Fidotron shows the Live Sets in one Ableton Live project as a family tree. You fork sets to try ideas, seal the versions you want to keep, see what changed, and keep your bounces and mix notes under the set that made them. It never edits your existing sets, and nothing leaves your Mac.
To open this guide from the app, choose Help > Fidotron User Guide (⌘?).
Choose File > Open Project Folder… (⌘O) and pick a Live project folder, the one with your .als files in it. Fidotron reopens the last project when it starts, and File > Open Recent lists your last ten.
Every .als directly in the folder appears in the tree. Subfolders, such as Live's Backup folder, are ignored. Sets that existed before Fidotron, or that you made with Save As in Live, appear at the top level: Fidotron never guesses how sets are related.
Fidotron rescans the folder whenever you switch back to it, so saves made in Live show up straight away. File > Reload (⌘R) rescans on demand.
Each set's dot tells you its state:
Forks sit under the set they came from. Fold a branch with its chevron, or with ← and →. Move the selection with ↑ and ↓.
The set you last opened from Fidotron has a red ring and the line "Last opened, new exports go here".
The New Set section under the tree, and each set's right-click menu, offer three ways to make a set:
Renaming a set in Finder is fine: it keeps its place in the tree, its forks and its status.
A sealed set is a version you can trust. Fidotron keeps a copy of it, and any set with forks is always sealed.
You can still open a sealed set in Live. If you save it, the seal breaks: the set shows a broken seal, and its details list what changed since it was sealed. Choose Restore Sealed Version to bring the sealed version back as a new set in the same place in the tree. Your changes aren't lost: the set you saved over stays in the project as an unsealed child of the restored version, so you can keep working on it or compare the two.
Each time you open a set from Fidotron, it first keeps a copy of the set as it was. If you then save it in Live and want the earlier version back, select the last-opened set: its details show Changed since opened on <date>, listing what that session changed, with a Restore As It Was When Opened button. It's in the right-click menu too.
This works like Restore Sealed Version. The earlier version comes back as a new set named "<name> restored" in the same place in the tree, and it's sealed. The set you saved becomes its fork and keeps its own forks, status and exports, and new exports still go to it. To carry on from the restored version, fork it. No file is changed or deleted.
Fidotron keeps only the copy from the last open, and only for sets opened from Fidotron, not from Finder or Live's recent list. The copy holds the Live Set, not its audio. If the set was sealed and unchanged when you opened it, only Restore Sealed Version is offered, since it brings back the same version.
Select a set to open its details. You'll see:
Click the selected set again to close or reopen the details.
Open in Live 11 (or whichever version it says) opens the set in the oldest installed Live that can open it, so it isn't upgraded by accident. Other installed Lives that can open it are offered next to it, in yellow, or under Open in Other Version.
If opening a set would upgrade it to a newer major version, Fidotron asks first, because the older Live won't open it again after you save. If no installed Live is new enough, it says which version you need.
Each project gets an Exports folder with Automatically Add to Fido inside it. Export (bounce) your audio there from Live, and once the file is finished it's linked to the set you last opened from Fidotron. It appears under that set in the tree.
Select an export to play it. The player has play/pause, a scrubber, ±10 seconds, and a Notes button.
Mix notes: click Notes, then Add Note to note something at the player's current position, like "kick too loud" at 1:42. Click ▶ on a note to play from just before it. Tick Resolved when it's fixed. The tree shows how many unresolved notes each export has.
Use a set's right-click menu, or the status menu in its details, to mark it Sealed or Abandoned, or to clear its status.
Abandoned sets, and the exports under them, are greyed out and only offer Show in Finder until you choose Bring Back. Hide abandoned in the top bar tucks them away. Show abandoned brings them back into view.
Inside the project, in a folder named .fido: which set came from which, statuses, sealed copies, a copy of the last-opened set from before it was opened, export links and mix notes. Keep it with the project when you copy, move or back it up. If you delete it, Fidotron forgets the project's history, but your sets and audio are untouched.
Fidotron never edits a Live Set it didn't create, and it never locks a file.
See Support for common questions, or email support@fidoaudio.com.