PRO TOOLS 2026.11 NOW AVAILABLE—WHAT’S NEW

Pro Tools 2026.11 introduces Pro Tools Extensions, a new plugin format that brings powerful third-party workflows, sound libraries, and automation tools directly into the Pro Tools experience. This release also includes the new Pro Tools Stem Separator Extension for fast, local AI-powered stem extraction, support for MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) for more expressive performances, and High DPI support on Windows for a sharper, more responsive experience on modern high-resolution displays.

For a detailed technical overview of the new features, be sure to check out the “What’s New in Pro Tools 2026.11” guide and release notes here. To get a summary of all recent releases and more, please visit the What's New in Pro Tools page.

If you’re new to Pro Tools, you can learn more and download the free 30-day trial here.

PRO TOOLS EXTENSIONS

With Pro Tools 2026.11, your creative environment gets even more powerful. The new Pro Tools Extensions plugin format brings a growing range of integrated tools and services directly into Pro Tools, giving you new ways to find sounds, collaborate, accelerate workflows, and bring ideas to life.

Unlike traditional plugins, Extensions aren’t limited to tracks or audio processing. They can deliver entirely new experiences within Pro Tools and remain available even when no session is open.

The first wave includes the Pro Tools Stem Separator Extension from Avid, plus support for third-party Extensions from Pro Sound Effects, Forte, Soundly, and Pibox, with more possibilities ahead as the ecosystem expands.

As Extensions become a bigger part of Pro Tools, we’re making them easier to find, launch, and manage.

A new Extensions menu gives Extensions a dedicated home directly in the Pro Tools menu bar, with quick access to your installed tools and an easy way to discover more. We’ve also streamlined the Window menu, with Splice and SoundFlow appearing as Extensions for easier management and Learn moving to the Help menu.

The side panel has also been refreshed with more intuitive, browser-like tabs, recognizable icons, and a cleaner layout that gives your content more room. And with the new Add/Select Tabs menu, it’s easy to add Extensions, jump between tabs, and keep your workspace organized.

The result is a simpler, more consistent experience that makes your favorite Extensions easier to reach and leaves plenty of room for new ones to come.

PRO TOOLS STEM SEPARATOR EXTENSION

Pro Tools Stem Separator is the first Pro Tools Extension by Avid and delivers local, AI-powered stem separation inside the DAW with no upload or third-party tool required. Separate audio into up to six stems, including Vocals, Drums, Bass, Guitar, Keys, and Other, without uploading your audio or leaving Pro Tools.

Simply drag audio into Stem Separator, preview the separated results, then drag the stems you want back into your session or write them directly to new tracks. Whether you’re isolating a vocal, pulling apart a mix for a remix, extracting instruments for creative production, or working with material that no longer has the original multitracks, Stem Separator puts those possibilities right inside Pro Tools.

And because all AI analysis and processing happens locally on your computer, your audio stays on your machine throughout the separation process. No internet connection is required for processing, your audio is never uploaded to the cloud or shared with a third-party service, and your content is not used to train AI models.

Best of all, Pro Tools Stem Separator is included across all Pro Tools tiers, giving every Pro Tools user a powerful new way to explore, repurpose, and work with audio.

MIDI POLYPHONIC EXPRESSION (MPE)

MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) takes MIDI beyond its traditional limitations, allowing for individual control over the pitch, timbre, and amplitude of each note within a chord or melodic line. Imagine the nuanced control of an acoustic instrument, now at your fingertips within the digital realm.

Many modern software instruments already support MPE. With this update, you can finally unleash the full expressive power of these instruments, transforming static sounds into dynamic, living performances. Dive into your favorite synths, orchestral libraries, and samplers, and discover sounds you never knew were possible.

Why MPE? The Power of Expressive Control

Think about a guitar player bending a string, or a violinist adding vibrato to a single note in a chord. Traditional MIDI, while incredibly powerful, often treats all notes in a chord uniformly. MPE shatters this constraint. With MPE, every note becomes an individual expressive voice.

This means you can:

• Individually bend the pitch of notes: Create incredibly realistic string bends, vocal-like slides, or unique synth modulations within a single chord.
• Apply distinct vibrato to each note: Add a rich, organic quality to pads and lead lines, with each note having its own subtle movement.
• Control timbre and filter cutoff per note: Imagine morphing the sound of individual notes in a complex harmony, creating evolving textures that were previously impossible with standard MIDI.

What Does This Mean for Pro Tools Users?

MPE fundamentally changes how MIDI information is transmitted and interpreted. Instead of a single set of MIDI Continuous Controllers (CCs) or Pitch Bend information applied across all notes played (polyphonically), MPE assigns these expressive controls per note. With this deep integration in Pro Tools, you gain the ability to record, edit, and automate these discrete parameters natively.

Key Workflow Enhancements Include:

• Per-note Automation: See your MPE data in dedicated lanes, in both Edit Window and MIDI Editors. You can now sculpt the vibrato of the root note differently than the third in a sustained chord or manually correct a micro-bend on an upper voice. Notes and their automations are colored, based on their MIDI Channel for easier editing.
• Seamless Hardware Integration: Connect your MPE-capable controllers—whether you use keys, pads, or ribbons—and Pro Tools intelligently routes the expressive data to the corresponding notes in your performance. No more complex MIDI channel workarounds—it just works as intended. The integration of MPE into Pro Tools is seamless and intuitive. Set any Instrument or MIDI track as an MPE track and connect your favorite MPE-compatible controllers.

For sound designers and electronic musicians, MPE support opens up an entirely new avenue for creating evolving soundscapes, intricate textures, and highly responsive sonic elements. Imagine creating a single synth patch that can morph and breathe with unprecedented detail across your entire composition.

WINDOWS IMPROVEMENTS

High DPI support and Display Scaling

Pro Tools 2026.11 marks the start of a new era in addressing some long overdue improvements on the Windows platform. First up, display scaling support: the Pro Tools user interface (UI) now scales natively according to the specified Windows Display Settings, resulting in sharper and more readable text, icons, and interface elements, especially when using modern high-resolution displays (2K, 4K, 5K). Yes, that’s right, you can now use one or more High DPI (QHD or UHD) displays set to >100% scaling without having to set Windows to forcibly scale the UI to the correct size causing blurriness and pixelation.

Dynamic DPI awareness

We’ve also implemented intelligent per-monitor scaling and dynamic DPI awareness, so moving Pro Tools windows between a laptop’s internal display (for example) and one or more external displays set to different resolutions and scaling factors is a seamless experience, with windows auto-adapting to the settings of the destination display. And enhanced compatibility scaling ensures that legacy components appear cleaner and less blurry, creating a more polished and consistent experience.

If you are currently using Windows compatibility settings (such as “High DPI scaling override”) to forcibly scale the Pro Tools UI to match Windows settings, you will be prompted to disable this on first launch to take advantage of the new native scaling support.

If needed, Pro Tools’ HiDPI awareness can be disabled at any time by unchecking the “Enable HiDPI Mode” option in Preferences > Display > Basics.

Plugins

All Avid plugins (whether installed with Pro Tools or separately) have also been updated to be HiDPI aware, assuring that they scale dynamically just like the Pro Tools application. Third-party plugins will need to be updated with the latest AAX SDK APIs to fully support dynamic scaling, though some plugins that already have their own scaling controls will be able to be manually resized. For those that do not, a new scaling button has been added to the AAX plugin header that will apply the required scaling override, stretching the plugin up to the expected size.

Dark Theme extended

This release also delivers additional dark theme support to various elements of the Pro Tools UI on Windows, including the main menu bar, the menus themselves and the title bars of most windows and dialogs.

One element we were not able to update in this release was the legacy styling of title bars and frames of “child” windows such as Edit, Mix, MIDI Editor, Workspace, etc. that reside within the frame of the main Pro Tools “parent” window. This is a restriction of the “Multiple Document Interface” (MDI) architecture that the application still currently uses, but the good news is that we are already busy working on moving away from this design for inclusion in an upcoming release.

One final improvement in this area are the common dialogs, such as Open Session, Save As, and import and export operations, which have been updated with the latest Windows APIs supporting modern Windows theming and other extended functionality.

AUTO-COLOR ALTERNATE TAKES

Take control of your clip color! The new Auto-Color Alternate Takes option automatically assigns a color and a “take ID” to each recorded take, which then persists through playlist editing operations. What’s more, takes recorded across multiple tracks at the same time are always colored the same, taking the guesswork out of which take a particular clip came from - or which takes match across tracks. This is invaluable when having to edit tracks recorded from multiple sources simultaneously, especially if not every track participates in every take!

If you’d rather retain more manual control over your clip coloring (by track, group, or marker as per the main playlist) uncheck the Auto-Color Alternate Takes option (found in Preferences > Display). Clips on auto-created playlists will now respect the Default Clip Color Coding setting, with consistent color assignment persisting throughout the editing stage.

Some behavior to keep in mind specific to the auto-color option:

• With the Automatically Create New Playlists When Loop Recording option enabled (Preferences > Operation) when loop recording, each take will get a color automatically assigned.
  
  
• When manually creating a new playlist, any clips on the previous main playlist that don’t already have an explicit color assigned (e.g. have been set manually via the color palette or created on a playlist as part of an earlier record pass) will adapt to the auto-color coding of the new playlist.
  
  
• When either of the Send Fully Overlapped Clips to Available Playlist… options are enabled (Preferences > Editing) any clips that are pushed to a playlist by layered editing operations and/or recording will have their color assigned based on the destination playlist, whether it is an existing or newly-created playlist.

AVAILABILITY

Pro Tools 2026.11 is now available for all Pro Tools customers on an active subscription or perpetual license with current Upgrade Plan, as well as all Pro Tools Intro users. You can update through Avid Link or find it in your Avid Account. If you need to upgrade your Pro Tools perpetual license to get the latest features, you can find options to do so here. And if you’re new to Pro Tools, you can try out the latest version with our free 30-day trial.

For more details about this release, please see the new documentation now available in your Avid Account.