Bitwig Feature Requests~

[halsallian]

The old browser back. The grid is easier to use than the browser.

I tried Ableton Live Lite for no particular reason again last week after using Bitwig for a couple of years and I found the workflow so much more intuitive that I bough Live Suite pretty much straight away. Everything is just there in front of you in folders (like every application ever uses) with no hoops to jump through creating collections, tagging etc. (though you can - the new auto-tagging is cool).

I'm paid up for Bitwig updates until mid-2026 so I'll check back in at some point to see if anything has changed but for me they need to put down the shiny toys for a while and catch up on the basic workflow stuff before I can jump back in full time. Oh, and themes please - people will still know it's Bitwig even if there isn't orange everywhere.

I have both Live and Bitwig - the one thing I dislike about Live is the 2 window support is weak and the modulators aren't as good (lfos are kind of useless).

Automation workflow etc. are streets ahead in Live but I stuck with Bitwig...

[duanosforde]

Bring the old browser!

[pdxindy]

Bring the old browser!

That of course is never going to happen. The old browser had too many limitations.

What might be possible, is the users who are unhappy with the new one, convincing the Devs to improve the new browser.

[duanosforde]

Bring the old browser!

That of course is never going to happen. The old browser had too many limitations.

What might be possible, is the users who are unhappy with the new one, convincing the Devs to improve the new browser.

Nah, I wont waste my time trying to convince a company of anything. There is enough healthy competation in the DAW market these days, if the browser gets to the point where it annoys me enough I would just take my $ elsewhere. For now all good, but would prefer the old browser to the new one.

[krankyone]

A setting to allow toggling of clips. Click once launches clip, click again stops the clip from running. No need to find the stop button at the end of the track or list.

[Chameleonman]

Would be nice to have some visual reminder if there's some clips in the clip launcher and the launcher is closed. Some color or something. I work always in arranger and sometimes would like to throw someting waiting in the launcher but it's so rare case I would forget it there. That's why I don't want to do it, but it would be handy.

[Maykie]

That of course is never going to happen. The old browser had too many limitations.

What devs (and you) dont realize is that most people just want a simple plugin/sample picker without presets/categories/favourites/hashtags/any other stuff preventing from finding my eq pluign.

There could be an option for choosing between old and new browser in the settings.

[Jac459]

damn are you me? also got update keys until 2026 - bought the upgrade to live 12.1 last week and i am a bitwig day one user. now i am looking for way to combine both and use best of both worls

I am curious about this approach.

I tried Live about 10 years ago and another time around 4 years ago. On both case I really tried to like it but couldn't.
I think it is because the gap between live and Reason (my ex-DAW) was too big and Live looked like an excel sheet to me.

That being said, after 4 years of intensive Bitwig I am pretty sure that I would now easily move to Live. I like what I have seen on it recently in youtube.

That being said I don't see how to integrate a 2 DAW approach and what it can bring to me... It is not like I am missing any feature now.

Can you explain me a bit more what would be your workflow in such context?

[Chameleonman]

That of course is never going to happen. The old browser had too many limitations.

What devs (and you) dont realize is that most people just want a simple plugin/sample picker without presets/categories/favourites/hashtags/any other stuff preventing from finding my eq pluign.

There could be an option for choosing between old and new browser in the settings.

Or another plus button under the one that opens the new browser, because there is useful things in the new browser, but the old one was faster with basic things.

[pdxindy]

That of course is never going to happen. The old browser had too many limitations.

What devs (and you) dont realize is that most people just want a simple plugin/sample picker without presets/categories/favourites/hashtags/any other stuff preventing from finding my eq pluign.

There could be an option for choosing between old and new browser in the settings.

It's never going to happen. It would be a development nightmare to maintain two completely different systems.

The path forward for people who aren't happy with how the current browser works is to improve the current browser.

[machinesworking]

One thing that flatly sucks about the new browser is the icons. I know the new thing with software developers is to always follow the Apple lead of developing things they like that they feel their customers will like, which works if you always acknowledge people outside of your typical users and fans. Using icons only for categories is such an insular echo chamber of UX nonsense that it's pissed me off every time I've used the browser since they changed it. The one f*cking thing I really don't want to have to do when using a f*cking browser is to learn some dickheads idea of what a category like "other synths" icon should look like. I'm constantly hovering over their icons to get the f*cking name. Not all Bitwig users use Bitwig as their main DAW, and this "feature" is a great example of sycophants and developers making UX choices without outside opinions. The sphincter icon for "everything sums" it up nicely.

It's the one area that Ableton beat the snot out of Bitwig in, I'm not a fan of the UX of Live by any means, but the browser in Live is just better. I don't need context based choices, icons etc. This is the one area of Bitwig where it's just far too Romper Room, and I wish it wasn't the case.

[nowiamone]

One thing that flatly sucks about the new browser is the icons. I know the new thing with software developers is to always follow the Apple lead of developing things they like that they feel their customers will like, which works if you always acknowledge people outside of your typical users and fans. Using icons only for categories is such an insular echo chamber of UX nonsense that it's pissed me off every time I've used the browser since they changed it. The one f*cking thing I really don't want to have to do when using a f*cking browser is to learn some dickheads idea of what a category like "other synths" icon should look like. I'm constantly hovering over their icons to get the f*cking name. Not all Bitwig users use Bitwig as their main DAW, and this "feature" is a great example of sycophants and developers making UX choices without outside opinions. The sphincter icon for "everything sums" it up nicely.

It's the one area that Ableton beat the snot out of Bitwig in, I'm not a fan of the UX of Live by any means, but the browser in Live is just better. I don't need context based choices, icons etc. This is the one area of Bitwig where it's just far too Romper Room, and I wish it wasn't the case.

For me it's the fact that you can't change/rename the categories.
We got a random, arbitrary, forced set of names for categories, which we HAVE to use. This is the opposite of customizibility.

[machinesworking]

For me it's the fact that you can't change/rename the categories.
We got a random, arbitrary, forced set of names for categories, which we HAVE to use. This is the opposite of customizibility.

For decades I've pretty much ignored browsers in DAWs, they've all universally sucked compared to the OS browser, but DAWs like Bitwig and Live incorporate plugins into the browser, forcing you to use it to some degree. The first thing that just irks me is these DAWs thinking we're going to be using their limited, usually not including 90% of your plugins, preset browsing. So any search for a plugin even pulls up presets along with the plugin. When the new browser was first introduced in Bitwig it would even in my case anyway, sort presets ahead of plugins.

The Live browser is faster in general to navigate, but it suffers from legacy icons, i.e. some elements of the GUI are tiny as hell on even 1080p monitors. You have to know which plugin is VST3 because you're not going to be able to read the 15 pixel VST icon..

[BobDog]

I’m a little confused by that. Are you saying the general folder/file OS browser is better than the contextual browsers internal to DAWs in choosing content, plugins etc?

[Trancit]

For me personally I prefer much more working with a kind of folder based system than Bitwig´s splitted view system...
I.e. what I hate in Bitwig is if you have a folder which has subfolders AND files in it, there is afaik absolutely NO WAY to let Bitwig just show the files in this folder instead of the included subfolder content as well...
A normal file browser kind of thing is much cleaner and more precise in this regard...

And I second machinesworking´s claim that I absolutely dislike to have all the way every silly preset visible...
Perhaps I am too old school but a DAW browser shall only offer me presets if I explicitly tell it to do and not that I have to find my way around to perhaps get mostly rid of it...

Bitwig´s browser always went into the wrong direction imho... trying to do a lot more than it should...nearly no way to customize it and making a huge mess out of the simplest things and being always complicated.
But usefull stuff like selecting a bunch of samples and adding user tags... or having sample preview in sync with the project even when the sequencer is stopped...nope...

The only thing I like above Ableton in this case is that it got 2 places (side browser, which I can use for samples and the popup browser for adding plugins and samples inside of plugins...) while this is just an Ableton issue... Everybody else got since ever multiple "browsers" or lists for plugins...
So just an advantage over Ableton...

Another silly decision: Everybody uses the right arrow key to retrigger preview of samples immediately...
Only Bitwig does it all of course a whole lot "better"... No retrigger but preview start/stop...
If you need to retrigger you get a tendonitis in your right hand because of the million times you have to press the key not to speak of the gaps in the preview which do not help either.