Ableton Forum

I can't understand why Ableton have the F keys locked to specific functions. Particularly the F1-F8 keys are completely wasted.

I thought I could override this with Bome's MIDI Translator, but the keys still mute/unmute tracks 1-8.

Free them up, already!

I was going to say "Try it in B-flat", then I read the post…

I mean... The F keys are the ones that stand out and are least prone to cocking things up. They should be freely assignable.

I haven't had problems with them.

You can use AutoHotKey to either disable them in Live or assign something different to them.

Yes, it adds an utility running in the background, but AHK is worth it.

Ok, so, unlike Bome's, AHK will actually not pass on a regular "F message" to Live? That's cool, and I will try it.

I was leaning towards Bome's in the first place because I wanted to try to move the Launchpad control frame in Session view, simultaneously updating the Launchpad, with keyboard keys - 8 tracks/scenes at a time, as this takes two button presses on the LP, but no luck...

I'll give AHK a go, but I still wish Ableton would remove the necessity for 3rd party apps JUST to free up keys for mapping. For more complex things, sure, but keeping the F keys locked like that is silly.

To modify the behavior of the F keys in Live, just add the following to your AHK script file :
This will change the way the F keys behave only in Live, thanks to the #IfWinActive, ahk_class Afx:00400000:0:00000000:01900015:00000000 line.

If you add nothing after "F1::", F1 will not do anything in Live (but may still respond globally if other applications use the key in this way). Otherwise, just type the character you want to map F1 to after the two ::.

Awesome! Thank you very much! And that active window string will work regardless of Windows version, etc.? Those numbers didn't mean a lot to me

Yes, this should work with any version of Windows, actually "Afx:00400000:0:00000000:01900015:00000000 " is the name of the Ableton window, not of a Windows variable.

It that does not work, use the AU3_Spy.exe file (in your AutoHotKey install folder) to monitor your mouse/keyboard/window focus, select the Ableton Windows to get its name/code, and modify the script accordingly. But it should work as provided

Cool! Thanks again, mate.

This worked for me! My AHK script was a little different:
#IfWinActive, ahk_exe Ableton Live 10 Intro.exe
F1::
F2::
F3::
F4::
F5::
F6::
F7::
F8::
F9::
#IfWinActive

I used the WindowSpy to grab the updated program code. I kept F11 and F12 normal because those toggle Fullscreen and Audio track View vs. FX view, respectively. Also, I needed to disable the Function Hotkeys in my BIOS (Windows 10, Lenovo laptop) so that just pressing a function button did the actual function #, and not so that it engaged one of the Windows hot key functions (e.g. volume up, down, brightness up, down, etc.)