Essential Keys No "Press and Hold" Option available
AnsweredBrand new user here. Inside button settings on my "creative console" pack, the option for "Press and Hold" is greyed out. The buttons are currently assigned to key commands, but I'd like to have the ability to press and hold to have a secondary function. How do I access this?
Thanks!
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Hey Matt, this is a great question.
The Press and Hold option is disabled for keyboard shortcuts, MIDI, and Joystick commands as the standards those commands are built upon (HID and MIDI) aren't made to support it—they only recognize key down/key up, note on/note off, etc., which creates an inherent incompatibility with press and hold.
You'll find that using any of the integrations, those functions are compatible with press and hold. So, for example, if you're using Lightroom Classic, you could assign the Press action to mark an image as picked, while Press and Hold adds a 5-star rating.
Please let me know if this is a significant blocker for your use case. I may be able to help with a workaround or a better way of assigning things.
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Appreciate the quick response. I have a MIDI controller (DMC Micro Pro), that has a function for a long press to send a different MIDI command, so I know it's possible. I'm using this primarily for MIDI commands, so I was a little disappointed to find that Press and Hold, and Press and Turn aren't available to me, but I'm still finding this to be a great product.
Since I have you here, has there been a request to be able to switch colors when a button is pressed? I have a profile for my Audio Mixer where the buttons Mute and UnMute channels. It'd be great if I could see the state of it by looking at the button color.
Thanks!
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Interesting! Are the press-and-hold and press actions on the DMC Micro Pro mutually exclusive? Or do you always get the press action, even before the press-and-hold action takes effect.
To add a bit more detail as to why we concluded press-and-hold is inherently incompatible with MIDI and Joystick: our press-and-hold functionality is mutually exclusive from press. That means you'll never get both actions—just one or the other depending on how long you hold the key down. To implement this, the press-and-hold action is triggered if the key is held down and isn't released for a small period of time, while the press action is triggered upon the release of a quick press.
This works fine for post-processing, like choosing a tool in Photoshop, but that small delay between press and release would be absolutely unacceptable for a musician using MIDI where ~20-30 ms will make-or-break their timing when punching in, triggering a sample, etc. It also negatively impacts the ability to recognize note on and note off messages as I alluded to above. Same for gamers and virtual production operators using the HID Joystick mode.
With this in mind, we only allow press actions for MIDI and HID in order to preserve the absolute fastest response and to preserve the integrity of the note on/note off timing.
Always happy to reconsider and log a feature request if this is something you feel strongly about, or if you have an idea for how we can implement it better :)
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Hey Matt, wanted to follow up quickly.
I spoke with our team and there will be an update that enables both press and press+hold assignment for keys when using virtualized keyboard shortcuts. This should work with your DAW of choice, as most have the ability to customize hotkey triggers as well as MIDI. I hope this unblocks you. If you want the ability to use it immediately, please reach out privately and I can share some workarounds using our Manual Entry tool that will work before the update comes out.
There are some deeper incompatibilities that prevent this from working with MIDI and Joystick modes. These incompatibilities relate to how we generate certain messages in the Core module firmware versus software, and it means that adding press+hold support for these message types isn't feasible in the short term. With this in mind, I hope the above improvement for Keyboard mode is sufficient to get you up and running.
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I appreciate the response! When you say that there will be an update, what kind of turnaround are we looking at? Days? Weeks? Months? Even a ballpark would be appreciated!
Regardless, these are all quality of life workflow adjustments. I'm not getting blocked or anything, so I can wait for the implementation you mentioned.
Thanks!
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The fix for it is already built and in code review, so quite soon! After it gets added to the app, it goes to the Alpha release, then Beta, then finally to the main stable release.
I'd expect you'll see it in the stable release in early December, give or take a couple weeks. Keep an eye on the release notes here:
If you want access sooner, you can install Alpha or Beta alongside your current install. If you find either release too buggy, just close that version and re-open the stable version.
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