Studio One Remote on the Same Windows Machine
Since I’ve started using Studio One, I periodically see YouTube videos of people using Studio One Remote on their iPads or Android Tablets. I wanted to use it too but I got rid of all of my tablets a while back as they weren’t getting much use. And that would be the end of it.
But I got intrigued with really cheap prices on Fire tablets this Black Friday and went on to research if it was possible to run the Remote on them. Long story short — it’s possible but involves some work.
Then I looked at my touchscreen Windows laptop connected to an external monitor and thought that it would be great to run the Remote locally (pardon the oxymoron). Too bad they don’t make Studio One Remote for Windows… or do they?
I had this image stuck in may head:
“Download on the App Store” and “Get it on Google Play” buttons jump at you so prominently that you can forgive me for ignoring the text that says “… or Windows® tablet, Surface, or Surface Pro…”
Long intro short — you can download Studio One Remote for Windows and it works great locally on a touchscreen Windows machine. There’s just one little (major) caveat…
As any normal window, Studio One Remote gets the Windows input focus when you touch it and then you have to alt-tab back to Studio One to continue working. Unfortunately, this makes the whole idea pretty much DOA and reinforces what’s in the name: Remote is meant to be used remotely.
But I’m a software developer and a geek. We don’t give up when faced with computer problems — we spend 3 hours trying to work around them. And that’s what I did.
There’s this great piece of software called AutoHotkey meant to automate things in Windows. I set out to write a script to automate returning control back to Studio One after each touch interaction with Studio One Remote. Unfortunately, AutoHotkey knows nothing about touch and Remote touches didn’t register as clicks (at least on my machine). So, I spent hours trying to solve that in some bizarre way… unsuccessfully.
But then I came to the simplest conclusion — I don’t actually care what happens in Remote (whether it’s touch, click or something else). I just care that it’s an active window. I ended up with a simple script that returns focus back to the Studio One window in 100ms after Studio One Remote window is activated. Here it is:
The only negative side-effect of it is that you can’t enter anything into the Remote app while the script is active. But the only things you can enter there are tempo and command button titles. Both aren’t something you will do often and when you need to do that you can just pause the script.
Now, it would be much nicer if PreSonus could bake a toggle for a more elegant version of this behavior right into the Remote app. If you agree, please upvote this feature request here.
Thanks!
