Pro Tools: Working With MIDI

Pro Tools’ MIDI capabilities continue to evolve.

MIDI Operations floating window.While Pro Tools has long been held in high regard for audio post and professional music production, it’s fair to say that its MIDI capabilities have lagged behind those of some other DAWs. Yet, in recent releases, Avid have given Pro Tools’ MIDI features sustained attention, with suites of changes introduced in Pro Tools 2024.3 and then in the more recent 2025.6 update. In addition to the introduction of Ableton‑style non‑linear composition and arrangement, courtesy of Pro Tools Sketch, the arrival of MIDI plug‑ins in 2024.3 was a notable development, and more practical enhancements introduced in 2025.6 add workflow and technical refinements to Pro Tools’ MIDI features.

MIDI Operations Window

A key part of this is the reworking of the Event Operations window, now renamed MIDI Operations and given a more logical placement within the MIDI Editor. Previously these tools for refining MIDI data were tucked away in the Event menu, with the unintuitive title of Event Operations giving no immediate indication that it was used for MIDI. This has been moved to the place it’s most likely to be needed: a tab in the MIDI Editor itself. There are of course two MIDI piano‑roll editors in Pro Tools — the docked and floating editors — and the MIDI Operations tab is available in both, tabbed together with the Tracks List at the left of the piano roll. However, it’s not available in the Score Editor or the MIDI Event List, which also function as MIDI editors.

The MIDI Operations window replaces the old Event Operations menu, and brings together a host of useful MIDI tools. It can be opened as a floating window (see above), or within the docked MIDI Editor (shown here).

The contents of the old Event Operations window have been inherited wholesale by the MIDI Operations window, but the layout has been updated to a drop‑down, menu‑based interface. The previous interface used a system of disclosure triangles to show and hide sections of the window, but the version before that used a drop‑down menu interface, so this could be seen either as an update or as reverting to an older layout!

In practice the new window is just as easy to get around as long as you know that using Command+up/down (Control+up/down on Windows) can be used to step through the different pages. Be aware that if you are using the on‑screen MIDI keyboard and it has keyboard focus (indicated by the minimise and close buttons in the top left being coloured), this will interrupt these shortcuts, stopping them from working in both the MIDI Operations tab and the docked MIDI Editor. This is true of any floating window, but the keyboard window doesn’t need to be focused to respond to key presses.

The floating MIDI Operations window is accessed from the Event menu or by using Option+Numpad 3 (Alt+Numpad 3 on Windows). The availability of the floating MIDI Operations window has a couple of other benefits. With the...