Ableton Forum

The first time you load a plugin it takes a while depending on the plugin (example: Komplete Kontrol is horribly slow and Addictive Drums 2 is extremely fast).

Once loaded, if you click the wrench icon (Show/Hide Plug-In Window) it will then hide the plugin window. However, when you click it again, a portion of this initial slow load time happens again. Especially noticeable with slower loading plugins like Komplete Kontrol.

However, if you use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + P, the plug-in window(s) hide and show instantly, no load time even on slower to load plugins.

So... It seems that to some extent when you use the wrench icon, it is actually unloading the plug-in GUI from memory and then reloading the GUI back when clicked again making it slow depending on how well the plugin GUI is coded (I would guess). But the keyboard shortcut isn't doing this, it's just hiding and showing it, instant.

Can we please have an option (or make the default behavior) to not unload the GUI of the plugin and just do what the keyboard shortcut does now and just show/hide the window(s).

It is SO painful for big slow loading plugins and other DAWs don't seem to have this same issue at all.

Frankly I am a bit surprised I don't see more people complaining about this. I use extremely high spec machines (i9gen11, 64gb memory, NVME, M.2 drives, RTX 3080 & 4080) and it's WAY slower to load/show plugins in Live than in Cubase, Cakewalk, Reaper, etc.

It's amazing to me that no one else seems to think this is an issue. I guess I'll need to make a video about it, maybe then it will become more obvious how these behaviors differ in Live.

I do see what you mean, but it's not such a huge difference here.
The keyboard shortcut is instantaneous, while clicking on the wrench seems to take about half a second to open.

Macbook Pro 2021 M1 Pro, Sonoma 14.2.1.

Try Komplete Kontrol... it's horribly slow to come back with the wrench.

Also, I notice that the keyboard shortcut only works when you've opened it with the wrench, if you click the wrench again to close it, the keyboard shortcut no longer works until you click the wrench again.

For something on v11 (soon to be 12) I would think these core behaviors would be ironed out. That's the point of this post. Yes, some plugins are horribly optimized (or not at all, like KK ), but clearly Live is unloading the GUI from memory or something with the wrench and only hiding/showing with the keyboard shortcut.

At the very least make the behavior consistent for the wrench and shortcut. They are certainly not right now...