Questions and answers

Short answers to what comes up first. If yours is not here, ask on GitHub.

About livesaver

Does livesaver need Ableton Live? No. It reads and writes Live's files itself. Live has to be closed while livesaver fixes, so that no open set is overwritten.

Which versions of Live does it understand? Sets, racks, presets and clips (.als, .adg, .adv, .alc, .agr) from Live 8.2 to Live 12.

Does it run on Windows? It is built to, and that is new: livesaver is made and tested on macOS, and no one has tried it on a Windows computer with Live yet. It handles Windows paths and knows where Ableton keeps its folders there. Try a fix on a copy first; livesaver on Windows says what differs and what is not known. On a Mac it has always read sets that were saved on Windows.

What does it cost? Nothing. It is open source under the MIT license, and not affiliated with Ableton.

Samples

Live says “Media files are missing”, but the files are on my disk. Why? A set remembers where each sample was. If the file was moved, a drive was renamed, or the project came from another computer, Live looks in the old place. livesaver finds the file by its fingerprint wherever it is now, and puts it into the project, where Live always finds it.

What is an uncertain match? A file that fits by its name and place, but whose fingerprint does not confirm it. livesaver marks such matches, and you can leave them out of a fix. See Uncertain matches.

Why is a sample “Different content”? A file of that name was found, but its audio is not what the set used. Taking it would change your music without telling you, so it stays missing.

Does a fix change how my set sounds? No. A fix changes where the set looks for its samples, not the samples and not the set's content.

Why does my project get bigger? A fix copies samples from outside into the project, as Collect All and Save does. On the same disk, macOS can make such a copy without using more room, and livesaver copies that way where it can.

The app

Is anything sent anywhere? No. See Your data.

My browser asks whether to upload my folder. That is the browser's word for letting a page read a folder. Nothing is uploaded. See In the browser.

The app says “livesaver on this computer does not answer”. The livesaver web in your terminal was stopped. Start it again; it opens the app anew.

Can I undo a fix after I closed the app? Yes. The overview offers to undo the last fix, and the History lists every run.

macOS asks whether livesaver may access a folder. Allow it for the folders your projects and samples are in. A folder livesaver may not read is reported, and what is in it is not found.

Removing it

How do I remove everything livesaver wrote? Its own files are in ~/Library/Application Support/livesaver (runs, with the originals for undo) and ~/.config/livesaver (your settings). In your projects it leaves what Live would leave as well: the collected samples in Samples/Imported, and backups in Backup.