[Feature]: more intuitive and natural file/workspace handling

[grexe]

What problem does this solve?

First of all, this is amazing work! Was instantly able to separate a song and play around with all 6 stems correctly identified (even in 1x fast mode!).

What I miss is a natural way to save the extracted state so I can continue to work with it later.
The File menu only has a "Close" option instead of allowing you to save the source file and current state of the workspace.
So I can only use the Export functionality but that breaks the flow and forces me to reimport later.

Proposed solution

As a user, I would expect a "Load/Save" functionality that quickly saves and restores my workspace with source, stems and any settings applied (e.g. volume, active stem,...).

Using 0.3.0 on MacOS 26.7 Tahoe on Macbook Air M4, 16 GB RAM.

Alternatives considered

Export is the only workaround but it's not the solution.

[thcp]

Thanks for this, and good to hear the six stems came through cleanly.

You are right that it is missing. StemDeck does keep your work. Tracks stay in the library with their stems, and clicking one reloads it without reprocessing. The File menu you found is the stock macOS menu. It offers Close and implies a Save that does not exist. Looking for one is the right instinct, and that menu needs to describe what the app actually does.

The other half is real too. What persists per song today is volume, mute and solo. Loop region, zoom, playhead, playback speed and click track settings are not saved. So even when a track reloads, it does not come back the way you left it. You were right that the flow breaks. It just breaks in a different place than it looks like it does.

One thing that may help now. You are on 0.3.0, and a lot has landed since May. The library sidebar came in 0.5.0, per song mixer state after that. Current build is 0.14.2. It still will not give you a Save menu, but it should stop you having to reimport.

Before I build anything, I would like to hear how you would expect it to work. You came to this fresh, which is worth more than my own assumptions here.

• One saved state per song, or several named ones, so a practice mix and a backing track can sit side by side?
• Explicit saving, a Cmd+S with some sign of unsaved changes? Or silent and automatic, with the menu simply being honest that it already happened?
• Beyond the faders, what should come back? Loop points and zoom are my guesses. You are closer to the actual playing than I am.
• Does any of this need to travel, to another machine or another person? Or is staying put on yours enough?

If anything else in the flow got in your way that I have not mentioned, I would like to hear that too. Thanks again for writing this up.

[thcp]

Hey @grexe , any chance that you tried the latest release?