Make Keyboard Shortcuts Rebindable (Windows)

[Philip Guin]

Would love to rebind a key or two in Live 10. I'm aware Mac supports this at the OS level, but Windows does not, and users shouldn't have to have some janky software running in the background just to change one shortcut. Two possible solutions:

A) Like Blender, make common alternatives toggleable via an options button. E.g. swap Redo between Ctrl+Y and Ctrl+Shift+Z.

B) Add a menu to rebind all keyboard shortcuts, only for Windows if necessary.

I'd be happy with option A, whereas option B is ideal but harder to implement. I'm assuming option B would also require a huge amount of documentation to be updated, whereas A's impact would be minimal.

[jonljacobi]

Janky software? Ableton has shown no interest in this, so you might want to give janky a try.

[Scoox]

+1

Janky software? Ableton has shown no interest in this, so you might want to give janky a try.

Word of caution, I use AutoHotkey for this sort of thing, but it doesn't work well for every piece of software. Using AutoHotkey's window inspector "WindowSpy" it looks like the Ableton Live GUI is one big window class so there's no way for an external program to know over which part of the GUI the mouse is or which control has focus. So, for example, 'A' is bound to 'Toggle automation mode'; if you use a script to send 'T' whenever 'A' is pressed while Live is the active window, then when you try to rename a track to "Bass" you will end up typing "Btss" instead.

[Philip Guin]

@jonljacobi I appreciate that AutoHotKey is necessary and exists, and for all I know it's amazing software, but combing through all your key inputs and running in the background 24/7 seems like a fundamentally invasive process to me, and therefore "janky." Sometimes the janky solution is the only solution, but it's a huge workaround for what should really be a simple fix on Ableton's end (if they were to choose option A, in any case).

Requiring third-party software to remap keys is disappointing for professional software imo. People hold "janky" video games to a much higher standard than that. I'll forgive them a bit since it's exclusive to Windows, but still.

[Scoox]

@jonljacobi I appreciate that AutoHotKey is necessary and exists, and for all I know it's amazing software, but combing through all your key inputs and running in the background 24/7 seems like a fundamentally invasive process to me, and therefore "janky." Sometimes the janky solution is the only solution, but it's a huge workaround for what should really be a simple fix on Ableton's end (if they were to choose option A, in any case).

Requiring third-party software to remap keys is disappointing for professional software imo. People hold "janky" video games to a much higher standard than that. I'll forgive them a bit since it's exclusive to Windows, but still.

Correct, and I agree 100%, that's what I meant in my earlier post.

[Lokan]

The OP mentioned Blender and it has one of the best customisation option I've ever seen. When I used Unity and Blender for game development, Blender was so flexible that I had no problem switching back and forth.

For a janky software I'd like to mention Clip Studio Paint as an example. The default key binding isn't good enough, which eventually makes users customise things on their own. But there's no way to switch between presets and sync between devices, also no search boxes like in Blender, VSCode, Bitwig etc.

When I tried Bitwig, this is one of the feature I really liked, I was able to remap some awkward shortcuts and get the workflow quicker.
I'd love to see this in Ableton, too.

[jonljacobi]

I wish Ableton allowed complete key remapping, but it doesn’t and it seems very much that they have no interest in it. Hence AutoHotKey and using keys that aren’t already mapped, such as the keypad and upper function keys.

I’m plus one on the suggestion but I’m not sanguine about the prospects.