PathfinderPrototyping · St. Paul MN

Audio production · Stream Deck plugin

REAPER Control Room

A large part of REAPER's action list has no default shortcut, so a keystroke plugin cannot reach it until you go and bind something first. Sending REAPER its own command ID skips the binding step, and the deck arrives already able to drive the app.

Direct checkout, at the Marketplace price

Buy direct delivers the Windows-only edition, built from 3.0.0.0, which also lacks the Home key 3.1.0.0 put on the Stream Deck XL and Stream Deck + XL command pages. On a Mac, buy through the Elgato Marketplace.

What it does

What you need

Windows 10 or later or macOS 13 or newer, Stream Deck software 6.9 or newer, and REAPER: built and tested against REAPER 7.80 on Windows and 7.79 on macOS. On macOS the Stream Deck app needs Accessibility and Automation, asked on the first key press. The Stream Deck + XL seats six of the eight dials at a time; a Stream Deck + seats Track Painter, Track Volume, Track Select and Horizontal Zoom.

Buy direct delivers the Windows-only edition, built from 3.0.0.0, which also lacks the Home key 3.1.0.0 put on the Stream Deck XL and Stream Deck + XL command pages. On a Mac, buy through the Elgato Marketplace.

Support

Good to know

  • Runs on Windows 10 and 11 and on macOS 13 or newer, built and tested against REAPER 7.80 on Windows and REAPER 7.79 on macOS. Requires the Stream Deck app 6.9 or later. On macOS the Stream Deck app asks once, at the first key press, for Accessibility and for Automation of System Events; if you declined, both are in System Settings, Privacy and Security. Seven profiles are bundled for six decks: the 15-key Stream Deck, the Stream Deck +, the Stream Deck + XL, the 32-key Stream Deck XL, the Stream Deck Mini and the Stream Deck Neo, plus a pop-open keypad profile for the 15-key Stream Deck. The Stream Deck + XL seats six of the eight dials at a time; a Stream Deck + seats Track Painter, Track Volume, Track Select and Horizontal Zoom.
  • Every key and six of the eight dials work without the OSC feed. Track Select and FX Parameter need it, and say why when they cannot work: Track Select's strip reads no feed, or a project with no named tracks. To add the feed on a Stream Deck + or a Stream Deck + XL, press Track Select while it reads no REAPER feed, close REAPER when the strip asks, press again, then start REAPER. On macOS the plugin adds it by itself whenever REAPER is closed. By hand, on any deck or when the port is busy: copy Pathfinder.ReaperOSC from the plugin's osc folder into %APPDATA%\REAPER\OSC (on macOS, ~/Library/Application Support/REAPER/OSC), then in REAPER's Preferences, under Control/OSC/web, click Add, choose OSC, set Mode to Configure device IP+port, Device IP 127.0.0.1, Device port 8000, Local listen port 9000 and Pattern config Pathfinder.ReaperOSC, and click OK. No restart.
  • There are three kinds of command key here and they treat focus differently. The 77 command-id keys go to REAPER itself, so REAPER has to be running but does not have to be the front window, and pressing one cannot land in another app: on Windows they find REAPER's own window, and on macOS they, like every dial, go through a small listener script the plugin starts inside REAPER. The 14 Track Painter keys hand the colour to a script running inside REAPER, so they need it running but not in front. The 33 keystroke keys go to the active window in the usual way, so keep REAPER in front for those; on macOS they arrive as Command chords, except Play/Pause, which sends Control+Space so Spotlight stays out of the way. With REAPER closed, the command-id keys have nothing to reach. A shortcut you capture in a key's settings overrides the command-id route, so that key becomes a keystroke key and needs REAPER focused like the other 33.
  • Updating from an earlier version: a profile you already installed keeps its old pages until you remove it and let the plugin install it again, which is how the 32-key Stream Deck XL and the Stream Deck + XL pick up the Home key on every command page. Easy Link rules you captured before keep working. If you set up the OSC feed with version 2, the FX Parameter dial's strip reads OSC pattern out of date: press it once to update the file, which keeps a backup, then restart REAPER. A pattern file you edited by hand is never touched.
  • Seven of the eight dials have no settings panel: their icon and title are the only settings, and the strip above each dial is its readout. FX Parameter's panel clears a slot. On FX Parameter a hold of about a second captures the parameter you touched last into the active slot; a row whose plugin cannot be found dims to no feed, and one whose plugin moved reads moved: re-capture, so hold again. Take FX, input FX and monitoring FX cannot be captured. Turn while pressing for ten times finer steps. Track Volume turns only, with nothing on press or tap, and Marker Nav has no tap: every candidate for those gestures either wrote to the project or opened a window that takes over the dial's turns, so they were left off rather than shipped as a hazard. Marker Nav's press drops a marker at the cursor.
  • The Mixer key reads REAPER's real state; on Windows that reading was tested with the mixer docked, and a mixer floated out into its own window may not be seen, in which case the key can read closed while the mixer is on screen. If it loses the reading it goes dark rather than showing a stale answer. Keys with no reading from REAPER light from their own presses, and the Lights Off key clears those at once if a light gets out of step, leaving alone the keys REAPER is reporting. Every key can play a press sound, 33 in the box. Recordings made with our free Sound Sampler plugin appear in the same Key Sound picker under Your recordings, with no import step.

True of every plugin we make

  • Every key carries the app's own shortcut for that command, and every key is remappable. Type your combination into the key's property inspector (its settings panel in the Stream Deck app) or click Capture and press it once. Where an app leaves a command unbound, the key still reaches it by the route that app exposes.
  • Keystrokes go to the front window and nothing steals focus, so keep the target app in front when you press.
  • Every command has its own drawn key art, so the deck reads at a glance instead of listing shortcuts.

Read the full quick fixes, or see this plugin on the support hub.

Still stuck? Email [email protected] with the plugin name, your Stream Deck software version, and what you pressed versus what happened. A human answers.