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AutoColor AutoColor — REAPER script

Clearing colours

Clearing removes the custom colour from a track, item, region or marker. It does not write a new colour. The object is then drawn in its theme default colour, the colour REAPER uses for an object that has no colour of its own. An item without a colour of its own is drawn in its track’s colour.

Tracks, items, regions and markers are called objects in the window and on this page.

Use clearing to remove colours you no longer want, or to start over after you change your rules. AutoColor offers two ways to clear colours:

  • The Clear… menu and the MXM_AutoColor_ClearColors.lua action clear colours once.
  • Reset to the default colour when no rule matches clears colours every time the rules are applied, from objects that no rule matches.

The Clear menu

The Clear… button is on the action bar of the configuration window. It clears only objects of the open tab’s type. For example, with the Regions tab open, it clears region colours, and tracks, items and markers keep their colours.

The menu has three choices, and each names the open tab’s object type. On the Tracks tab they are:

Menu itemWhat it clears
Clear track colours the rules matchOnly tracks that the current rules assign a colour to. Other colours stay.
Clear colours on selected tracksThe selected tracks, whether or not a rule matches them.
Clear EVERY track colour in the project…Every track colour in the project, including colours that AutoColor never set. AutoColor asks for confirmation first.

On the Tracks tab, Clear track colours the rules match includes tracks that take their colour from a folder, and items that are coloured because their track rule has the FI (force item colour) switch on. On the Items tab, Clear item colours the rules match includes those items as well. See Folders and Items and their track’s colour.

Each clear is one undo point. REAPER’s undo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z) restores the colours.

Clearing an item’s colour also clears the colours of all its takes. See Takes.

Clearing track icons

On the Icons tab, the Clear… menu removes track icons instead of colours. It offers the same three choices:

  • Clear icons the rules match removes icons only from tracks that an icon rule currently matches.
  • Clear icons on selected tracks removes icons from the selected tracks.
  • Clear EVERY track icon in the project… removes every track icon, including icons that AutoColor never set. AutoColor asks for confirmation first.

From the Action List

MXM_AutoColor_ClearColors.lua clears colours without opening the window. When you run it, it asks which objects to clear:

  • Yes clears the selected tracks and items.
  • No clears everything the current rules match.
  • Cancel does nothing.

The action differs from the Clear… menu in these ways:

  • It does not depend on a tab. It clears tracks, items, regions and markers at once.
  • When it clears the selection, it clears the selected tracks and the selected items, and never regions or markers.
  • It cannot clear every custom colour in the project. That choice is available only in the window, so that a single keyboard shortcut cannot remove every colour.
  • It does not clear track icons.

Reset to the default colour when no rule matches

By default, applying the rules never removes a colour. An object that no rule matches keeps whatever colour it has. Reset to the default colour when no rule matches changes this for one object type: each time the rules are applied, AutoColor removes the colour from every object of that type that no rule matches.

The setting is in Options → Scope → Reset to the default colour when no rule matches. It has one checkbox for each object type: Tracks, Items, Regions, Markers and Icons. All are off by default. The Icons checkbox removes the icon from tracks that no icon rule matches.

The reset applies whenever the rules are applied: with Apply now, with Selection, with the actions in the Action List, and with auto-apply.

For example, with the reset on for regions and a single region rule matching Chorus:

  • A region named Chorus 1 gets the rule’s colour.
  • A region named Bridge loses any colour it had.

Items

For items, the reset is the recommended way to make items show their track’s colour. An item without a colour of its own is drawn in its track’s colour, and keeps following its track when you move it. The reset never removes a colour that comes from an item rule, or from a track rule with the FI switch on. Items and their track’s colour compares the reset with the FI switch and gives the full order in which an item’s colour is decided.

Limitations

On REAPER older than 7.62, clearing the selection on the Regions and Markers tabs does nothing. See REAPER versions before 7.62.

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