2023 brought lots of changes to Pro Tools and as well as the big ones like Native Apple Silicon Support and an integrated Dolby Atmos renderer there were progressive tweaks which make Pro Tools more productive. As you’ll see from this list, not all of them are headline grabbing but they are the kind of changes which can really make a difference to the quality of a busy audio professional’s day.

In this article, as follow up to our article 5 Ways Pro Tools Changed in 2023 Which Made It More Useable I’ll highlight five more new features introduced in Pro Tools in 2023 which I think make Pro Tools that bit more useable.

Tab to Breakpoint

This long requested feature was implemented in Pro Tools 2023.3. It’s as simple as it sounds. When in an audio playlist you can tab between clip head and tail or use tab to transients to tab between audio transients, in a MIDI playlist you can tab between MIDI notes and now you can tab between automation breakpoints. However some users found that this functionality actually slowed workflows down because of breakpoints getting in the way. To avoid this issue Avid added a preference so that you can turn tab to automation breakpoints off. This preference can also be assigned to a key modifier.

The reason this could be an issue is that Pro Tools 2023.3 allowed you to Tab between automation breakpoints, if there was a mixture of Automation playlists and clip boundaries in the edit selection then it tabbed between breakpoints and clip boundaries (or transients if using Tab to Transients). In cases where clip-to-clip tabbing was all that was required then the tab to breakpoints would just slow things down.

New Ruler Markers

Some features stay near the top of my wish list for new features in Pro Tools for so long that when they finally arrive it feels even more significant. One such feature is additional marker rulers. Track Markers are very welcome and have their place but when they were announced I felt some disappointment that they weren’t the additional rulers I’d been missing for so long.

There are lots of additional features beyond just track and additional ruler markers which have been introduced in 2023. The use of colour and the new filtering features are particularly welcome but just the ability to have a set of markers marking out the sections of a project which can stay complete and uninterrupted by any other markers which are added during the life of a project feels luxurious. New key commands have been added, which allow you move between the previous and next memory locations in the list. You can also recall the last recalled memory location via a keyboard command. That last one is way more useful than it sounds!

Drag and Drop Plugin Reordering

While it’s always been possible to drag inserts between plugin slots, when re-ordering plugins there had to be a vacant slot to move the insert to or plugins would be replaced rather than re-ordered, an action which isn’t undoable. A new warning has been introduced to minimise the chance of accidental replacement in the new update. This new feature gives greater flexibility in experimenting with and changing processing order by shuffling plugins between slots and moving the plugins which follow in much the same way as clips move on the timeline when in Shuffle mode. Watch the video above to see how it works.

Export Session Range

Export Selected Range enables users to export selected portions of the timeline as a new session. This feature is perfect for breaking up large post sessions, separating a live recording into a session per song, and saving important elements of the session as bite size pieces. See it in action in the video above.

Colour In IO

This is one of those UI tweaks I didn’t even know I needed. To at least some degree developed with Atmos workflows in mind, even if you’re strictly stereo, this can definitely help make your sessions more easily readable at a glance. I’ve always been pretty rigorous about naming my Inputs, Outputs and Busses but deciphering complex routing can still tak a little time to decode. Colour really helps this! The D Control used to have an interrogate busses feature where lights would flash on the surface to show tracks which were route to or from a target track, it was useful and ‘Show/Select Assignments’ as found in the contextual menu on IO assignments isn’t nearly as convenient as colour.

There are some notable omissions on my list. I haven’t mentioned Pro Tools Sketch or Track Markers, the new track widths or the Pro Tools scripting SDK. What else would you like to see either in this list or new in Pro Tools in 2024?