Frequently Asked Questions

BeatButler is a desktop app for sharing and version-controlling Ableton Live projects. It lets you collaborate with other producers without file conflicts, time travel to any previous version of your project, and keep everything safely backed up in the cloud. You can also upload and listen to bounces tied to each version, and see detailed plugin and file info for every project.

Yes! BeatButler supports Ableton Live 12 onwards. It parses .als project files and automatically detects which version of Ableton was used, and will warn you if a project was saved with a different major version than what you have installed.

Saving locally means you end up with folders full of "track_v2_final_FINAL.als" files, no easy way to see what changed between versions, and no backup if your drive fails. BeatButler gives you a visual timeline of every version, one-click restore via Time Travel, and automatic cloud backup. Hit check in and your entire project is safely stored in seconds.

One person checks out and edits at a time, so there are never any file conflicts. But collaborators aren’t left waiting — they can pull the latest sync at any time to open and listen to the project locally, even while someone else has it checked out. When changes are checked in, everyone gets a real-time notification.

Your files are stored in the cloud with encryption. Every file is compressed and verified before upload. Files are versioned so nothing is ever permanently lost.

BeatButler has a generous free tier to get you started. Check out our pricing page for full details on all plans.

Barely. You create tapes in BeatButler — either from scratch or from an existing Ableton project — and open them through the BeatButler app instead of browsing in Finder or Explorer. Once the project is open, you work in Ableton exactly like you always do. You can even enable auto-sync so every time you hit save in Ableton, your changes are backed up to the cloud automatically.

Open the Time Travel tab and browse the full version timeline. Pick any version — major check-ins or minor syncs — and restore it with one click. BeatButler is smart about it too, only downloading what’s actually changed so it’s fast and keeps your data usage to a minimum.

Yes. BeatButler collects all referenced files, compresses them, and uploads them in parallel. Projects transfer cleanly between Windows and Mac.

BeatButler scans your .als file and detects every plugin used in the project. Before checkout, it compares the plugin list against what’s installed on the collaborator’s machine and warns about any that are missing. From there you can either download the plugin at the same version your collaborator is using, or ask them to freeze those tracks so everything plays back correctly.