dawling isn't connecting to Ableton

Quick fixes for the most common connection issues between dawling and Ableton Live.

If dawling's status bar shows Ableton offline, work through these checks in order. Most issues come down to Ableton not having loaded the dawling Remote control surface yet.

(If the status bar shows Disconnected instead, that's a different problem — the dawling app itself isn't running its background process. Quit and reopen dawling.)

1. Is Ableton Live open?

dawling only connects to a running Ableton process. Open Ableton first, then check dawling again.

2. Is the dawling Remote selected in Ableton's Preferences?

dawling talks to Ableton through a control surface script called dawling Remote. Ableton has to know to load it.

  1. In Ableton: Preferences → Link, Tempo & MIDI.
  2. Under Control Surface, make sure one of the dropdowns is set to dawling Remote.

You don't need to set the Input or Output rows next to it — the dawling Remote uses a local TCP connection, not MIDI.

3. Did you restart Ableton after dawling installed the Remote?

Ableton only scans for control surface scripts at startup. If you installed dawling while Ableton was already running, the dropdown in step 2 won't list dawling Remote yet. Fully quit Ableton and reopen it.

4. Is the dawling_Remote folder actually there?

dawling installs the script to your Ableton User Library on first launch. Check that this folder exists:

~/Music/Ableton/User Library/Remote Scripts/dawling_Remote/

If it's missing, restart dawling — it reinstalls the script on launch if it's not present.

5. Restart both apps

If the dropdown shows dawling Remote but the status still says Ableton offline, close dawling, close Ableton, then open Ableton first followed by dawling. This resolves most stuck-state issues.

6. Check for a port conflict

The dawling Remote listens on TCP port 9999. If another app is holding that port, the connection will fail. From Terminal:

lsof -iTCP:9999 -sTCP:LISTEN

You should see a Python process (Ableton's). If you see a different app there, quit that app and then restart Ableton.

7. Check the logs

Connection errors are logged at ~/.dawling/agent.log. The last lines usually point at the problem.

Still stuck?

Email support@dawling.app with:

  • Your Ableton version (Help → About in Ableton).
  • Your dawling version (visible in dawling's settings).
  • The last 20 lines of ~/.dawling/agent.log.

We usually reply within a business day.