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, or plain Zonea depending on the MIDI engine — 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, which needs Windows 11 24H2 or newer.
• 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 works offline day to day; it only uses the network to check for a new version when it starts (silently; no connection, no problem) and if you ever move your licence to another computer.

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 showing the new version number. Clicking it warns you that Zonea will close and send you to the website to download the new version. Save your work first.

Trying it, and activating after you buy

The trial

The trial has no time limit: no countdown, no watermark, and Zonea never closes itself. Design as long as you want; the single restriction is in Performance mode:

• Design mode is completely unrestricted. Build across all 144 pages, move between them freely, save and load templates. Nothing is disabled and nothing is watermarked in your saved work.
• Performance mode runs on pages 1 and 2. Navigating to page 3 or beyond shows a dialog with the option to buy the full license; Cancel returns you to page 1. Everything you built on higher pages stays in your template, ready for the moment you activate.

If you use one of a few open-source creative apps, Zonea can also be free for as long as that app is on screen. See Free with open-source apps.

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 sign-in boxes are replaced by the deactivation controls described below.

If you have not bought yet, Get Your License opens the checkout page 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:

Free with open-source apps

Zonea is free to use, with every feature unlocked, while one of a family of free and open-source creative apps is running. Zonea itself is a commercial app that is built with the help of open-source libraries, most of them MIT licensed and credited in the notices file installed with the app; the free mode is our way of supporting our favorite projects and the people who use them:

• Mixxx: the leading open-source DJ software.
• LMMS: the free, open-source music production studio.
• OpenMPT: the legendary Windows tracker.
• OBS: the open-source standard for live streaming and recording.
• Ardour: the open-source DAW that professionals respect.

There is nothing to configure and nothing to buy. Start one of these apps and Zonea unlocks itself: the licence line on the main screen changes to Free (OSS) and the trial's page limit is gone, all 144 pages in Performance mode.

The rules

The app must be genuinely on screen. Time while it is minimised, hidden or closed adds up across the session: after about 45 minutes of it, Zonea simply returns to trial mode (Performance limited to pages 1 and 2; nothing closes and nothing is lost), and unlocks again as soon as the app is back on screen. Bringing it back clears the accumulated time only gradually, so a short minimise costs almost nothing but a long one still counts. Zonea re-checks every few seconds after anything changes, and about every twenty seconds once things are steady, so closing one app and opening another keeps the free mode going; allow a few seconds for the licence line to follow.

You can still buy and activate a regular licence at any time, exactly as described in the previous section: a paid licence works on its own, with no companion app required. Mixxx, LMMS, OpenMPT, OBS and Ardour are independent open-source projects, not affiliated with Zonea.

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 and opens the editor.

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 (if you had Zonea hiding it). 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 where it was: the same page, or the main menu if that is where you were. Hiding closes the editor, so if you were editing you come back in Performance mode.

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 Free (OSS) when a free partner app is unlocking Zonea.
• 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; plain Zonea when the MIDI Engine is Windows MIDI Services.
• 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 menu columns run across the editor: Menu on the far left (its groups are headed Super UI, Edit, Files and Menu), Objects in the centre, and Properties on the right (headed Properties, Protocol, Bridge and Global). Clicking an entry opens its panel in the space next to its column. Only one panel is open at a time; the exception is Video Mon, which opens on top of whatever else is showing.

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. Its icon flashes: the widget is now armed on your cursor.
3. Place it. Click the spot on the canvas where you want it: the widget is created right there. Drag it to adjust, and drag the handles around its edge to resize. Hold Shift + S while resizing a button, slider, frame, shape or image to keep its proportions (knobs and other round widgets keep theirs on their own).
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, a fixed fine step independent of the grid. Zonea stops widgets at the page edge so you cannot accidentally push one onto the next page.
• Line things up with Ctrl + G (Grid — snap to grid) and Ctrl + T (Ruler — alignment guides).
• 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's title bar expands it to reveal its contents; touching the bar 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 very large selections, 64 widgets or more, the panel steps aside and just shows the count).

With nothing selected the panel reads No Properties Available. 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: on a button, Outer is the border (and the fill when it lights up) while Inner colours the text or icon; on a slider, Outer is the body and knob while Inner is the coloured bar; on a meter, the frame and the needle. The two arrow buttons copy one colour onto the other, and a hex box is there 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. On VU meters, an extra Fill % box (0–100) then sets how dark that background 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 and wheel 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.

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 (a second rings look) 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. The style is purely visual; Touch Signaling is its own switch on the MIDI tab, which the 3 State Dj Plate preset simply arrives with already on.

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), Needle Tip At Top (draws each tip at the needle's end instead of below the arc), 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, hotkeys, OSC, HTTP, OBS and DAW

The Events panel is where a widget stops being a picture and starts doing something. It has a MIDI tab, a Hotkeys tab, an OSC tab, an HTTP tab, an OBS tab and a DAW tab. MIDI and Hotkeys have a per-widget On switch in the tab header; the OSC, HTTP and OBS tabs' On switches are masters for the whole application. The DAW tab needs no switch: pick an action or leave it on None.

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: on the classic driver each copy takes the next name, Zonea-2, Zonea-3, and so on. On the Windows MIDI Services engine they all share the single Zonea port instead — it is multi-client, so your DAW still has just one port to configure and every copy receives its traffic (see MIDI Engine).

Zonea-1 is the name used by the classic MIDI driver, the engine Zonea uses by default on Intel/AMD machines (the ARM version always runs on Windows MIDI Services and its port is plain Zonea). If you switch the MIDI Engine to Windows MIDI Services (see Global settings), the port is called plain Zonea instead. One thing to know: the classic Zonea-1 entry deliberately stays visible in your DAW's port list after the switch (removing it live can freeze software that has it open), so make sure your software is pointed at the port that matches your engine.

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 MIDI IN column sets what makes a widget move on its own. It appears for buttons (a Channel and Number to listen on, plus an On and Off value that decide which incoming values light it and which turn it off) and for the VU meter (Channel and Number only).

Faders and knobs have no MIDI IN column at all: they always listen on the same channel and number 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.

Buttons also get a per-widget master switch with four positions: MIDI ON, MIDI OUT OFF (listens only), MIDI IN OFF (sends only), and MIDI OFF. On every other widget only MIDI ON and MIDI OFF apply; the partial positions have no effect there.

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.

Widgets that use two addresses at once get dedicated help, because you cannot easily move only one axis by hand: the XY Pad, and any wheel with Touch Signaling on (the 3 State DJ Platter preset comes that way). 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 (up to 8 inputs and 8 outputs at a time); 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 your finger leaves the button, whether you lift it or slide it off).

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.

OSC: control over the network

Alongside MIDI, Zonea speaks OSC (Open Sound Control), the network protocol used by Reaper, Resolume, TouchOSC, QLab, Max/MSP, Behringer's X32 family and many more. Where MIDI is a cable with 128 steps, OSC is your network with full floating-point precision. Zonea sends the true continuous position of a fader, not 128 approximations of it.

Everything lives in the OSC tab of the Events panel, in two halves: Connection (shared by the whole app) and Widget (the selected widget's settings).

Connection

Making a widget speak OSC

Select the widget and press Auto next to the Address field: Zonea invents a unique address like /zonea/fader1. That is all: the widget now sends its value there and follows what arrives on the same address, each direction as far as the widget supports it; the per-widget table below marks which way each one speaks. Clear the address to switch the widget's OSC off.

What each widget does over OSC

HTTP: buttons that call a web API

The HTTP tab lets any button fire a web request, which turns Zonea into a control surface for software that speaks HTTP rather than MIDI. The showcase is vMix: its entire function list (Cut, Fade, overlays, Start/StopRecording, streaming, PTZ…) is reachable through simple web addresses, and a Zonea button can call any of them. The same mechanism drives Companion, webhooks, or anything with a web API.

For vMix the address shape is always the same, http://127.0.0.1:8088/api/?Function=NAME&Input=1, and any function from its Shortcuts reference works. Beyond vMix: trigger Companion buttons, fire home-automation webhooks (lights down when the show starts), poke OBS through a web-API plugin, or call anything on your network that answers a web request.

A status line under the fields reports the last request, OK or the error, so a wrong address never fails silently. And the division of labour with vMix is natural: vMix also accepts MIDI natively, so map Zonea's faders to volumes and the T-bar over MIDI, and use HTTP buttons for the functions MIDI mapping does not reach.

OBS Studio: scenes, recording and volumes with live feedback

The OBS tab connects Zonea to OBS Studio through the WebSocket server built into OBS itself (OBS 28 and up; enable it once under Tools → WebSocket Server Settings). This is a two-way link: Zonea drives OBS, and OBS drives your widgets back.

• Buttons switch to a scene, start/stop recording, streaming or the virtual camera, mute an audio input, or save the replay buffer. And they always show OBS's real state: the record button lights while recording, however the recording was started, and the button of the active scene lights up, so a row of scene buttons behaves like a radio group on its own.
• Sliders and knobs ride an audio input's volume, in both directions: move the fader and OBS follows; change the volume in OBS and the fader moves. OBS has no MIDI of its own, so this is the touch fader it never had.

Setting a widget up is two dropdowns, no typing: pick the Action, then pick the Target from a list of your actual scenes and inputs, read live from OBS (⟳ rescans; the lists update by themselves when you add or rename things in OBS). Enter the connection once (host, port 4455, and the password OBS shows in its WebSocket dialog), turn on the tab's On checkbox, and the status line confirms the link. If OBS closes and reopens, Zonea reconnects by itself.

One caveat worth knowing: widgets remember scenes and inputs by name, so if you rename a scene in OBS afterwards, re-pick it in the widget's Target list.

The Clip Grid with Ableton Live

The Clip Grid widget (in DAW Perform) puts a Launchpad-style clip grid on your surface, and it speaks to Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio through the Zonea script for your DAW, both shipped with Zonea. The script is what makes it tick: the grid does not use ordinary MIDI mapping at all, and does nothing until the script is in place. With it, every cell shows the actual colour and name of the clip, updates the moment clips play, record or stop, and the DAW draws its session frame around exactly the area your grid controls, so you always know where you are.

Setting it up for Live takes a minute, once:

• The installer has already placed the script in Documents\Ableton\User Library\Remote Scripts\Zonea_Live. If Live was running during the install, restart it so it notices. (If you have moved your User Library somewhere else, copy the Zonea_Live folder into your User Library's Remote Scripts folder yourself: the installer leaves a copy of both DAW scripts in Documents\Zonea\DAW Scripts, with a README that says exactly where each one goes.)
• In Live, open Preferences → Link / Tempo / MIDI and pick Zonea Live in a free Control Surface slot. Set its Input and Output to Zonea's MIDI port.
• That is all. Place a Clip Grid, set its columns and rows, and the colours and names arrive on their own.

The grid always starts at the top-left of your set, so the first cell is track 1, scene 1 (the Ring Left / Right / Up / Down buttons from the DAW tab move that window, and the grid remembers where it was left). Use one Clip Grid per template: the DAW feeds a single region at a time, so a second grid would show the wrong clips. If you need to cover more of the session, make the one grid bigger instead.

The grid can also carry the track's mixer controls, in either DAW. Tick Track Buttons in the inspector for a header row that shows each column's track name and selects that track in the DAW when you tap it (the selected track is highlighted, and a Device Panel on your surface jumps to that track's devices). With Scene Buttons also on, the header's corner becomes a Main button that selects the Main (master) track — the quick way to put the Device Panel on your master chain. Tick Mute Row or Solo Row for rows of M and S buttons below the clips, one per track, each lit with the track's real state. Solo Is Cue relabels the Solo row as "C" for cue (headphone pre-listen): in both DAWs the track button is the same one, and whether Solo acts as cue is a DAW-wide switch (in Live the Master's Solo/Cue button, in Bitwig the Solo as Cue option) that the DAW does not report to controllers, so set this label to match how your DAW is configured.

Around the clips the grid carries the full session-controller layout: the ▶ scene buttons on the right fire an entire row at once (and show the scene's name whenever it has one), the ■ stop row at the bottom stops whatever is playing on each track (even a clip outside the visible grid), and the corner button stops all clips. The ▶/■ symbols take the editor's Color 1 / Color 2 (white by default), and two inspector fields, Clip Dim and Empty Dim, set how bright stopped clips and empty cells are drawn. And the grid is playable like an instrument: drag a finger across it and each cell it enters fires in turn, clips and scenes alike. Stop buttons deliberately ignore the sweep: they only respond to a direct tap, so a run across the grid can never silence a track by accident.

The Clip Grid with Bitwig Studio

The same grid, colours, names, scenes, stops and glissando work with Bitwig Studio through the bundled Zonea Bitwig controller script. Setup, once:

• The installer has already placed the script inside Documents\Bitwig Studio\Controller Scripts. If Bitwig was running during the install, restart it so it notices. (If your My Controller Scripts location is somewhere else, copy the script's folder into it yourself from Documents\Zonea\DAW Scripts; the README there says exactly where each one goes.)
• In Bitwig, open the Dashboard, then Settings → Controllers → Add Controller, choose vendor Zonea and the Zonea Bitwig script, and set both its Input and Output to Zonea's MIDI port.
• Done. Bitwig highlights in its clip launcher exactly the area your grid shows.

Two Bitwig-specific things worth knowing. First, when you change the grid's Columns or Rows, the script restarts itself for about a second to resize that highlight; this is normal and only happens when the size changes. Second, orientation: the grid uses the standard session-controller layout (tracks as columns, scenes as rows), which matches Bitwig's Mix view. Bitwig's Arrange view draws its clip launcher rotated, tracks as rows; if you prefer your grid to match that view, tick Flip in the grid's inspector and the whole grid transposes, scene buttons moving to the bottom row and stops to the right column. Flip is purely visual: the clips stay mapped to the same tracks and scenes.

DAW: transport, mixer and grid navigation

The DAW tab of the Events panel turns ordinary widgets into session controls for Ableton Live or Bitwig Studio. It rides the same Zonea script as the Clip Grid, so there is no MIDI mapping to do: pick what the widget does from a dropdown and it just works, with live feedback from the DAW.

• Buttons get an Action: Ring Left / Right / Up / Down move the Clip Grid's viewport (and the highlight frame follows in the DAW); Play, Stop, Record (session), Metronome, Overdub, Tap Tempo, Tempo +1 / -1, Undo, Redo drive the transport; the Quantize actions set the launch quantization (None to 1/16), and the button holding the active value lights up, so a row of them behaves like a radio group; Mute / Solo / Arm / Select Track act on a track of the grid's ring, chosen with the Track field (1 to 16, counted from the ring's left edge, so it follows the ring as it moves).
• Buttons follow the DAW's real state: Play lights while the DAW plays, Record while it session-records, Metronome and Overdub while they are on, Mute/Solo/Arm with the track's actual switches, however they were changed.
• Sliders and knobs get a Control (Volume, Pan, Send 1 or Send 2) and a Target: a ring track (1 to 16), the currently Selected track (volume and pan), or the Master volume. The link is bidirectional at high resolution: move the fader and the DAW follows; move it in the DAW and the fader follows, and your finger always wins while it is on the widget.

In Bitwig, Record (session) is the clip-launcher overdub toggle and Overdub is the arranger overdub, the closest equivalents of Live's session record and arrangement overdub. One tip: if you give a widget a DAW role, do not also MIDI-map that widget to the same function in the DAW, or every touch will act twice. Its MIDI stays free for anything else.

Device Panel: hands on the selected device

The Device Panel widget (in DAW Perform) is the "screen plus eight knobs" strip of a hardware controller, in a single widget. It always controls the currently selected device in Ableton Live or Bitwig Studio: click a synth or an effect in the DAW — or tap a track name, or the Main button, on a Clip Grid — and the eight knobs jump to it by themselves. It rides the same bundled Zonea script as the Clip Grid, so there is nothing to map, ever.

• The header shows the device's name with ‹ › buttons to step to the previous or next device on the track, and a page indicator ("2/5") with its own ‹ › buttons to move through the parameters in banks of eight. In Live these are the device's parameters taken eight at a time; in Bitwig they are the native Remote Controls pages you define per plug-in.
• Each parameter's real name and its value as the DAW formats it ("-12.5 dB", "3.2 kHz") sit above the knob, so your fingers never cover them while turning; the knob's centre shows its position as 0–100% (% In Knob, on by default).
• The knobs read absolute (the arc shows the parameter's true position) but are turned relative, in a circle like Zonea's other knobs: the value moves from wherever it is and never jumps, the safe behaviour when the DAW changes values underneath. The link is bidirectional at high resolution, and multitouch: turn several parameters at once. Double-tap a knob and the DAW returns that parameter to its default value — in either DAW.
• In Ableton Live the panel also knows what kind of parameter each one is: an on/off switch appears as a button that lights while it is on, and a stepped selector of up to 16 positions draws division marks across its arc (Step Marks), so you can see at a glance that it clicks between fixed values. Bitwig does not report which parameters are switches, so there every parameter stays a knob.
• Layout and looks: Rows lays the eight knobs out as one row of eight or two rows of four (new panels start as two rows, a squarer shape); Classic Knobs and Classic Buttons draw them in the same style as Zonea's Knob widget, with Stroke setting the ring thickness; Font and Bold pick the typeface for its texts (the device name stays bold regardless). Color 1 sets the value arcs, Color 2 the rings and texts. A column with no parameter behind it simply dims.

A classic DAW mixer with MCU (Mackie Control)

Besides the Zonea scripts there is a second, older road into your DAW: Mackie Control (MCU), the hardware-controller protocol that nearly every DAW has spoken for twenty years. Tell your DAW that a Mackie Control is connected on the Zonea port and you can build a complete bank mixer — motorised faders, pan pots, transport, and displays that label themselves — with no MIDI mapping and no script. Where the Zonea script covers Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio, MCU covers practically everything else: look for a "Mackie Control" or "MCU" option in your DAW's control-surface or remote settings.

Set the DAW up once: add Mackie Control as a control surface with both its Input and Output on Zonea's MIDI port. Then build the surface from these pieces — the numbers are the MCU standard, so the same template works in any DAW that speaks it:

Two tips. First, build one strip completely — fader, pan, four buttons, display — then copy and paste it seven times and only change the channel and note numbers; it is minutes, not hours. Second, MCU and the Zonea script speak different languages on the same port, so in Live or Bitwig a template can carry both at once — a Clip Grid and Device Panel over the script, plus an MCU fader bank — with the two control surfaces configured side by side on the Zonea port.

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 fires the moment you touch it — navigation should feel instant, not wait for you to lift your finger. Zonea also sets such a button to momentary (Push) when the template is saved and reloaded; tick Push yourself if you want it to look momentary straight away.

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

Most widgets can wear your own image instead of Zonea's built-in graphics — buttons, sliders, knobs, encoders, pads, meters, labels, displays and the decorations. (The Clip Grid, Device Panel, keyboards, containers and the video widgets draw themselves and take no images.) 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. Animated GIFs play on the Image decoration; every other widget uses the first frame as a still.

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. (The Page Background slot is the exception: it needs no selection.)
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 partial: 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 leave Auto Connect ticked (it comes that way) so it reconnects by itself whenever the template loads. There is one video background per template: connecting a source replaces the previous one, and it shows behind every page, unlike still page backgrounds, which are per page.

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, or press Enter. Escape cancels.
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. It is on by default: during selection, Shift + arrow keys zoom in on the selection rectangle (up to 200%) while nudging its edge one pixel at a time; Ctrl + Shift + arrows pulls it back the other way. Moving the mouse returns you to the normal view, and the Magnifier button switches the feature off if you prefer to work unzoomed.

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, and put its window where you want it first: its position and size are captured at the moment you assign it.
2. Go to the page that should control it.
3. Click Handle Window. Zonea steps aside and a small crosshair appears: drag it onto the application's window and let go. That window, at that position and size, is now saved with the page.

Moving the window by hand afterwards is not re-captured: to adjust, use the Position Handle arrows, or assign it again. And the button is a toggle: clicking Handle Window on a page that already has one removes it (the button then reads Unhandle Window).

Copy Handle gives another page the same assignment. Position 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, DAW Perform, Decoration, Meters, Displays, Video Mon and Tools & More; the groupings below cover the same widgets, with a few combined or re-ordered for readability.

Buttons

Sliders and faders

Knobs and encoders

DAW Perform

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. 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.

What does not travel is anything that belongs to Zonea's own settings on each computer rather than to the surface: hardware MIDI device choices, the MIDI engine, monitor placement, the OSC/HTTP/OBS connection settings and everything else in Global settings.

Window handles do travel inside the file — but they point at programs and screen positions as they were on the original machine, so on a different computer you will usually need to re-assign them.

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, right after loading, whether it arrived scaled to fit this screen.

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. If Zonea ever crashes, the taskbar and Start menu are repaired the next time Zonea starts. 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, and the two that also need administrator rights say (Admin, Restart Windows).

Touch Mode

Keyboard shortcuts

The editor has a short version of this list too, under 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 (a button with the Quit page target takes you back to that main screen, not out of Zonea).

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 installers and the wrong one will not work properly. (At the time of writing the ARM installer is coming soon; the download page offers the standard build.)

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 (and can optionally use Windows MIDI Services too, with the MIDI Engine option in Global settings); the ARM build uses Windows MIDI Services always, because the driver has no ARM version.

For you this means:

• Windows 11 24H2 or newer is required on ARM: Windows MIDI Services is the only MIDI engine available there, because the classic driver has no ARM version. There is nothing to install — the MIDI service ships with Windows 11 itself and Zonea talks to it directly (see MIDI Engine). Any problem with it, please report it on the forum.
• The port is called plain Zonea: Windows MIDI Services ports drop the -1 that the standard build's classic driver uses. Enable that name in your DAW.
• 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.

The Mac Bridge is not available on ARM either, for the same reason. 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.

Changelog

What changed in each version. Click a version to expand it.