Pro Tools makes it easy to identify different elements of your session and with the tools available to help there’s really no excuse for having tracks called “Audio 1” in your session. It’s lazy if it’s just you working on the session but if you’re collaborating it’s definitely a faux-pas. In this tip, Julian looks at some of the ways you can tidy up track naming in a Pro Tools session.

Naming Tracks In Pro Tools

These things are always better done at the time you create the tracks but there are plenty of times you might want to rename tracks when they are already in your session, for example if you have imported tracks using Import Session Data.

Rename A Single Track In Pro Tools

To Rename a single track just double click on the track name in either the Mix or Edit window and type. Couldn’t be simpler. You can also add track comments from this window which will be displayed in the comments field in the track header. This is really useful for leaving notes to your future self or for collaborators.

Manually Rename Multiple Tracks In Pro Tools

From the rename track dialogue, you can advance to the next of previous track by using the next previous buttons but it is far quicker to hold Command on a Mac or Control on a PC and use the up or left arrow to move to the previous track or the down or right arrow to advance to the next track. The flexibility about which arrow you can use comes from the fact that in the Edit window the next track is down and in the mix window the next track is right. Makes sense once you know that!

Name Tracks From the New Tracks Dialogue In Pro Tools

Since Pro Tools 2019.5 it has been possible to name tracks from the new track dialogue (Command+Shift+N on a Mac, Control+Shift+N on a PC). Instead of clicking with the mouse to move the cursor from the number of tracks field to the name field, use Tab to move between the two fields. If you have more than one row open in this window you can cycle through all the fields sequentially using Tab, Add Shift to move backwards and add Alt to move vertically down the rows.

Pro Tools Batch Rename

If you have to rename large numbers of tracks use the Batch rename window (Shift+Option+R on a Mac, shift+alt+R on a PC), which was introduced in Pro Tools 12.8.2. This window can do everything from append and prepend track names with text, automatically number tracks or find and replace text, so if you are working on a session in which someone has named 30 guitar tracks as “GEETARZZ!!!” and you’d prefer a less excitable “guit”, you can do it all in a single operation. If there really are 30 guitar tracks you might mute some and see if the client notices…

Keyboard shortcuts are particularly useful in Pro Tools as, unlike some DAWs it is not possible to change the default set of keyboard shortcuts, because of this they form a common language between Pro Tools users in a way that doesn’t exist between users of other DAWs. If you struggle to remember your shortcuts then you might consider getting a Pro Tools keyboard like the excellent models offered by Editors Keys.