Five Secret Live Features With Options.txt

Let’s look at an interesting hack that can be used to activate extra hidden features within Live

> Create a plain text file named Options.txt and place it in the same folder as Live’s Preferences.cfg file – /Users/[username]/ Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live x.x.x on Mac, or \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Preferences\ on Windows. Find out more info at http://bit.ly/2fi6BlF. Now, by adding specific lines of code within this text file, you can unlock hidden features – let’s look at five of the best.

1 Close Live, open Options.txt text file, add the line -ShowDeviceSlots=1 then save. Reopen Live and a new Show/Hide Device Slots button is to the right of the Session View, sitting between the I/O and R buttons. Toggle this, and each channel’s list of loaded plug-ins is shown directly on the Session View, plus Device On/Off button for each device. You can only see the first four plug-ins in the chain, though.

2 With multiple Simplers/Samplers within the same Drum Rack, manually assigning each one’s parameters to a single macro is a laborious process, until now! Close Live, open Options.txt file and type -EnableMapToSiblings=1 on a new line. Save and reopen Live. Right-click any parameter and choose Map to all Siblings from the menu to automatically assign every instance of that parameter to the same Macro.

3 If you’re playing live or using hardware instruments with Live, it might be useful to be able to automatically Record Arm the currently selected track – a feature accessible using Options.txt functionality. Follow the same process as in the previous two steps, except add -EnableArmOnSelection on a new line in Options. txt file and save it. Now, when you click on any track, it will automatically activate Record Arm.

4 Toggling a device’s Unfold Device Parameters accesses a panel that can be populated with that device’s parameters by hitting Configure and wiggling a parameter on the plug-in’s interface. Quicker is to add the line _PluginAutoPopulateThreshold=X in the Options. txt file – but replace ‘X’ with a number between 1-128 to set the amount of parameters the plugin must have in order to auto-populate this list.

5 When recording automation data in real time using the mouse/a MIDI knob, this creates hundreds of messy breakpoints, leaving you to smooth out curves manually if you want more editing control. By adding the line -ThinningAggressiveness=0.45 on a new line in the Options.txt file, Live will automatically smooth out automation into a straight line. Swap out 0.45 for a higher number to remove more breakpoints.