Context Menu Items

Context menu actions are one of the most common ways users interact with extensions. They allow you to add custom entries to various right-click menus in Ableton Live.

Registering an Action

You can register actions for specific object types in Live. This is usually done inside the activate function.

context.ui.registerContextMenuAction(
  "AudioClip", // The scope
  "Process Audio", // The label shown to the user
  "my-extension.process-audio" // The ID of the command to trigger
);

When a user selects your action, the command identified by the ID will be executed, and the Handle of the object that was right-clicked will be passed as the first argument.

Scopes

The scope determines where your action appears. You can use any of the following object classes as a scope:

Object Scopes

These scopes correspond to specific objects in the Live Set. When triggered, your command receives the Handle of the clicked object.

• AudioClip
• MidiClip
• AudioTrack
• MidiTrack
• ClipSlot
• Scene
• Simpler
• Sample
• DrumRack

Selection Scopes

These scopes represent general areas rather than specific objects.

• AudioTrack.ArrangementSelection and MidiTrack.ArrangementSelection: Triggered when right-clicking on a time selection in the Arrangement View on an audio or MIDI track respectively. Instead of a single handle, the command receives an ArrangementSelection object containing the time range and selected lanes.
• ClipSlotSelection: Triggered when right-clicking a selection of clip slots in Session View. The command receives a ClipSlotSelection object with a selected_clip_slots array of clip slot handles.

context.commands.registerCommand("my-ext.process-selection", (selection) => {
  const { time_selection_start, time_selection_end, selected_lanes } = selection as ArrangementSelection;

  // Resolve the handles into Track objects
  const tracks = selected_lanes.map(h => context.getObjectFromHandle(h, Track));

  console.log(`Selected ${time_selection_end - time_selection_start} beats across ${tracks.length} tracks.`);
});

Unregistering Actions

The registerContextMenuAction method returns a Promise that resolves to an unregister function. This is useful if you need to remove an action dynamically.

const unregister = await context.ui.registerContextMenuAction(
  "AudioClip",
  "Temporary Action",
  "my-ext.temp-cmd"
);

// Later, to remove the action:
await unregister();