Ableton Forum

Just found out about the Ctrl+Alt+P shortcut to Show/Hide Plug In Window, but does it work on the currently Selected Track? I'm familiar with the Preferences regarding Plug-in Windows, but any combination thereof will not allow me to Show/Hide the Plug-in Window of the currently Selected Track. The keyboard shortcut will only open the "last" Plug-in Window opened via the Wrench tool. Am I missing something? I read in a forum somewhere that this has been a bug for a long time. Can anyone confirm?

Working on a PC Windows 10. Live 9.7.7

EDIT: I think I found the behavior I can work with, but it's plug in specific - it won't work for other plug ins. Just had to play with the preferences more (been at it for a few days I'm pretty sure I tried this combination and it didn't work before - I will update/report if it is indeed a bug).
TURN ON - Multiple Plug In Windows
TURN ON - Auto-Hide Plug In Windows
TURN ON - Auto-Open Plug In Custom Editor
I have to turn on every single plug in I have on a track manually via wrench and press Ctrl+Alt+P to hide it. Whether I have an VST instrument of effect. After which, every time I go to that track and hit the keyboard shortcut, all the plug ins I opened up manually; shows and hides. So far it works on LABS by Spitfire, but it doesn't work for Komplete Kontrol.

EDIT 2: Apparently, when you open the project again, even if you save - the behavior resets to default - and I have to do the process all over again (open each instance of the plug in on each track), which is a hassle. Can anyone confirm this?

Simply put, this shortcut has never worked correctly, unfortunately.

Yes its a shame, ... being able to map show/hide plugin wrench for selected device on a controller would be a must have...would save so many time

[jur] wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:16 pm

Simply put, this shortcut has never worked correctly, unfortunately.

The shortcut works properly and is useful in some scenarios (e.g. to quickly close and reopen the opened plugin windows for editing automations or using the faders), however i agree that a second shortcut to open the windows of the selected plugins is what most people need and that is long overdue (as is a similar shortcut for Push).

danielr wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:55 am

[jur] wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:16 pm

Simply put, this shortcut has never worked correctly, unfortunately.

The shortcut works properly and is useful in some scenarios (e.g. to quickly close and reopen the opened plugin windows for editing automations or using the faders), however i agree that a second shortcut to open the windows of the selected plugins is what most people need and that is long overdue (as is a similar shortcut for Push).

You're actually right. I rarely use 3rd party plugins, but I played a bit with a few these last weeks and the shortcut does indeed work as expected. My bad.

Rather than open another thread on this hoping that someone has an answer as to why this is so badly implemented, and it sounds like it's just a long standing partly finished area of Lives usually stellar UX. Why on earth wouldn't this just be a track based instrument plug in command? Why would anyone prefer to have to use the mouse first?

To be fair dual monitor support in Bitwig is near useless IMO. They screw up their own keyboard shortcuts and you're stuck with 4 or five awkward setups that really don't help at all. Live on the other hand even in 11 has fantastic dual monitor support, most shortcuts are great. The aforementioned lack of useable screensets for dual monitors in Bitwig and that it's stayed that way for years is an example of the reason why people supposedly first looked at Live and other DAWs like it, I would have to say the near uselessness of partial shortcuts that only work when primed by multiple steps like the Show/Hide plugin window command is another example. Anyway I have my answer there is no way to fix this, it's a bug or partially implemented feature.