Can we PLEAAASSSEEE finally get some proper plugin window management and UX?!!

[geeklamb]

I have recently gotten back into music production after being out of the game for almost 20 years and while certain features have blown my mind there are some features that are unbelievably exactly the same as they were then!! As a software engineer myself, I would consider many aspects of the UX surrounding plugins to be fundamentally broken and I have to say, I felt embarrassed for your product managers that this was the current state of things today. Here are some of the main issues I'm referring to...

1. There is no way to allow plugin windows to display/autofocus/jump to the foreground based on which track/device/chain is focus at the time
2. There is no hotkey to display the plugin window of the currently selected track/device/chain. You can only display all plugin windows that have been toggled on or not. Another track's plugin could remain at the foreground.
3. There is STILL no way to universally resize plugin windows (As a result we have to rely on the plugin maker to implement basic infrastructure like this
4. There is no way to display all plugin windows side-by-side next to each other like "Mission Control" on Mac OSX
5. There is no universal plugin wrapper UX that allows for the quick search browser of other plugins/devices and the ability to tag and save presets accordingly (similar to NI Komplete Kontrol).

Look I get that you guys wanna be fascist to increase the pain points associated with 3rd party plugins and force everyone into M4L, but the actual reality of modern music production is that virtually all of your customers have to use 3rd party plugins and would probably be more drawn to your products if you could create the proper infrastructure here that is needed for their workflows.

How many millions of musicians around the world have to break their creative flow while writing/producing/performing to stop and find their mouse cursor, click into some nested device inside of the Detail View, and find the little dot they need to see the plugin they are playing in over and over? You should be enabling your users to keep their creative flow states, not destroying them!

I know you have a high standard for UX design. You force all of your own devices and your 3rd party M4L devices to get squished into the Detail View at the bottom row of your layout to save as much screen real estate as you can for small-screen laptops and such. This is a huge boon to creativity for users using those screens.

However, because the UI of plugins can't be controlled for you just put them in their own crappy window resizeable window and call the feature "done". The current plugin window UX comes across as though you built in a hackathon and never revisited its feature set on your roadmap. That's not good enough Ableton!

You've spent such an amazing amount of time and effort building some of the most innovative features in music tech!! Can you please try to catch up on the basic infrastructure please!!

[CrystalWizard]

Couldn't agree more. Can we get a way to open all third party plug in windows At Once. Really, seriously you call it "Ableton LIVE" do you think maybe it would be helpful in a live gig if i didn't have to click through each channel and open it? Maybe not having to resize and move them all around while setting up?

[jonljacobi]

"Facist" Really? Hurling pejoratives is sure to win them over.

[E_Sync]

I have to agree. I just got Live 11 andf I MUST say that it's system for finding and updating the plugin folders is HORRIBLE!!!! Im so pissed for all the time I'm wasting I will even say it completely sucks!!!!! Don't get me wrong I also think overall Fruity Loops sucks too and that's why I switched to Live but this one part of Live MUST get caught up to the rest of it... PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS MAN AND FIX THIS PROBLEM IMMEDIATELY... $750.00 SPENT AND i CANT EVEN GET STARTED MAKING MUSIC BECAUSE ALL MY TIME IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHERE SOME MISSING VST'S ARE.

And yest I've read everything and all the reasons why this could be happening and did everything suggested and still, nothing. LIve will not even show a new folder Ive added to my VST3 folder on my hard rive. It wont even show after updated in Live.. I'M FULLY STUCK AND CAN NOT USE THE SOFTWARE TO CONTINUE WORKING.

THIS IS THE MOST FRUSTRATED I'VE BEEN SO FAR AS A NEW PRODUCER

[oscarstott]

I completely agree with you. Having a convenient button right next to the device activator that allows you to fold a stock/M4L device and create a detachable window is absolutely essential when it comes to comparing different tracks!

[jlgrimes]

One thing that always irk'd me with Ableton was its minimal plugin window management compared to something like Sonar which had some cool Plugin Window management options (even from a mid 2000s Windows XP standpoint).

I never understood why you couldn't at least minimize the plugin Window (something I assumed that was pretty common on about any DAW). Sonar even had a plugin Window "transparent" mode to where it fades into the background allowing you to see and control whats behind the plugin. A fairly modern feature for like 2006 or 2007 when it was implemented.


In Ableton you can pretty much only open and close a plugin Window.


I got used to Abletons' workflow overtime but it would be cool to get some development here as those type of features helps greatly when a project gets bigger and busier.


Ableton has a very individual track based workflow of Window management and kind of wants you to make use of the "basic" device View for managing plugin windows which probably made some sense back when plugins themselves were minimalistic, but with complex plugin GUI (which is now more common than ever), we should be able to manage the plugin Windows better.

[pottering]

Show/Hide Plug-In CTRL-ALT-P (Win), CMD-ALT-P (Mac)

"Close plug-in" is separate from "show/hide plug-in" in Live, clicking the close button in a plug-in window will close it (potentially saving some rendering CPU/GPU), while "show/hide" will only hide the window without closing it. There is no shortcut for closing/opening, gotta click in the the spanner icon, or the window's close button, or alt+F4.

[jlgrimes]

Show/Hide Plug-In CTRL-ALT-P (Win), CMD-ALT-P (Mac)

"Close plug-in" is separate from "show/hide plug-in" in Live, clicking the close button in a plug-in window will close it (potentially saving some rendering CPU/GPU), while "show/hide" will only hide the window without closing it. There is no shortcut for closing/opening, gotta click in the the spanner icon, or the window's close button, or alt+F4.

Those key commands while useful aren't a full controlled independent minimize function.


In Sonar you could minimize plugin windows independently and the window would stay floating on the bottom of the screen with just a minimized bar up.

This feature while not useful to some was great for comparing settings for different tracks to each other and had a pretty good way of keeping open what you wanted to focus on regardless of track.

I think most of Ableton's limitations here stems from on how most people will only focus on plugins on a track by track basis, where Sonar had a more globalized flexible approach which sometimes help when mixing.

[pottering]

OK, but Live is not limited to "only open and close a plugin Window", you can show/hide.

You can compare settings between plug-ins in different tracks, just disable "Auto-Hide Plug-In Windows" in Preferences.

[dave baker]

"Facist" Really? Hurling pejoratives is sure to win them over.

Well, they are in fact very authoritarian about anything that has to do with their UI design. Ableton's design choices suggest that they feel like plugin GUI windows are an abomination and an unacceptable, verminous eyesore on the clean, utilitaryan landscape of the Ableton Ideal. They tolerate these impure VST and AU infestations only because they must, only to the minimum degree required, and only until the glorious day when a final solution expunges and exterminates them. Until that day, Ableton will seek to maximize the inconvenience and pain associated with incorporating these mongrel plugins into their superior master workflow.

[pottering]

"Facist" Really? Hurling pejoratives is sure to win them over.

Well, they are in fact very authoritarian about anything that has to do with their UI design. Ableton's design choices suggest that they feel like plugin GUI windows are an abomination and an unacceptable, verminous eyesore on the clean, utilitaryan landscape of the Ableton Ideal. They tolerate these impure VST and AU infestations only because they must, only to the minimum degree required, and only until the glorious day when a final solution expunges and exterminates them. Until that day, Ableton will seek to maximize the inconvenience and pain associated with incorporating these mongrel plugins into their superior master workflow.

LOL, projecting much?

[Machinesworking]

"Facist" Really? Hurling pejoratives is sure to win them over.

Well, they are in fact very authoritarian about anything that has to do with their UI design. Ableton's design choices suggest that they feel like plugin GUI windows are an abomination and an unacceptable, verminous eyesore on the clean, utilitaryan landscape of the Ableton Ideal. They tolerate these impure VST and AU infestations only because they must, only to the minimum degree required, and only until the glorious day when a final solution expunges and exterminates them. Until that day, Ableton will seek to maximize the inconvenience and pain associated with incorporating these mongrel plugins into their superior master workflow.

That’s some serious BS. Why on earth would any rational person compare a GUI to the final solution? not cool or funny at all. Your post should be deleted and you should feel bad for having thought it at all.

[Tarekith]

People are more than welcome to discuss what they don’t like about Live, but let’s not start hurling insults and calling people Fascists please. We don’t tolerate name calling and insults here please.

[nroller]

HEEEEEEEELPP!!! It's 2024 and this is still a huge pain in the ass!

We desperately need a shortcut to open/close the VST OF THE SELECTED TRACK in Ableton. It's an integral action that people do continuously hundreds of times a day and it's currently a huge waste of time.

Ctrl+alt+p only toggles the last used VSTs and this is pointless if you want to see the plugin of a new track you've selected.

Every single time you want to change one little parameter of a VST, you have to:
1. click the track
2. find tiny plugin wrench icon with your eyes
3. move the mouse over to the tiny plugin wrench for that track
4. click the plugin wrench icon to open VST
5. change parameter in VST
6. find tiny plugin Close icon with your eyes
7. manually close the plugin

HOW IT SHOULD WORK:
1. click the track
2. plugin opens via hotkey (or automatically)
3. change parameter in VST
4. plugin closes via hotkey (or automatically)

Has anybody at Ableton realised that this is core functionality which should be streamlined ASAP? It seems like people have been asking for this nearly A DECADE??

Using the mouse to navigate to the teeny plugin wrench icon 200 times per day is absolutely INFURIATING.

[The Rabbits]

How will it know which vst to display? There's often multiple plugins on a track, so you still have to select the one you want.

I want a shortcut to open/close the selected vsts window.