Windows - Ableton and Touchable on same machine

I’ve really been battling with Touchable on an MS Surface with Ableton running on the same machine.
I have finally got it working. So I will leave what I did here to hopefully help someone else.
The clue for me was a post else where in this forum talking about this command.

CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -s

This should show an entry for Touchable if you want to connect to Ableton on the same machine. However for me there were 2 random entries, one showing a not found message.

Touchable needs to be listed here because apps installed from the Microsoft App store (like touchable pro) aren’t allowed to connect to localhost by default.

I tried uninstalling and re-intalling Touchable pro thinking some step had failed but still no joy.
So I looked a bit closer at this CheckNetIsolation.exe command and it turns out you can manually add exemptions.

This is where I found more info… https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-firewall/troubleshooting-uwp-firewall

You will notice the command we need is CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -a -n=<AppContainer or Package Family>
So the next challenge is how do we find out what the “AppContainer or Package Family” is for Touchable.
In comes this command https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/appx/get-appxpackage?view=windowsserver2022-ps.
To run Get-AppxPackage you need to drop to a powershell. To find out info just about Touchable you run
Get-AppxPackage -Name "*Touchable*"
The field we are interested in here is ‘PackageFamilyName’
So armed with this new family name we can finally run
CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -a -n=zerodebug.touchAblePro_n8xmrrdk4s5k2

Now running ‘CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -s’ again will show Touchable listed and all should be working.

Note some other challenges in this process were Bonjour and the control surface scripts.

I had to manually copy the control surface scripts from C:\Program Files\Zerodebug\touchAble\touchAble to C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 10 Suite\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts.

And for me Bonjour was a red herring, I tried lots of different versions of it and itunes but for a localhost only setup you don’t need it.
Also RTP Midi is not needed.

I hope this helps somebody.

4 Likes

This is great for the “vacation making music with laptop setup” so thank you for that! :blush:

Absolutely amazing, thank you so much, @turtle_terry for this, It works like a charm!
Thank you so much for figuring this out and sharing your solution here!

Awesome, was looking for this solution for a month. Which windows Version are you using. On Win 11 I had to put the Package family name in quotation marks in order to add it to the list.

CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -a -n=“zerodebug.touchAblePro_n8xmrrdk4s5k2”

To finally make it work I have to start a Network Isolation Debug Session

CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -is -n=“zerodebug.touchAblePro_n8xmrrdk4s5k2”

this works for a while until touchable pro crashes. Anyway, this was the first time I was able to use it at all. Thank you for your post turtle_terry.

You’re welcome glad it’s helped. I am on Windows 10. I can’t actually remember whether I used quotes, I just tested it again and it worked without quotes for me so I guess it’s a Win 11 thing.

I should add the CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt -a -n=... command needs be run as administrator.

I need to dig into this. I’ve been using touchable with a Surface Go 2 for DJ sets for a little leas than a year. (Both Ableton and Touchable on the same device) Sometimes it plays nice, sometimes there are some issues. I’m glad to hopefully bring some more stability to the setup. Thank you!

I’m having this issue with Windows 10 now, for some reason only on my laptop. Can we get some input from the developers on what might be causing this? I really don’t want to have to start a PowerShell script every time I go to use Touchable. What might cause the static LoopbackExempt to fail?

Thank you so much!
This has to be added to the official installation guide/manual.
I can run it now on the same PC as Ableton (Ableton 11, Windows 11, Dell XPS 9710 Touchscreen)

Right now i m wondering: how on earth do i put Touchable Pro into Fullscreen mode? I searched the manual for it, but it only mentions the fullscreen/splitscreen button. What i m looking for is actual fullscreen: no more Windows-Task-Bar, no more Window-Bar on top.
EDIT: woops, now my google search was successful: It’s Windows+Shift+Enter. I didnt know this combination, cause this is my first Windows-Store-App ever i use.

Thanks for help :slight_smile: