Ableton Forum

OK maybe my Push 3 is unique? but this does seem more like a design flaw. The play button is a horizontal rectangle of a thing with the lighted part to the left of the rectangle slightly. When I go to start the song, if I hit the light play symbol directly about half the time it short circuits Push 3. In other words nothing happens and all the button lights go dark while I push down. I'm still caught by this occasionally especially in low light when I'm more likely to intuitively go for the lighted triangle directly.

Do any of you other Push 3 owners notice this? is it unique to my device, i.e. I got unlucky with a slightly off button?

Some other information, it seems to be tied most of the time to how long you press, though even then sometimes it does not work on short presses.

This is because of the enable follow action shortcut that is activated by holding play + track/master lower buttons. In order to do this, they put a timer on the play button. If you don't release the button quickly this is what you get. The catch 22 is the spongy buttons along with the fact it wants to trigger on release instead of press makes you subconsciously want to hold it down even longer. IMO, not the best shortcut since play should be reliable and trigger instantly.

Admittedly, I thought the shortcut was a nice idea initially until I discovered this side effect. Perhaps if Ableton extended the timer just a tad before it goes into follow action mode it would reduce how often we run into this issue.

b-righteous is right.

No kidding.
That's worth a report to Support imo. We already heard about users who feel like the latency caused by this is a problem; your example is showing another side effect that might call the Follow Action control implementation for some improvement.

Thanks b-righteous!

[jur] wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 07, 2026 7:23 am

b-righteous is right.

No kidding.
That's worth a report to Support imo. We already heard about users who feel like the latency caused by this is a problem; your example is showing another side effect that might call the Follow Action control implementation for some improvement.

Yeah I'm in agreement, it really is all over the place here, honestly the spongy play button is half the issue here like righteous points out, you can also on rare occasion hit it too quickly and not dead center, and get the same result, nothing. This is one of those times when I wished I worked at Ableton so I could have been screaming from the rooftops, >>The play button is for actions, not turning on a function!<<< and specifically why would you put a function that might mess up an action on the main button? To sink this in, it's a freaking slow response button, and on the computer a lot of us have used the auto rewind of Live to play live using the spacebar, that being sketchy on Push 3 makes me a sad panda!

Machinesworking wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 08, 2026 6:06 am

so I could have been screaming from the rooftops, >>The play button is for actions, not turning on a function!<<< and specifically why would you put a function that might mess up an action on the main button?

Please do so, respectfully of course, via Support.
I'm also in the team that thinks that using the Play button for controlling FA was a terrible design choice.
Ableton is aware of that (forwarding users feedbacks from the forum is part of my job, and there's indeed the many other platforms where users share their opinions). That's definitely a case where users feedbacks arriving into Support's emails can make a difference, so when I encourage anyone feeling that it needs to be re-designed to kindly take 5 minutes to create a ticket and share that feeling, I really mean it: do it!
(and sorry to any of my beloved Ableton colleagues that will read this and see me conspiring here - you know I'm a brat sometimes )

[jur] wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 08, 2026 6:50 am

Please do so, respectfully of course, via Support.
I'm also in the team that thinks that using the Play button for controlling FA was a terrible design choice.
Ableton is aware of that (forwarding users feedbacks from the forum is part of my job, and there's indeed the many other platforms where users share their opinions). That's definitely a case where users feedbacks arriving into Support's emails can make a difference, so when I encourage anyone feeling that it needs to be re-designed to kindly take 5 minutes to create a ticket and share that feeling, I really mean it: do it!
(and sorry to any of my beloved Ableton colleagues that will read this and see me conspiring here - you know I'm a brat sometimes )

Thanks, I always forget that Ableton beyond the centercode beta forum don't really have a suggestions box email address. The play button should be sacred though, because personally in a live situation Push3 as it stands is more iffy to use than a spacebar on a qwerty keyboard. <--- Side note, that! right there drives me nuts as well. Why can't we hook a qwerty keyboard up to Push3 SA? Hopefully that's something Ableton are thinking about.