What changed.

Steps Free, a free edition of Steps, and a new look for Steps with a Gate lane up top.

• NewSteps Free: a free step sequencer and pattern generator that plays your synth over MIDI. Draw a line or roll one in the Acid or Arp style, keep it in key, and move two of your synth’s parameters with the CC lanes. Type your email the first time it opens and it is unlocked for good - no trial, no key. It comes in the Tonestatic installer. Steps Free
• NewThe Chance lane can be a Gate: each step simply on or off, drawn as numbered diamonds. Click the lane’s name to switch between Gate and Chance - switching never changes what plays. A note the Gate silences is drawn as an outline. Steps
• ImprovedA new default lane order: Gate, Notes, Octave, Velocity and Length. Ratchet starts hidden unless a pattern uses it, and Settings > Lanes brings it back. The factory presets open this way. Steps
• ImprovedA cleaner face: flat lanes on a dark band, and Warm sunset as the default colours. Settings > Theme has four more palettes - Periwinkle, Cherry and sand, Baltic and Golden hour - for twelve in all. Steps
• ImprovedChance bars carry their step numbers, as the Gate’s diamonds do, and with the controls folded away a small Run button stays in the header. Steps

Steps is lighter on your host while it plays, and its lane drags stay on the lane you started on.

• NewBeat markers every four steps make long patterns easier to read. Steps
• ImprovedLower CPU use with the window open while a pattern plays: the playhead now moves without redrawing the whole face on every step, and the plugin only updates the window when something has actually changed. Steps
• ImprovedDrawing across a lane keeps working when the pointer leaves the grid, and stays on the lane you started on - values and steps are held to that lane’s edges. The lane’s readout follows the drag as you draw. Steps

Some bug fixes.

• FixedSome bug fixes.

The Mac plugins open on every macOS from 11 Big Sur on, as promised - not only on macOS 26. The trial panel shows once a day, and Live on Windows says how to get a sharp window.

• NewIn Ableton Live on Windows with display scaling above 100 %, Live’s Auto-Scale Plugin Window option stretches the plugin window, which blurs the text and can leave the window and its contents different sizes. When that is happening, the plugin now explains how to switch the option off. It shows at most once a day, and never again once you tick “Don’t show this again”.
• ImprovedDuring the trial, the trial panel opens over the plugin once a day instead of every time its window opens. The tag in the corner still opens it whenever you want it.
• FixedOn macOS 11 to 15, Logic, Live and other hosts refused to open the Audio Unit and VST3 plugins, saying only that they could not be opened: the Mac builds since 0.10.0 had been made for macOS 26 alone. They now run on macOS 11 Big Sur and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel.

Steps learns a CC lane’s number from your synth, and drags smoothly in Live while it plays.

• NewMIDI Learn for the CC lanes (Settings > MIDI): press Learn and move a knob on your hardware synth or controller, and the lane takes its CC number. Steps
• ImprovedA tidier face: the MIDI export sits beside the logo, Rate and the play direction share one section, and the factory bank is a tighter set of Acid, Arp, Bass and Techno patterns. Steps
• FixedDragging a lane’s end, or drawing steps, no longer stalls in Ableton Live while the transport is running. Steps

Introducing Steps, a MIDI step sequencer. Also a quicker way to pick an engine, a steadier tape stereo image, and faces that open faster.

• NewTonestatic Steps, a MIDI step sequencer that plays your synth. Draw steps in a scale, roll a pattern in a style with the dice for a place to start, mutate part of it, chain up to eight patterns, and move two synth parameters per step on the CC lanes. A pattern drags out to a MIDI track. VST3 and Audio Unit (a MIDI FX in Logic Pro). Steps
• NewClick an engine’s name to pick it from a menu, each with its own icon, instead of stepping through them with the arrows. The arrows still work. Alpine, Artifact, Modulation, Delay, Reverb
• ImprovedTape’s Stereo knob now widens the image without it drifting from side to side. Alpine, Modulation
• ImprovedPlugin windows open faster, and on Windows a window opened after the first no longer starts its browser from scratch.
• ImprovedWhere the trial asks for your email address, a link now shows how we use it.
• FixedChanging the delay’s routing while repeats are sounding no longer clicks. Alpine, Delay, Grains

The first release.

• NewAlpine, Grains, Artifact, Modulation, Delay and Reverb, as VST®3 and AU on macOS 11 or later and VST3 on Windows 10 or later (64-bit).
• NewA 14-day trial of every plugin, started from any of them with your email address. A licence key unlocks it for good.