YouTubeToAbleton

This repo holds the open source yt-dl wrapper extension for Ableton Live (12.4.5 Beta 3)

The extension will automatically clean most youtube links, I have not found one to fail due to the link but if you find a pattern of it submit an issue

Generally speaking, I am more than happy to offer support if you are having issues, the only thing I require is just minimal ammounts of effort on your end to make my job easier. Please remember, this is not a product that you or anyone else has paid for and any work done with this is simply out of the kindness of whoevers heart is working with the extension.

If you enjoy this extension, you may enjoy some of my VST3 projects that I offer for free on my website wavfinaudio.com

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There are no new big features being guaranteed for this, the only other features I am now exploring are

• Automatically setting the BPM to sync w/ the imported track
• Import specific time frames of videos vs just importing the entire video
• Potentially building a bridge that allows you to just search for songs inside of Ableton on Youtube or Youtube Music and keep the entire flow in the extension. (this is more of a concept I am looking into, whether or not this gets implemented is honestly dependent on how well my zoloft continues to work)

Prerequesites

• YOU NEED TO HAVE TEH extensions-sdk-1.0.0-beta.0 in the workspace, I have included it in the repo.
• Ableton Live 12.4.5 Beta 3 (this is the minimum version that has Extension support)
• Windows (this also works for Mac, I just dont know how to set it up as I dont have one)
• yt-dlp and ffmpeg

winget install yt-dlp.yt-dlp
winget install Gyan.FFmpeg

• Common sense

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Development

• Clone Repo
• Open terminal in ThirdAbletonProject folder

npm install
npm run build
npm run verify

• Go into Ableton, go to settings and ensure that Development Mode is toggled on in the extension settings (last option)
• Create a .env and paste your Ableton Live 12 Beta EXE, it should look similar to this

EXTENSION_HOST_PATH=C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 12 Beta\Program\Ableton Live 12 Beta.exe

• Go back to terminal, run npm run start and you should see something like

Extension Host sends greeting to Live
FlipMessageStreamSocket send success

• Go into Ableton, right click on Audio track and you should see the Extensions in the context menu. Open this extension, paste a link, choose WAV or MP3, and it will automatically import it for you.

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Using The Extension

• Download the ablx from the releases tab
• open Ableton, go to Settings, go to extensions and drag the ablx or just hit the select file button thing and select the ablx
• restart Ableton
• Right click on an audio track, import audio from YouTube as WAV or MP3 :)))

Troubleshooting For Development

Extension is not connecting to Ableton.

• Verify you have correctly installed yt-dlp and ffmpeg (i included both for winget as I find just using yt-dlp doesnt like to work). When you install these, make sure your IDE or terminal is closed as it automatically updates your PATH to allow the extension to work.
• Verify you have correctly put the .env in the ThirdAbletonProject folder, not the root repo.
• Verify that you have turned on Developer mode inside of the Ableton Extensions settings tab or it Ableton wont open up the extensions server.

If you have done all of the above and its still not working follow these steps

• Freshly install yt-dlp and ffmpeg using the commands above, try running your terminal in Administrator mode, though you should not have to do this.
• Once you have verified these are installed, open Ableton, verify that your Development mode toggle is turned on.
• Restart your PC
• Open your terminal or IDE
• Navigate to ThirdAbletonProject
• run the above mentioned commands
• start Ableton
• Run npm run start, it at this point should connect. If it doesnt please open an issue and I will fix it as soon as I can.

Troubleshooting for Extension usage

• Verify that you have correctly installed yt-dlp and ffmpeg from winget using your terminal.
• Go into your Ableton extension settings, verify that Development mode is turned off, this should only be turned on while developing the extension.

Maintenance checklist for Ableton updates

• Pull latest changes and run from ThirdAbletonProject: npm install, npm run build, npm run test, npm run verify.
• In Ableton, smoke test all three entry points (Audio Track, Arrangement Selection, Session Clip Slot).
• For each smoke test, verify both output formats:
  • WAV import (default)
  • MP3 import (switch format in dialog)
• Confirm yt-dlp/ffmpeg resolution still works (PATH or tools.json overrides).
• If Ableton extension APIs changed, update supported version notes before release.