Hi @leolabs ,
While preparing a completely disposable project for beta testing, I noticed an important consequence of AbleSet’s current new-project workflow.
The documentation explains that when a new Ableton Live project is created, AbleSet copies the previous project’s settings into the new project’s AbleSet/Settings folder.
Reproduction
- Open a Live project that has MIDI mappings and project-specific AbleSet settings.
- Create a new empty Live Set.
- Save it as a new Ableton project.
- Let AbleSet create the new project’s
AbleSetfolder. - Inspect the new project’s
AbleSet/Settingsfolder.
In my test, the new project inherited the previous project’s MIDI mappings, OSC connections, general settings, and computer-specific settings. One of the inherited MIDI mappings contained a script that called sendOsc(...) with a fixed local destination. Transport mappings and mappings for hardware that was irrelevant to the new project were copied as well.
Copying settings is clearly useful when a new project is meant to continue an existing setup. However, it can be surprising when the user intentionally wants a clean project. A connected MIDI controller could still trigger actions from the previous project, even though the new Live Set itself is empty.
Would it be possible to offer a choice when AbleSet initializes a new project?
For example:
- Copy settings from the previous project — current behavior;
- Start with empty settings — no MIDI mappings or OSC connections;
- optionally, Choose what to copy — general settings, MIDI mappings, OSC
connections, audio-interface settings, and computer-specific settings.
If a selection dialog would be too intrusive, even a one-time notification such as “Settings were copied from the previous project” with a link to review them would make the behavior more visible.
For safety-sensitive or experimental projects, an explicit clean-start option would make it easier to guarantee that a disposable project cannot inherit unrelated control actions.
Thanks for considering it! 