I built a tablet app (a personal project not a product to sell) for controlling Ableton Live and plugin/device windows remotely.
The original motivation was preset browsing. I was getting frustrated by how often loading presets still means reaching for the mouse. Native Instruments Kontrol is great, but only when the plugin supports it. A lot of the stuff I use doesn’t, so I started thinking about a better touch-first way to interact with plugins from the couch or across the room.
From there, the idea expanded into Ableton components more broadly, not just plugin windows. So now I’m exploring a setup where the tablet can mirror and control parts of Live itself, along with plugin/device UIs.
The current version can show the Live view on a tablet and open plugin/device interfaces with touch input mapped back to the Mac. I attached a couple screenshots to show what it looks like on a tablet.
Would you use something like this?
If yes, what would matter most: preset browsing, plugin editing, mixer/device access, clip launching, performance use, sound design away from the desk, etc.
If not, what's the main reason: latency, reliability, already covered by Push/TouchOSC/Kontrol, too niche, or just not enough value?
Would you use a tablet app to control Ableton and plugin windows remotely?
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- KVRer
- 2 posts since 2 Apr, 2026
I'd find this quite useful, I always found if annoying when plugins have their own windows and open on top of Live, so having this in a second screen that's touch enabled would be perfect. Plugin search seems like the least useful approach to me, since I tend to use the keyboard a lot for that, but tweaking knobs and toggling things off and on would be the ideal scenario.
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- KVRer
- 10 posts since 14 Dec, 2010 from Igloo
I'd use this if its snappy and responsive. If you aren't already aware there is Touchable as well (https://zerodebug.com/), though it can be a little crude at times or for certain tasks. It would be preferrable to access VSTs on their original GUI as you have shown above.