If you're one of the many people with a large collection of sounds and other assets in your Live library you'll know that every time you start live 12 it will re-address all of those things. This is thrashing your hard drives and weighing on your system resources *every time* you start the DAW regardless of if you've added new assets or not.

This was a big problem for me so I made a simple solution that I hope will help you as well.

Just download the file, rename .txt to .rar and unpack. Instructions included.

Cheers.

Note : The indexing enabler/disabler script will not effect plugin scanning.

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2025 at 8:11 PM

Ha. I was looking for a solution 2 days ago to this, CPU was struggling due to indexing. I'll try this out. Thanks.

 

Alternatively, and this is more dependent on your workflow (ie, do you use external mangers along with Ableton), don't store non top level things directly in your user library. Just store the parent references... eg, keep your sample libraries outside of the user library, but save the preset that uses those samples within the library. Store presets, adg, and devices etc, keep everything being referenced (and all other files used or not) in a location that is not your Ableton library. This includes the sidebar Places. Any parent file saved into the User Library will retain the file paths for child references irrespective of directory structure, in other words those paths can be any other location and drive. Same applies to your plugins folders. Anything not a .dll or .vst3, get it out of there. Use symlinks if needed.

 

It's probably better to suspend the indexing process in case Ableton gets too crash happy. Maybe I've been unlucky with trying to replace the indexer... But as long as something works, no need to go further, right?

Anyways, if OP's solution doesn't work for you, try this:

a) suspend "Ableton Index.exe" from Task Manager / Process Explorer with right click > "Suspend", resume by doing right click > "Resume"

b) Install PsTools from Microsoft, put PsSuspend.exe in PATH or a known location somewhere. Run C:\tools\pssuspend.exe "Ableton Index.exe" (change path to where you extracted the tools) to suspend. Resume by running C:\tools\pssuspend.exe -r "Ableton Index.exe"

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2025 at 10:18 PM

How does that work for sample libraries, loops and oneshots that are not referenced by ableton devices directly? Surely one would want to have all those sounds in the browser, ready for audition and use in the project? - I think your suggestion means that you would have chosen sound already, loaded them into a simpler or whatever and then saved that preset. What I'm looking at here are large libraries of sounds that you want to browse from the Live browser directly.

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2025 at 11:10 PM

It's great to see more options here - I wish I'd know about them a long time ago! We should always share these ideas...

I don't see an option to 'suspend' in task manager...

Okay, on further digging I found that you can 'suspend' from Resmon. So thats certainly a good option. But Suspend IS NOT possible from task manager.

In any case, with my solution the index process will not start when you load Live, unless you want it to. So once you decide to disable the index process, it will stay disabled no matter - you won't need to keep suspending it or whatever every time you load Live.

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2025 at 11:25 PM

That's why I mentioned if using managers was something already in the workflow. Loopcloud, and I believe now ADSR Sample Manager as well, both will sync with Ableton. They are a two part program, the standalone and a vst that work together to integrate into the project. So you can realtime bpm match, pitch correct, warp, etc while browsing in the manager. Click n drag same as you would from Ableton browser when you find something you like. LC also has several features that make it faster to work with over Ableton's browser --especially with large and/or many libraries (browser tabs, multitrack audio sequencer whose tracks you can prepopulate with trigger or edit patterns for auditioning, and vastly more screen real estate being the biggies). I haven't used ADSR since before that feature was added so can't comment on it's current state (though it is free with ads).

 

It's equally as useful on Mac/Logic, or any other Mac DAW using AU format for the plugin; in addition to the VST3 format. It builds a decent sized database file on the local machine, but nothing terrible. Last I checked was about 3gb db file, with it having over 1m samples in the database. It can scan independently of your DAW; and scanning can be paused and even stopped completely while DAW is open. You have complete control over when it scans for new content, and when it is just out of your way. XO is a great drum machine, comparison based manager for one-shot sample library; but LC is on a different level of sample manager when it comes to large libraries.