Live Remote

Control your Ableton Live session from a phone or tablet browser — built for recording yourself when the instrument is far from the computer.

Open an address on your iPhone/iPad (same Wi-Fi as the Mac) and get a Live-like Session and Arrangement view, a mixer, transport, and a simplified Record screen with a big REC button and input meters. Nothing to install on the phone.

Features

• Session view (tablet/desktop): clip grid with scene launch, per-track stop, playing/recording/ triggered states with clip progress; mixer with sends, pan, volume, meters, mute/solo/arm/monitor.
• Arrangement view: timeline with clips, playhead, loop region, zoom and Follow; tap the ruler to move the playhead.
• Record screen (default on phones): pick a track, watch its input level, set arm/monitor/volume, and hit one big button.
  • New clip (Session): records into the next empty slot from the selected scene; tap again to stop.
  • Arrangement: arms the track and starts Arrangement Record; tap again to stop.
• Transport everywhere: play, stop, record, session record, overdub, metronome, tap tempo, loop, undo/redo.
• Touch-friendly faders (relative drag, double-tap resets to 0 dB), live state sync with every change made in Live, ~10 Hz meters, works with several devices at once.
• Installable to the iPhone home screen (Share → Add to Home Screen) for a full-screen app.

Requirements

• macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon.
• Ableton Live 11 (tested with 11.3) — any edition: this uses a MIDI Remote Script, not Max for Live. Live 12 should work as well but has not been tested yet.
• A phone/tablet on the same network as the Mac.

Install

Option 1 — one-line installer (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nagualcode/abletonweb/main/install.sh | bash

It downloads the latest release, installs Live Remote.app in /Applications, installs the LiveWeb Remote Script into Live's User Library and starts the bridge service. Then:

1. Restart Ableton Live → Settings → Link, Tempo & MIDI → in a free Control Surface slot choose LiveWeb (Input and Output: None).
2. Open Live Remote and scan the QR code with your phone.

Option 2 — download the app

1. Download LiveRemote-vX.Y.Z-macos-arm64.zip from Releases and drag Live Remote.app to Applications.
2. The app is not notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks the first launch of downloaded copies. Run once:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Live Remote.app"

   (or try to open it, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway).
3. Open Live Remote and click Install, then select LiveWeb in Live as above.

Option 3 — without the app window (terminal only)

The app's executable is also a command-line tool; the window is optional:

LR="/Applications/Live Remote.app/Contents/MacOS/live-remote"
"$LR" install    # Remote Script + bridge service (starts at login, restarts if it dies)
"$LR" url        # address to open on the phone, with a QR code in the terminal
"$LR" status     # service / bridge / Live status
"$LR" help       # all commands (uninstall, restart, install-script, serve)

Option 4 — build from source

Needs Rust and Node.js (only to build the web app).

git clone https://github.com/nagualcode/abletonweb.git && cd abletonweb
./scripts/build-app.sh --install     # builds web app + Rust app, copies to /Applications
"/Applications/Live Remote.app/Contents/MacOS/live-remote" install

Using it

• On the phone, open the address shown by the app (e.g. http://YourMac.local:6090). The .local name keeps working when the router changes the Mac's IP.
• The Live Remote app shows whether the service is running, whether Live is connected, how many devices are connected, and the QR code. You don't need to keep it open: the bridge runs as a background service and reconnects to Live whenever Live starts.
• Solo and Arm are exclusive by default (like Live's defaults); Cmd/Ctrl-click on desktop adds to the selection.
• Over plain http:// on a LAN, iOS does not let pages keep the screen awake; disable Auto-Lock while recording.

Settings

The app's Settings section edits ~/.config/abletonweb/config.json:

{
  "port": 6090,
  "livePort": 9877,
  "requireToken": false,
  "token": "…"
}

• port — HTTP/WebSocket port the phone connects to.
• requireToken — when true, each device must open the address once with ?t=<token> (the app's QR code includes it; it is then remembered by the browser).

Security without a token: any device on your LAN can control Live, but web pages from other sites cannot — browsers allow any website to open WebSockets to LAN addresses, so the bridge only accepts WebSocket connections whose Origin matches its own address and whose host is an IP, localhost or *.local (which also blocks DNS-rebinding). Turn the token on if you don't trust your network.

How it works

Ableton Live ── Remote Script "LiveWeb" (Python, runs inside Live)
                    │ newline-delimited JSON over TCP 127.0.0.1:9877
               live-remote serve  (Rust bridge, LaunchAgent)
                    │ HTTP + WebSocket :6090 — full state, then JSON patches + meter ticks
               Browser (Svelte web app, embedded in the binary)

• remote_script/LiveWeb/ — MIDI Remote Script (Python 3.7-compatible for Live 11). It observes the Live Object Model through listeners, sends a state snapshot whenever something changes plus a meter "tick" every ~100 ms, and executes commands on Live's main thread.
• app/ — one Rust binary: the control panel (egui), the bridge (serve: axum/tokio, diffs states into patches, per-client backpressure) and the installer commands. The web app and the Remote Script are embedded, so the app works from wherever it is installed; if it is moved, the service is updated the next time the app opens.
• web/ — the browser UI (Svelte 5 + Vite).
• tests/mock_live/ — a fake Live song that runs the real Remote Script outside of Live.

The bridge and the Remote Script are deliberately separate processes: Live's embedded Python stays small and safe, and the network-facing server can restart without touching Live.

Development

# web app with hot reload (talks to the bridge on :6090)
cd web && npm ci && npm run dev

# bridge / app
cd web && npm run build && cd ../app
cargo run                 # control panel
cargo run -- serve        # bridge in the foreground
cargo test

# without Ableton: run the real Remote Script against a fake song
LIVEWEB_PORT=9878 python3 tests/mock_live/run_mock_live.py
LIVE_PORT=9878 PORT=6091 cargo run -- serve      # then open http://localhost:6091

# release zip (dist/)
./scripts/build-app.sh --zip

Remote Script changes are installed with live-remote install-script (or the app) and need a Live restart. Logs: ~/Library/Logs/abletonweb/bridge.log (bridge) and Live's Log.txt (lines starting with LiveWeb:).

Remote Script commands

Tracks are addressed as t<i> (tracks), r<i> (returns) and m (master).

• Transport: play, stop, continue, toggle_play, record {value?}, session_record {length?}, tap_tempo, undo, redo, stop_all_clips, capture_midi, re_enable_automation
• set_song {prop, value}: record_mode, session_record, metronome, arrangement_overdub, session_automation_record, loop, back_to_arranger, tempo, current_song_time, loop_start, loop_length
• set_track {track, prop, value}: volume, pan, send (+index), mute, solo (+exclusive), arm (+exclusive), monitor (in/auto/off), folded, name
• select_track, stop_track {track}; select_scene, fire_scene {scene}
• fire_slot, stop_slot, delete_clip {track, scene}
• record_into_track {track, scene?, exclusive?} — arm, select and record into the first empty slot
• get_state, ping

Uninstall

Click Uninstall in the app (or live-remote uninstall), delete /Applications/Live Remote.app, the LiveWeb folder in your User Library's Remote Scripts, and ~/.config/abletonweb.

License

MIT. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Ableton. "Ableton" and "Live" are trademarks of Ableton AG.