Hi all,

Lately I've been thinking it'd be quite spectacular to have my iPhone connected to Ableton in order to control the X/Y axis, mainly for Kontakt plugins like Thrill, Mysteria, Pharlight etc. However, it's been hell setting it up, mostly because I'm on windows and my Ableton just doesn't want to recognize my phone in whatever way. It looks like it's a smooth operation on Macs because of the better MIDI integration, but in order to translate the USB signal to MIDI on Windows, you seem to need all kind of nifty bridging tools to make it work ( Or at least, in my very limited understanding, you do )

I got LK to work at some point, but then the X/Y axis didn't work - it didn't send any MIDI signal at all like the other instruments did. LK's drum kit and piano roll were working just fine in contrast to the X/Y. Wasn't really sure if I should laugh it away or smash my recently bought keyboard through the window. All that faceplant while Ubridge recognizes my phone, and the virtual midi ports created in (for example) LoopMIDI were also visible in Ableton.
And still, after a looooong day filled with a plethora of 3d party apps and some good doses of misery and despair, the only thing that really worked was a free app, which had a downside: it only lets you create horizontal/vertical faders and rotaries. This was kind of doable as there (finally) was control over the X and Y axis, but separately, and after playing with that for a bit, it felt completely off, weird and not what I was looking for.

And it just seems strange; I'd never expect something so simple to be so challenging, because literally all I want is an X / Y control in "one finger". You'd say setups like these are not very far-fetched and more commonly used! Are there (more fool / idiot-proof) alternatives to setting this up? Something that dodges all the bridging? Or is it just not convenient to make this work on a phone and do I need a pad instead? I would love something where I just install a program on my laptop, I install a program on my iPhone, and it links. If there's something freeware I would highly prefer that because at this point I feel like buying sth like Studiomux also wouldn't work, as I might be simply missing something. Moreover, I've already spent a grand total of less than €5 euro on different useless plugins, which is about double my monthly pandemic salary.

I've tried contacting the companies whose apps I've tried or bought, but these are very small companies, if companies at all, and I see other people asking questions without any replies after years. Which is understandable, because they only program a little app and have no customer support. But that's why I thought I'd have a better chance at fixing this if I asked you guys.

Relevant specs: Windows 10 ( laptop was bought only 2 months ago, all drivers up to date etc ).
Ableton 10.1.15
iPhone SE2020

Things tried:
Ubridge,
LKBridge,
LoopMIDI,
rtpMIDI,
LK,
MIDIberry,
X/Y PAL
+ about 5 very low-profile midi apps that aren't worth noting and are already deleted

One detail that should be noted is that when I point out the Ableton path to LKBridge, LKBridge shuts down. However, when I uninstalled rtpMIDI and loopMIDI and then ran LKBridge, it did work. That's also the point where LK was ( partially ) functional.

Massive thanks in advance, if anyone could point me in the right direction it'd be much appreciated!