel doubles as a checklist for judging a replacement:

The melody sounds are Marimba, Piano, Strings, Woodwind and Synth, the drums are Electronic, Blocks, Kit and Conga, and Save gives you a link or a WAV or MIDI download.

The setting that matters most is Scale. Set it to Pentatonic, start on C, and the grid only holds C, D, E, G and A, the five notes of the C major pentatonic scale. None of those notes sits a half step from another, so any squares a child fills in sound fine together (why the pentatonic scale sounds good explains the reason). Bandimal, Gelato Synth and BeepBox’s easiest scale are built on the same idea.

Apps like Chrome Music Lab for iPhone and iPad

These five are apps, not websites. The line under each name gives the price and the devices it runs on.

1. Incredibox (So Far So Good). Paid ($4.99), no ads or in-app purchases, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android, plus a free demo in the browser.

   Drag icons onto a row of beatboxers and each one starts singing its part: a beat, a melody, an effect or a voice. Kids learn about layering by ear, adding one part at a time and hearing the mix change, and the right combination of sounds sets off an animated chorus. One purchase includes all nine versions, from the original Alpha to Brazil (inspired by Brazilian music) and Jeevan (inspired by Indian music and Bollywood). Incredibox for schools is a browser version sold by the license: the teacher creates classes and logins, and students are not asked for any personal information, not even an email address.

2. Bandimal (Yatatoy). Paid ($4.99), no ads, iPhone, iPad and Mac.

   Yatatoy calls it a first music composer for kids, and it is the pick here for the youngest players. Nine animals are the instruments. Melodies go in on a kalimba keyboard built on pentatonic scales, and the beat section builds drum loops from kicks, snares and hi-hats; you can change the loop speed and add effects. It works with no internet connection and collects no data, and it won an Apple Design Award.

3. Gelato Synth (ours). Free with a one-time $4.99 unlock, iPhone.

   Song Maker’s pentatonic trick, played live. There is no keyboard: you pick a root and one of nine scales (Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic and Blues among them), and the pads hold only those notes, three rows for three octaves, with each scale degree always the same color. Fat sliders shape the sound, and the presets run from Toy Piano and Music Box to Laser. It is rated 4+, shows no ads, has no accounts and makes no network connections. The unlock adds Chords mode, the loop recorder and every preset.

4. Gelato Chord (ours). Free with a one-time $4.99 unlock, iPhone.

   For kids who liked Chrome Music Lab’s Chords experiment. It lays one key’s seven chords across seven labeled keys: in F major that is F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm and Edim. A twelve-string melody plate lights up the notes of the chord you are holding, so a child who sticks to the lit strings plays notes that fit the chord. The free version is the whole instrument in Play mode with three sounds (Grand Piano, Rhodes and Saw). The unlock adds the Strum, Lead, Arp and Repeat modes, the loop recorder and all 59 sounds. Like Gelato Synth, it has no ads or accounts and collects no data.

5. Bloom (Opal Limited). Paid ($3.99), iPhone, iPad and Mac.

   Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers made this ambient music box. Each tap plays a note and a bloom of color, the notes repeat, and a few taps grow into a slow, shimmering pattern; shake the phone to clear it. Leave it alone and it composes by itself. It has 12 moods and collects no data. It suits a calm corner or a listening lesson more than songwriting. A newer version, Bloom: 10 Worlds, also runs on Android.

Websites like Chrome Music Lab

All three are free, run in the browser like Chrome Music Lab, and need no account to play.

6. Blob Opera (David Li with Google Arts & Culture). Free, in the browser.

   Four blobs sing bass, tenor, mezzo-soprano and soprano. Drag one up or down to change its pitch and forward or back to change the vowel, and the other three harmonize in real time. The voices come from a machine learning model trained on recordings of four opera singers, so a kid dragging one blob hears a quartet answer. In class, hand one student the soprano and let the room hear the other three parts follow: four-part harmony in a single demo. It can lag on older devices.

7. Groove Pizza (NYU Music Experience Design Lab). Free, in the browser.

   Rhythm drawn as a pizza: a circle cut into as many as 16 slices, with three rings of dots, one for each drum sound. Put a topping on a slice and that drum hits on that step. Start from a preset in the Specials menu, or build a beat from shapes: on a 16-slice pizza, kick toppings on slices 1, 5, 9 and 13 form a square and play the steady four-on-the-floor kick of dance music. That makes it an easy tie-in to math lessons on shapes and angles. There is a swing control, grooves export as audio or MIDI, and an accessible version adds keyboard controls and audio cues.

8. Learning Music (Ableton). Free, in the browser, no account.

   Short interactive lessons on beats, notes and scales, chords, basslines, melodies and song structure, each with a small grid you play as you read. Advanced lessons cover modes, inversions and seventh chords, and the site comes in 19 languages. It suits older kids, and teachers, who want to know why a pattern works.

For chords in the browser, our free online chord player plays the chords of all 24 major and minor keys with Keys, Pad and Pluck sounds.

Song Maker alternatives for composing

When a kid starts filling every bar of Song Maker and asks for more, these two are the next step.

9. BeepBox (John Nesky). Free, in the browser, no account.

   The closest thing to a grown-up Song Maker. You still draw notes on a grid, but across several instrument channels plus drums, in patterns you arrange into a longer song. The Scale menu uses friendly names: “easy :)” is the major pentatonic (C, D, E, G and A in C), “easy :(” is the minor pentatonic (C, Eb, F, G and Bb), “normal” is the plain major or minor scale, and “expert” opens all 12 notes. Blues, island, double harmonic and a whole-tone scale called “strange” sit in between. The whole song lives in the page’s URL, so saving is copying a link. BeepBox collects no data and exports WAV, MP3 or MIDI.

10. GarageBand (Apple). Free, iPhone, iPad and Mac.

    The free step up once a kid wants to record a real song. Live Loops is a grid of cells you tap to start and stop loops, Drummer adds a virtual drummer that plays along, and the Touch Instruments include Chord Strips, so a kid can play chords without knowing a single chord shape. The Sound Library of extra loops and instruments is free. Downloading it needs an Apple Account.

Using these apps in the classroom

Match the tool to the lesson. The websites need nothing but a browser, which makes them the easy choice for shared Chromebooks.

A few habits that keep a lesson running smoothly:

• Give everyone the same constraint: a 4-bar Song Maker loop in Pentatonic, starting on C, at one shared tempo, with no more than three notes per beat. Every loop uses the same five notes, so you can play them back to back as one class piece.
• Collect links instead of logins. Song Maker and BeepBox both save to a link, so students paste theirs into a shared class document.
• Plan for noise. Twenty-five Blob Operas at once is a lot. Use headphones, or run one on the projector and take turns at the controls.
• Check a site before you project it. Patatap, another popular sound toy site, carries a flashing imagery warning, which matters for students with photosensitive epilepsy.
• If older students ask for BandLab, know that it has social features. Our guide on whether BandLab is safe for kids covers what to check first.

To turn those loops into a finished piece, follow our steps for writing a song with kids. For more apps to use at home, see music making apps for kids.