What Zonea is

Zonea is two things at once, and it helps to know which one you are looking at.

It is a control surface: a full-screen layout of faders, knobs, buttons, jog wheels, pads and meters that sends MIDI to your music, DJ, lighting or video software, exactly like a hardware controller would. Your software cannot tell the difference — to it, Zonea is simply a MIDI device called Zonea-1 plugged into the computer.

And it is the designer that builds that surface. Every control is placed by you, sized by you, coloured by you, and assigned by you. There is no fixed layout to live with, no manufacturer deciding you get eight faders when you needed twelve.

What that makes possible

• A controller shaped like your workflow, not like a product someone decided to manufacture.
• 144 pages per layout. One page for mixing, one for effects, one per deck, one for lighting — a button takes you between them instantly.
• Controls that light up. When your software sends feedback, faders move and buttons light on their own, so the surface always shows the real state.
• Buttons that press keyboard shortcuts in any Windows program, including whole recorded sequences of them.
• Live video on the surface — camera feeds or output from other apps, sitting right next to the controls.
• Windows from other programs, framed inside your layout, so a waveform or a mixer strip from your DAW becomes part of the surface.
• Your own artwork instead of the built-in graphics, if you want the surface to look like nothing else.

What you need

• Windows 10 or Windows 11. There are two versions of Zonea: one for ordinary Intel/AMD computers and one for ARM computers. They work the same, with a few exceptions covered in The ARM version.
• A screen you can touch — this is what Zonea is built around. It runs perfectly well with only a mouse, but a touchscreen is where it comes alive, and a screen that accepts several fingers at once is better still.
• Software that accepts MIDI — a DAW, DJ software, a lighting desk, a video mixer. If it can learn a MIDI controller, it can be driven by Zonea.
• An internet connection, once, to activate after you buy. After that Zonea does not need it.

Installing

Zonea comes as a single installer that also sets up everything it depends on. You do not need to hunt down any extra components yourself.

1. Check which version you need. Almost every Windows PC is Intel or AMD and needs the standard installer. If you have an ARM machine (some newer Surface and Snapdragon laptops), download the ARM installer instead. To check: Settings › System › About and look at System type.
2. Run the installer. Windows will ask for permission to make changes — Zonea needs it, because it installs system components. Say yes.
3. Let it work. It installs Zonea plus the pieces it needs, quietly and without asking you anything else. On the standard version you will see it pause on "Installing Virtual MIDI Ports"; that step is what creates the MIDI connection your software will see.
4. Restart when asked. The installer will ask to restart Windows at the end. Do it — the MIDI connection is not fully in place until you do.
5. Open Zonea from the desktop shortcut.

Where your own work is kept worth knowing

Your templates, settings and licence live in a Zonea folder inside your Documents, completely separate from the program itself. That has one very useful consequence: uninstalling Zonea never deletes your work, and reinstalling or updating finds all your templates exactly where you left them. If you want to back up everything you have built, that Documents folder is the thing to copy.

Updating keeps everything

Install the new version over the old one. Your templates, your settings and your activation all stay as they were.

When a new version is available, the main screen replaces the version number with an orange Update button. Clicking it warns you that Zonea will close and send you to the download page. Save your work first.

Trying it, and activating after you buy

The trial

Zonea runs unactivated with every single feature available. Nothing is disabled, nothing is watermarked in your saved work, and saving templates is not blocked. What you get instead is a time limit per session:

• After 30 minutes, a large translucent notice appears across the top of your surface reminding you it is a demo. Everything keeps working.
• After 45 minutes, the session ends: Zonea opens the store page in your browser and closes itself. Anything you had not saved is lost.

Free for Mixxx users no purchase

If you use Mixxx, the free and open-source DJ software, Zonea unlocks itself for free while Mixxx is running. The licence line on the main screen changes to Mixxx License, the timers stop and the demo notice disappears.

Mixxx must be genuinely on screen — minimising it stops the free mode counting straight away, and leaving it minimised long enough brings the demo limits back. Note this recognises a specific released build of Mixxx; if you are running a different or self-built version, Zonea will simply stay in demo mode.

Activating

Activation uses the email and password of your account on the store where you bought Zonea. There is no serial number to type or lose.

1. On the main screen, find the INFO panel at the bottom left. While unactivated it shows two boxes: User Email and User Password. The eye icon reveals what you typed, in case of a stubborn password.
2. Enter your store account details and press Activate.
3. On success you will see "Activation successful! Restarting..." and Zonea restarts itself. When it comes back, the licence line reads Activated and the boxes are gone.

If you have not bought yet, Get Your License opens the store in your browser. Zonea steps out of the way while you do that — see the main screen for how to bring it back.

Moving your licence to another computer

Your licence covers a limited number of machines, so if you replace a computer — or reinstall Windows, which counts as a new machine — you may need to free a slot. Once activated, the INFO panel offers exactly that: sign in again and press Deactivate. Zonea confirms with "License released! Restarting...", returns to demo mode, and that slot is free to use elsewhere.

Do this before you wipe or sell the old machine. It is much easier than recovering a slot afterwards.

If activation is refused

Zonea tells you exactly what went wrong. Here is what each message means:

The main screen

This is where Zonea opens. It is the hub: from here you load a surface, choose which monitor to run on, or step out of the way.

The three big buttons

Load — the template browser

Load opens a panel titled Load Template. It works in three taps:

1. You see your folders. Tap one to open it.
2. You see the templates inside. A ".." button appears to go back up.
3. Tap a template and two buttons appear: Load & Touch (orange) loads it ready to play; Load & Edit (blue) loads it with the editor available.

The browser goes one folder deep. Folders inside folders are not reachable here, so keep your library one level flat.

Templates always open on page 1, whichever page you were on when you saved.

Placement — choosing your screen

If you have more than one monitor, the row of numbered pads 1 to 6 chooses which one Zonea occupies. Tapping a number asks you to confirm, because Zonea restarts to make the move and unsaved work would be lost. Your choice is remembered for next time.

Not sure which screen is which? Identify flashes a big number on every monitor for three seconds.

Hide — getting Zonea out of the way

Hide makes the whole surface transparent so your desktop and other programs are visible and usable. Video widgets pause and the Windows taskbar comes back. All that remains of Zonea is a small blinking yellow arrow at the top-right of the screen.

Tap that arrow to bring everything back. Zonea returns to exactly where it was — the same page, or the main menu if that is where you were.

Lock

Locks Windows, the same as pressing Windows+L. Useful when you step away from a machine mid-session.

The INFO panel

Bottom left. It answers the questions that come up most:

• License — Demo Mode, Activated, or Mixxx License.
• Multi Instances — whether more than one copy of Zonea may run at once.
• Screens Detected and Running On Screen — how many monitors Zonea can see, and which one it is on.
• MIDI Port Name — shown in orange. This is the name to look for in your software. Normally Zonea-1.
• Software Version — replaced by an orange Update button when a newer version exists.

Edit mode and Performance mode

Zonea is always in one of two modes, and understanding the difference removes most early confusion.

That widgets go deaf in Edit mode is deliberate: you could not drag a fader into position if dragging it also blasted MIDI at your DAW.

Switching between them

• Press Escape — the default way in and out. You can change this key; see Global settings.
• Right-click anywhere on the surface opens the editor (this can be switched off, so an accidental right-click during a show does not throw you into edit mode).
• The PERFORM button at the bottom of the editor closes it and goes live.

The Editor: a tour

The editor is a floating panel that sits over your surface. It is where everything gets built, so it is worth five minutes learning its shape. You can drag it around by its title bar — the strip along the top reading "Editor" — to get it out of the way of what you are working on.

How the editor is organised

The PERFORM button sits at the bottom right of the editor — it closes the editor and takes you live.

Three columns of menus run down the left. Clicking any entry opens its panel in the middle of the editor. Only one panel is ever open at a time.

The title bar

The panels you will open most

Building your first surface

Here is the whole workflow end to end. Everything after this section is detail on individual steps.

1. Start fresh. From the main screen, press Create.
2. Pick a part. In Objects, click a category — say Sliders — then click the slider you want. It appears on the canvas.
3. Place it. Drag it where you want it. Drag the handles around its edge to resize. Hold Shift + S while resizing to keep its proportions.
4. Assign it. Open Events and set the MIDI Channel and Number. This is the address your software will listen to.
5. Teach your software. Put your DAW into MIDI-learn, hold Shift + X in Zonea, and move the fader. Your software sees it and maps it.
6. Make it yours. In Properties, set colours, size and label.
7. Repeat for the rest of your controls. Copy and paste is faster than placing each one — see below.
8. Save it. Menu › Save As, give it a folder and a name, press Save.
9. Play. Press PERFORM or Escape.

Selecting and arranging

• Select several by dragging a box around them. Most properties then apply to the whole selection at once — set the colour once for twelve buttons.
• Nudge precisely with the arrow keys, one step at a time. Zonea stops widgets at the page edge so you cannot accidentally push one onto the next page.
• Line things up with Ctrl + G (snap to grid) and Ctrl + T (lane grid).
• Copy with Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V. Copying a container brings its contents along.
• Undo with Ctrl + Z, redo with Ctrl + Y.
• Lock a finished widget with Ctrl + F so you stop moving it by mistake; Ctrl + E unlocks it. Ctrl + W allows moving but not resizing, and Ctrl + R adds rotation handles.

Stacking order

When widgets overlap, the Z Order buttons at the top of Properties decide who sits on top: Bottom, -1, +1, Top. Use it to put a label above a frame, or slide a decorative panel behind a row of buttons.

Containers — tidying a busy page

A Container (in Tools & More) is a folder that lives on the canvas. Drag widgets into it while editing, and in Performance mode touching the container expands it to reveal its contents and touching it again folds it away. Containers can hold containers. It is the answer to a page with more controls than room.

Properties: shaping a widget

Select a widget, open Properties, and you get the controls that apply to that kind of widget — a VU meter offers needle options, a slider does not. With several widgets selected you see only what they have in common.

With nothing selected the panel reads No Widget Selected. That is the answer to "why is this panel empty".

Colour

The Color Palette swatch opens the picker. Most widgets have two colours — an Outer and an Inner — and what they mean depends on the widget: border and fill on a button, track and knob on a slider, arc and needle on a meter. There is a chain toggle to move both together, and a hex box if you have an exact colour in mind.

Fill

Fill turns the widget's background on or off; off leaves just the outline and content, which is how you build surfaces that feel light rather than boxy. When fill is on, Fill % (0–100) sets how dark it is — lower is darker. It is the control for making a widget sit back quietly behind its own label.

Text and icons

Shape, size and position

Button behaviour

Knob behaviour

Slider style

Four looks, chosen with radio buttons:

Touch Enter deserves its own note. With it on, a finger already touching the screen can slide into a fader and pick it up — but only once it reaches the fader's current position, so the value never jumps. That is exactly how a DJ grabs a fader mid-move without a jolt. With it off, the fader responds only to touches that begin on it.

No Bar hides the coloured bar and leaves just the knob.

Encoder style

Four visual styles for endless wheels. The radio buttons here are labelled JogWheel (a circle with a dot), TurnWheel (concentric rings with an indicator line), TurnWheel2 (rings, with touch signalling) and Encoder (a classic star/gear knob). The Objects panel names the same four Jog Wheel, Dj Plate, 3 State Dj Plate and Endless Knob — same wheels, different wording.

VU meter options

The meter carries its own set: Needles (1 to 4), Peak Hold (holds the highest reading for 1.5 seconds before it fades), Dual VU Meter (a second arc for stereo), Tip Fixed Color (each needle tip a distinct colour so you can tell them apart), and a family of Hide switches — Hide Needle, Hide Tip Needle, Hide Indicator Arc, Hide Tick Marks, Hide Scale Arc — for stripping the meter down to only the part you want.

Events: MIDI and hotkeys

The Events panel is where a widget stops being a picture and starts doing something. It has a MIDI tab and a Hotkeys tab, each with its own On switch.

How your software finds Zonea

Zonea appears to Windows as a MIDI device called Zonea-1. In your DAW's MIDI preferences you will see that name as both an input and an output:

• Enable it as an input so your software hears Zonea's faders and buttons.
• Enable it as an output too if you want the traffic to come back — that is what makes faders move and buttons light up on their own.

If you run several copies of Zonea on several screens, each takes the next name: Zonea-2, Zonea-3, and so on.

MIDI OUT — what a widget sends

Four switches change the nature of what is sent:

MIDI IN — what a widget listens to

The right-hand column sets what makes a widget move on its own: a Channel and Number to listen on, and for buttons an On and Off value that decide which incoming values light it and which turn it off.

For faders and knobs, leaving the IN fields blank means they listen on the same address they send on, which is what you want almost every time.

Buttons are different and this catches people out: a button with empty MIDI IN fields listens to nothing at all — there is no fallback. It must be given an IN channel and number before your software can light it. To help, typing an OUT channel and number on a button copies them across to the IN side automatically.

There is also a per-widget master switch with four positions: MIDI ON, MIDI OUT OFF (listens only), MIDI IN OFF (sends only), and MIDI OFF.

MIDI learn without leaving your seat

The reliable routine: put your software into its learn mode, hold Shift + X so Zonea's widgets go live, and move the control. Release Shift+X and carry on editing.

Two widgets that use two addresses at once — the XY Pad and the 3 State DJ Platter — get dedicated help, because you cannot easily move only one axis by hand. Their panel offers Send CC and Send CC+1 buttons that fire each address on demand, one at a time, so your software can learn them separately.

Connecting real MIDI hardware

Zonea can also talk to physical MIDI gear. Under Hardware MIDI Devices there are two lists, Inputs and Outputs, with a Refresh button each. Tick a device to connect it; the choice is remembered and reconnects next time you start.

Widgets respond to every connected input at once — there is no per-widget device routing. Note that SysEx messages coming from hardware are ignored on every version of Zonea: ordinary notes and CCs work in both directions, but a controller that relies on SysEx to talk back will appear to do nothing. Note that these hardware choices are saved with Zonea's settings, not inside the template, so a template moved to another computer will not bring them along.

Hotkeys — buttons that press keys

Any button can type keystrokes into whatever program has focus, which lets Zonea drive software that has no MIDI at all. Open Events › Hotkeys with a button selected.

1. Select your button and open the Hotkeys tab.
2. Press Set. The box turns orange and reads Press a key...
3. Press the key or combination you want. Modifiers are supported — Ctrl + Shift + F1 records as one hotkey.
4. Tick On.

Clear removes it again.

The three modes

In Tap mode on a momentary button you can also choose the Trigger: TouchDown (fires as you press, the default and the responsive choice) or TouchUp (fires when you let go, which gives you the chance to slide off and cancel).

On a toggle button, the hotkey fires when it turns on and sends nothing when it turns off.

Building a macro

Choose Macro and the MACRO SEQUENCE editor appears — a list of steps you assemble:

Double-click a step to change it. Double-click a keystroke and press a new key to swap it; double-click a delay and its value loads into the Delay box, where you edit it and then either press Enter or click + Delay to commit.

A finished macro reads like a sentence: Ctrl+C › 200ms › Ctrl+V › Enter.

Which keys can be used

Function keys F1–F24, letters A–Z, the number row 0–9, Space, Enter, Tab, Escape, Backspace, Delete, Insert, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, the arrow keys, common punctuation, and Ctrl, Shift, Alt and Win as modifiers.

Pages and navigation

Every template has 144 pages. Think of them as a very wide strip of surfaces you slide between: mixing on one, effects on the next, a page per deck, a page for lighting. They cost nothing until you use them.

The editor's title bar always tells you where you are, and the Adv. UI / Pages panel has the full grid of 144 buttons — the current page is drawn in yellow. Click any page to go there and build on it.

Buttons that change pages

Any button becomes a navigation button by giving it a Page target in Properties:

A button with a page target automatically becomes momentary and fires the moment you touch it — navigation should feel instant, not wait for you to lift your finger.

Dim on Page — knowing where you are

Dim on Page, on by default, draws a navigation button at half brightness when you are already on the page it points to. Build a row of page buttons and the current page dims itself. It is a small thing that saves you looking twice mid-performance.

Page animations

Each navigation button can play an animation as the new page arrives: Explode, Spiral, Cascade, Zoom In, Random Sides, Drop Down, Rise Up, Slide Right, Slide Left, Wave, Hurricane — or None.

Anim ms sets the length, from 200 to 2000 milliseconds, default 500. Longer looks more dramatic and takes longer before you can play again; taps during an animation are ignored so navigations cannot stack up. For live work, 200–300 ms or None keeps the surface feeling immediate.

The five-finger gesture

In the Skins panel, 5-Finger Touch chooses what happens when you place five fingers flat on the screen — go to a page, Hide Zonea, or Quit to the main screen. An escape hatch that needs no button and cannot be hit by accident.

Sharing a widget across pages — the Super UI commands

A transport bar you need everywhere should not be built 144 times. The Menu › Super UI commands solve this, and the difference between them matters:

Copy To — which lives in the Edit section of the Menu column, not with the Super UI commands — is the opposite of sharing: it makes an independent copy on another page. Change one and the other does not follow. Use it when you want a similar control with different MIDI.

The rule of thumb: Float when it is the same control; Copy To when it merely looks the same.

Skins: using your own artwork

Every widget can wear your own image instead of Zonea's built-in graphics. A surface can end up looking like a photograph of vintage hardware, or like nothing anyone has seen before. Zonea takes PNG and GIF files.

The image library

Open Skins. At the top is your Image Library — the pool of images this template can use. + Load Images adds files from your computer (several at once), and Remove Selected takes them out again.

Images live inside the template, so a template you copy to another machine or send to a friend arrives with its artwork intact. Nothing to collect, nothing to relink.

Assigning an image — the two-click rule

Assignment always works the same way, and it is worth learning once:

1. Select the widget on the canvas.
2. Click the slot you want to fill. Its border turns yellow — that slot is now armed.
3. Click an image in the library. It goes into the armed slot.

Click the armed slot again to disarm it. Each slot has a Clear button to empty it.

The three slots

Two widgets are exceptions: encoders only take the overlay (the spinning part), and the Image decoration only takes a background.

Skinning several widgets at once

You can select many widgets and skin them together, provided they are the same type and the same size. If they are not, Zonea refuses and tells you in red: "For multiple, select same type and size". The panel always names what you have selected — "Buttons (8) 100x60 px" — so you can see at a glance whether the selection is uniform.

Live video as a page background

A page background does not have to be a still image. The Skins panel can put a live video feed behind your controls — from OMT or NDI (over the network) or Spout (from another program on the same computer). Pick a source from the dropdown, use ⟳ to rescan, and tick Auto Connect so it reconnects by itself whenever the template loads.

OMT offers Low, Medium and High quality; NDI offers Low and High; Spout has no quality setting. Lower quality uses less of your processor — worth choosing when the machine is also running your DAW.

Advanced UI: bringing other programs into your surface

This is the part of Zonea that has no equivalent on a hardware controller. Instead of a controller sitting next to your software, the software can be built into the controller.

External UI Display — a live piece of another program

Capture any rectangle of any application window — a waveform, a mixer strip, a track list, a plugin's display — and it appears as a widget on your surface, live and updating in real time. Your controls can then be arranged around it.

1. Open Adv. UI / Pages and click External UI Display.
2. A red selection rectangle appears over the screen. Move and resize it to frame exactly the region you want.
3. Double-click (or double-tap) inside the rectangle to confirm.
4. The widget appears on the canvas. Move and resize it like anything else.

Re-Map points an existing widget at a different region — useful after you have moved the source application around.

Magnifier helps when the thing you want is small. Turn it on, and during selection Shift + arrow keys zoom into the area under the cursor and nudge the selection edge one pixel at a time; Ctrl + Shift + arrows pulls it back the other way. Moving the mouse returns you to the normal view.

The source program must be running and not minimised. Some windows are protected against being captured — most video streaming apps are — and those will show nothing.

Holes — seeing straight through the surface

A Circular Hole or Rectangle Hole is a genuinely transparent opening in your surface. In Performance mode you see the application underneath through it and you can touch it directly. In Edit mode the hole shows a faint outline so you can grab and position it.

The Transparency command in the Menu column does the same thing to the whole canvas at once, rather than one region.

Handle Window — the application arrives where you want it

Each page can take charge of an external program's window. Navigate to that page and the window is un-minimised, moved and resized to exactly the position you saved, and brought to the front.

1. Open the application you want to place.
2. Go to the page that should control it.
3. Click Handle Window and pick it from the list of open windows.
4. Position and size the window where you want it. It is saved automatically.

Copy Window Handle gives another page the same assignment. Position Window Handle brings up arrow buttons that nudge the window one pixel at a time — which is what you need when you are lining a hole up precisely with a waveform.

Widget reference

Everything you can place, what it is for, and what it sends. The Objects panel sorts them into Buttons, Sliders, Knobs, Pads, Encoders, Decoration, Meters, Displays, Video Mon and Tools & More; the groupings below follow that order, combining a few for readability.

Buttons

Sliders and faders

Knobs and encoders

Pads

Meters and displays

Decoration

Purely visual — none of these send or receive anything. They are what turns a grid of controls into a designed instrument: grouping related controls, labelling sections, separating banks.

Tools & More

Video

These display live video on the surface. None of them send or receive MIDI, and none take skins. All keep their proportions.

These are not placed from the ordinary parts bin. In the Objects column choose Video Mon, which opens a panel with a section for each of OMT, NDI and Spout. In each section you pick a Source from the list (⟳ rescans), press Start to bring the feed up, and click the thumbnail to place the widget on the canvas.

Each also offers Auto Connect (on by default, so the feed returns whenever the template loads), Show Info Overlay for resolution and frame rate, and a Status line telling you what it is doing. Quality is offered on OMT (Low, Medium, High) and NDI (Low, High) — Spout has none. Lower quality means less load on your processor, which matters when the same machine is running your DAW.

Until a source is chosen and running, the widget shows Waiting for NDI... or its equivalent. Video widgets pause automatically while Zonea is hidden.

Saving and loading templates

Saving

Menu › Save As opens the template information panel. Two fields matter:

You can also record an Author name and a forum link, which travel with the template if you share it.

Press Save and a brief please wait... appears while everything is packed up.

Attaching your DAW's mapping file

A control surface is only half the job — the other half is the mapping file that teaches your software what everything does. Zonea can carry it: MIDI Map File attaches your DAW's mapping to the template, so it travels inside the same file. When someone loads your template, the mapping is unpacked automatically for them.

If you ever share a template, do this. It is the difference between "here is a layout" and "here is a working setup". Detach removes it again.

What a template contains

Everything: every widget and its settings, all 144 pages, your skin images, page backgrounds, per-page window handles, hotkeys and macros, and the surface's own settings. One file, self-contained.

Loading

Either Load Latest on the main screen for the one you used last, Load for the browser, or Menu › Load & Reset from inside the editor. Choose Load & Touch to go straight to playing, or Load & Edit to keep building.

Templates always open on page 1.

Backups happen automatically — on overwrite

Save over an existing template and the old version is not thrown away. It is moved to a _Backups folder in your library, renamed with the date and time it was replaced. If you save something you regret, your previous version is there.

This is not a substitute for saving. It captures the version you replaced, at the moment you replaced it — nothing more.

Moving templates to another computer

Copy the single template file into any folder inside the other machine's Zonea template library. Artwork, page backgrounds and all settings come with it.

Two things do not travel:

• Window handles, which point at programs and screen positions on the original machine.
• Hardware MIDI device choices, which are saved with Zonea's own settings rather than with the template.

Different screen, different resolution

Templates scale automatically to whatever screen they land on. The save panel shows the resolution a template was designed at and whether it is currently being scaled to fit.

A layout designed for a wide screen and opened on a squarer one will fit, but the proportions will not be what you drew. If you regularly use two very different screens, it is worth keeping a version made for each.

Global settings

Config holds the settings that belong to Zonea itself rather than to any widget.

Editor

Application

Windows Overlay Protection

Four switches, all off by default, that stop Windows from interrupting you. On a touchscreen, a stray swipe near an edge can throw the taskbar or a system panel over your surface at the worst possible moment.

• Disable Taskbar · Disable Start Menu · Disable Quick Settings · Disable Notifications

All of them are restored automatically when you hide or close Zonea — including if Zonea ever crashes. You will not be left with a broken Windows.

Touch Optimization

Four switches, all on by default, that remove Windows behaviours designed for browsing the web and unhelpful on a control surface: the long-press right-click, flick gestures that turn a fast fader move into a navigation swipe, edge swipes that pull in Task View or the notification centre, and the Windows Ink workspace. Each is labelled (Restart Windows) as a reminder of what it takes to apply.

Touch Mode

Keyboard shortcuts

The editor keeps this list too — the ⌨ button in its title bar.

Getting around

Editing

Handling widgets

View

There is no keyboard shortcut for changing pages and none for quitting. Pages change from your own on-screen buttons, the editor's page grid, or the five-finger gesture; quitting is the main screen's Quit button or a button you give the Quit target to.

The ARM version

Zonea comes in two builds: one for ordinary Intel and AMD computers, and one for ARM machines such as newer Surface and Snapdragon laptops. Install the one that matches your computer — they are separate downloads and the wrong one will not work properly.

Not sure? Settings › System › About and look at System type. If it says ARM, you need the ARM build. Almost everyone else needs the standard one.

Everything in this manual applies to both. These are the differences:

Video: OMT only

On ARM, OMT is the only video source available. NDI and Spout do not work — the components they need have never been made for ARM processors.

External UI Display — capturing a region of another program's window — works normally on ARM.

MIDI: Windows 11 required

The two builds create their MIDI connection in different ways. The standard build installs a MIDI driver; the ARM build uses Windows MIDI Services, built into Windows itself, because the driver has no ARM version.

For you this means:

• Windows 11 is required on ARM. Windows MIDI Services must be present and running.
• The port name is identical — Zonea-1. Existing DAW setups that refer to it by name carry over unchanged.
• The ARM installer does not include the MIDI driver step.
• Nothing to configure. Zonea chooses the right method for your machine on its own.

MIDI hardware

Physical MIDI devices work on ARM and appear in the device lists as usual. One ARM-only quirk:

• Long device names are cut short in the list, at about 31 characters. Two devices with similar long names can look identical.

Everything else — the editor, all widgets, licensing, templates, pages, skins, hotkeys, touch settings — behaves identically on both.

Troubleshooting

Support

If something here did not answer your question, the forum is the best place to ask — other people build with Zonea too, and templates get shared there.