HelrigHelrig

Changelog

What changed, newest first. You are running version 1.4.14 — the exact build is in the footer.

Reported bugs are credited where the reporter said something publicly (a YouTube comment, a forum post) or asked to be named. Everything else stays anonymous — the report still shaped the fix.

1.4.14 — 19 October 2026

  • − and + buttons for exact values on touch screens. Tap a knob's value and a row of − and + appears under it. Each tap moves the value one step, the same step as the arrow keys, and holding a button keeps it going. Easier than dragging a small knob, especially on a slower phone or tablet.

1.4.13 — 19 October 2026

  • Presets with MIDI Bank/Program commands save to your pedal (Helrig Desktop). A preset whose Command Center sends an instant Bank/Program change, for example to switch an amp's channel, was refused with "would lose … Command Center entries", although nothing would have been lost.
  • Picking a preset in the pedal's library waits for the pedal (Helrig Desktop). Helrig showed the new preset as selected even when the pedal had not switched to it. It now counts the switch only once the pedal reports the setlist and slot.
  • Linux: no more blank white window on NVIDIA (Helrig Desktop). Helrig turns off WebKitGTK's newer renderer when NVIDIA's driver is loaded, unless you set WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER yourself.

1.4.12 — 17 October 2026

  • On/off switches under snapshot control save to your pedal correctly. When a block's switch (an amp's Bright, a fuzz's octave) changed per snapshot, Helrig saved its values empty, and the Helix then said it "failed to recall snapshot data properly". Helrig now writes them exactly the way HX Edit does, checked byte for byte against HX Edit on a real Helix LT.
  • Arrow keys turn knobs at a useful speed. One press used to move a delay time by 1 ms and a cut filter by 1 Hz. Now times and frequencies move by a share of their value (in tenths of a kHz once a frequency reads kHz), other wide ranges by about 1% of the range, and Page Up/Down moves ten times as far. Ordinary knobs step as before.
  • Add a block from the keyboard. Shift+arrows now stop on empty slots as well as blocks; on an empty slot, / (or Enter) opens the block catalog to add one there. On a block, / still replaces it.
  • A video of Helrig for Android on the phones and tablets page and in the Download page's Android card.

1.4.11 — 17 October 2026

  • Presets with unnamed snapshots save to your pedal again. Reading a preset off the pedal skipped any snapshot left without a name, so saving it back was refused with "would lose snapshot names, which blocks each snapshot turns on and snapshot parameter values". Now and then the read also took other text in the preset for a snapshot's name, which moved every name after it along by one. Snapshots are now read in full, named or not.
  • Popups fit the screen on older Android tablets (Helrig for Android): on a tablet whose built-in web engine is a few years old, the block catalog and other dialogs grew past the top and bottom of the screen, with their headings and search out of reach.

1.4.10 — 17 October 2026

  • Try Helrig with your own pedal for 7 days. Plug in your Helix or HX pedal while signed in and start a 7-day trial of everything Helrig does over USB: live editing, reading and saving presets, IRs. Every pedal on your account shares the one trial, and each pedal gets one trial.
  • Your devices lists the pedals you've connected, in one place in the device menu.
  • Plugging a pedal in while Helrig is open connects it again (Helrig for Mac, Windows and Linux): the pedal was picked up in the background, but the app kept showing "No pedal", and after unplugging kept showing it connected.
  • Helrig for Android runs on 32-bit phones and tablets too, such as older Samsung Galaxy Tabs.
  • Shared preset cards show an HX Stomp's Return L/R and USB 5/6 inputs by their names.

1.4.8 — 16 October 2026

  • Presets with parameters on footswitches can be saved to an HX Stomp and HX Stomp XL (Helrig Connect), as on the Helix since 1.4.3: a footswitch that turns up an amp's Drive, or several things on one switch, written exactly the way HX Edit writes them, checked byte for byte against HX Edit on a real HX Stomp. HX Effects still can't save these.
  • Keyboard shortcuts and a command palette. Cmd/Ctrl+K lists every action with its key: 1-8 switch snapshots, Space bypasses the selected block, Delete removes it, Cmd/Ctrl+D duplicates it, / searches blocks, Cmd/Ctrl+S saves. Cmd/Ctrl+click a knob resets it to the model's default, and Alt/Option+drag turns it finely.
  • The About page thanks the Android testers who asked to be named.

1.4.7 — 15 October 2026

  • Helrig for Mac, Windows and Linux mentions Helrig for Android too, now that it's on Google Play: the pages inside the app show the Android app, and what players say about it.

1.4.6 — 15 October 2026

  • Each cab shows its own mic names. Older single cabs use a longer mic list than the newer ones, and Helrig named every cab's mic from the short list, so an 87 showed as "67" and a 67 as "47", most visibly after converting a Helix preset to HX Stomp. The mic itself was never changed; only its name was wrong. Bass cabs show their own list too.
  • HX Stomp, HX Stomp XL and HX Effects stop at their block limit (8 blocks on HX Stomp and XL, 9 on HX Effects, across both rows together). Helrig let a 9th block in on the second row; now adding or pasting one says there's no room, and a preset already over the limit says so and isn't saved to the pedal (Helrig Connect).

1.4.5 — 13 October 2026

  • Helrig for Android is on Google Play: connect to your Helix or HX over USB from an Android phone or tablet. The same Helrig Connect license works in every Helrig app.
  • Variax knobs set by snapshots or an expression pedal save correctly at whole values (Helrig Connect). A Volume or Tone knob at exactly 10 was written in a form the Helix stores but then refuses: snapshots that set it could no longer be selected on the pedal. Thanks to the tester who caught it. Presets already saved this way are fixed by saving them again.

1.4.4 — 12 October 2026

  • HX Stomp and HX Stomp XL: the Input block's Return L/R and USB 5/6 work (Helrig Connect). Choosing them now changes the input on the pedal, and a preset that uses them shows the right input instead of "Variax" or "Mic". Checked against HX Edit on an HX Stomp.

1.4.3 — 12 October 2026

  • Presets with parameters on footswitches can be saved to a Helix again (Helrig Connect). Helix Floor, LT and Rack: a footswitch that turns up an amp's Drive, or several things on one switch, is now written exactly the way HX Edit writes it, checked byte for byte against HX Edit on a real pedal. HX Stomp, HX Stomp XL and HX Effects still can't save these until I've checked them the same way; HX Edit and .hlx export still work for them.
  • Controllers on a path's join and the main output are saved too (Helrig Connect), instead of refusing the preset.
  • Snapshot Control set to Off on a footswitch or controller is kept when a preset is read off your pedal (Helrig Connect), instead of coming back as On.
  • Live editing comes back on by itself after the pedal goes quiet and Helrig reconnects (Helrig Connect), when it's safe; if a change didn't reach the pedal as the connection dropped, Helrig sends the preset again instead of asking. When Live is off while your pedal is connected, a warning says your changes stay in Helrig.
  • "Save to pedal…" is what Save reads for a preset that didn't come from your pedal (Helrig Connect), instead of "Save to another slot…".
  • Sign out asks first (Helrig Connect).

1.3.11 — 10 October 2026

  • Saving over the preset that is loaded on your Helix no longer reports differences (Helrig Connect). The pedal reloads it and leaves out settings that are at their defaults, the Variax string levels and the DT and Powercab selection, and Helrig counted those as missing. The preset was saved correctly all along.
  • An HX Stomp XL save no longer reports differences in settings the XL has no use for (Helrig Connect): the Variax string levels and the DT and Powercab selection.
  • Presets over 100% DSP aren't saved to your pedal unless the pedal has run them. A preset built at 101% did not load correctly on an HX Stomp, so the limit is back to 100%. A preset read off your pedal that runs a little over still works.
  • Large presets open once (Helrig Connect). Opening a big preset from the Device library could read it twice, show the previous preset's name, and ask about it again.
  • When a save can't be undone, Helrig says why (Helrig Connect), and offers the download of the previous version under the same "Changed your mind?" heading.

1.3.10 — 8 October 2026

  • The preset's slot is shown beside its name (Helrig Connect). A preset opened from your pedal reads "30A · Clean Verb" at the top of the editor, numbered the way your pedal numbers it, with the setlist's name above it on a Helix.
  • The Device library opens on the preset you are editing (Helrig Connect): its setlist, scrolled to its slot and marked, rather than at slot 1.
  • Resync works after a whole-preset load. The pedal refuses to select the snapshot it is already on, and Helrig took that refusal for a failure, so "Pedal out of step" stayed up after a Resync that had worked.
  • Saving over a preset Helrig can't copy first now asks before anything is written, and a save to an empty slot says there is nothing to undo, instead of leaving out "Changed your mind?" without a word.
  • Saving to your pedal refuses what it can't write faithfully (Helrig Connect). A preset where a footswitch controls a parameter can't be saved to the pedal for now, while I make sure the pedal reads those correctly: one tester's Helix Floor stopped responding after loading one. Any other preset that would lose something on the way, a controller assignment or a switch's label, now says what and stops, instead of saving without it. HX Edit and .hlx export still work for both.
  • After a save, Helrig checks everything it wrote (Helrig Connect): footswitches, controllers, Command Center, snapshots and settings as well as the blocks.
  • Powercab and DT settings stay as they were when a preset read off your pedal is saved back to it (Helrig Connect), and parameter footswitches keep their custom labels and colours.
  • Opening a preset from the Device library with your changes discarded no longer asks "Your pedal switched…" with both answers opening the same preset (Helrig Connect).

1.3.9 — 7 October 2026

  • Helrig now opens for everyone: edit, convert and organise presets for free. Connecting to your pedal over USB needs Helrig Connect or Helrig Pro, and nothing changes for anyone who already has one.
  • The apps are now simply called Helrig (Helrig for Mac, Windows and Linux); Helrig Connect is the one-time purchase that connects them to your pedal.

1.3.8 — 6 October 2026

  • Helrig Desktop is now called Helrig Connect. Nothing else changes: same license, same price, and everyone who bought it keeps it.
  • Open a shared preset in the desktop app. Share and community pages have an "Open in the desktop app" button on computers, which opens the preset straight in Helrig Connect.
  • On tablets, the header shows the Helrig icon instead of a squeezed wordmark.
  • Export all no longer numbers an IR twice (Helrig Connect).

1.3.7 — 5 October 2026

  • Saving over a preset on the pedal says clearly what happened (Helrig Desktop). After a save, the window reads "Saved to 04C", and the copy of what was on the slot before sits in its own "Changed your mind?" box with Undo save and Download previous version.

1.3.6 — 4 October 2026

  • Importing several IRs no longer stops partway (Helrig Desktop). With only a few IRs on the pedal, an import could stop after the third file with "The pedal stopped answering", although the pedal was fine. Imports now go through on every model.
  • IRs exported from a pedal import back identically (Helrig Desktop), so a re-imported IR is recognised as a duplicate of the original.

1.3.5 — 4 October 2026

Manage your pedal's IRs from Helrig Desktop.

  • IR manager in Helrig Desktop. The IRs tab in the Device library now changes the pedal's IRs, not just lists them. Import IRs with the Import button or by dragging them in, one or several at once (any bit depth, sample rate, length, mono or stereo), rename and remove IRs, and let "Remove unused duplicates" clear the spare copies no preset uses. An IR that presets use is never removed or replaced without saying which presets first.
  • IR names without the pedal (Helrig Desktop). Once Helrig has read your pedal's IRs, IR blocks show their names even when the pedal is unplugged.
  • Drop a preset anywhere to open it in Helrig Desktop too, as on the web.
  • Pricing, on Pro: the Helrig Desktop card stays, marked "Included in your Pro", with the download link.

1.3.4 — 4 October 2026

  • Encrypted Marketplace files now open a clear message, "Encrypted file — not supported", instead of doing nothing on the start screen or showing a small note in the editor. A backup or setlist that can't be read gets the same popup, with the reason under Technical details.

1.3.3 — 4 October 2026

Your IRs in Helrig Desktop.

  • IR blocks saved to the pedal play their IR (Helrig Desktop). Before this version, an IR block saved from Helrig reached the pedal without its IR, so the preset played without it. Open those presets and save them to the pedal again to fix them.
  • An IRs tab in the Device library (Helrig Desktop) lists every IR on the pedal by name. Export one IR or all of them as a zip, see which presets use each IR, and spot slots holding the same IR.
  • Pick an IR by typing a name or slot number in the IR block (Helrig Desktop).

1.3.2 — 4 October 2026

  • HX Stomp XL presets are numbered the way the pedal shows them (Helrig Desktop). The XL has four presets to a bank, and Helrig counted them in threes, so a preset the pedal shows as 31A appeared under a different number.

1.3.1 — 4 October 2026

  • Presets with an effects loop save to the pedal (Helrig Desktop). FX Loop, Send and Return blocks stopped a save with "This preset can't be sent"; loops 1 and 2 and their Sends and Returns now save. Loops 3 and 4 still don't.
  • IR blocks show the IR's name (Helrig Desktop), as the pedal has it, in the slot list and in the signal chain.

1.3.0 — 3 October 2026

Pro is now sold through Paddle, and a file that isn't a preset says so.

  • Pro is sold through Paddle, and only yearly. There is no monthly plan. Checkout asks for your country first, and the price follows it, tax included where it applies.
  • Your plan is Paddle's or a complimentary one. Clerk Billing is switched off; Clerk now only says who you are. A refunded payment ends Pro, and nothing is deleted when it does.
  • Subscription page: a refund line for anyone who has paid, and Paddle's customer portal opens in a new tab.
  • Terms, Privacy and Refunds name Paddle as the seller.
  • Opening a file that isn't a preset now says so in plain words, in a popup, instead of replacing the page you were on.
  • Footswitch labels and colours are stored the way HX Edit stores them.

1.2.2 — 2 October 2026

Footswitches can move parameters, the way HX Edit's Controller Assign does.

  • A footswitch can now move a parameter. Pick a switch from the footswitch button on any parameter (the list shows what is already on each one), then set the values for off and on in the Controllers card, where each switch has one editor for its label, colour, type and everything it controls.
  • Snapshot Control can be turned off for a parameter on a footswitch, a MIDI CC or a Variax knob, so snapshots stop recalling its value.
  • Parameters already on a footswitch in a preset now show it, instead of looking free.

1.2.1 — 1 October 2026

The desktop app learns one verb, and the download page is easier to read.

  • "Save to your pedal" is the one phrase for writing a preset to a slot, in the app's menus and on the site, in place of "send to device".
  • Undo and redo reach your pedal while you edit live in the desktop app.
  • The download page keeps the systems it runs on beside the download.

1.2.0 — 1 October 2026

The desktop app is out.

I've been building it for weeks with a group of testers who own far more pedals than I do, and it is no longer a beta. Download it from the site, plug in your Helix or HX, and Helrig opens the preset your pedal is playing.

The desktop app

  • Your pedal, in Helrig. It opens the preset the pedal is playing, reads every setlist off it, sends presets back and edits the pedal live. Before it writes to a slot, Helrig backs that slot up, and it checks the result afterwards.
  • Every Helix and HX pedal. Helix Floor, LT and Rack, HX Stomp, HX Stomp XL and HX Effects can all be read and written to. The Command Center, global settings and the Variax settings are there too.
  • One library for every pedal you own, and a tone can move from one pedal to another, with every change it needed listed.
  • macOS, Windows and Linux. Updates arrive by themselves on macOS, on the Windows installer and on the Linux AppImage.

On the website

  • Locked presets open and download. A preset that is beyond your library's editable ones stays listed, readable and downloadable, and opens in the editor as a copy.
  • The About page says what the app does today and where it is going.

1.1.14 — 30 September 2026

The Command Center looks like your pedal's.

  • The Command Center is laid out for each pedal, as HX Edit shows it. On a Helix, the EXP toe and the Variax knobs sit beside the instants, with the twelve switches beneath (the LT shows its two expression pedals, not three). On an HX Stomp and Stomp XL, the switches you can add on the rear jack sit top right. On an HX Effects, its six switches are in two rows of three.

1.1.13 — 29 September 2026

Path B gets its empty slots, and the refund policy has its own page.

  • Path B shows its empty slots. After a split, the lower row stopped at its last block, so there was nowhere to click to add another: you had to drag a block across and change it. Path B now shows empty slots all the way to where it merges, as path A does, on both paths.
  • Refund policy on its own page, linked from the footer. The promise is unchanged: a full refund within 14 days of any charge.

1.1.12 — 29 September 2026

A snapshot fix.

  • No more "unused" snapshots. Helrig showed a snapshot as unused from a flag in the preset file that HX Edit never shows, and editing the snapshot didn't clear it. The label is gone, and a snapshot you select or edit is now saved as in use, so an exported .hlx carries it the way HX Edit would.

1.1.11 — 29 September 2026

A way to report a problem from anywhere in Helrig, and an editor that is easier to read and to reach.

Report a problem

  • Report a problem or share an idea from inside Helrig. A button at the bottom right, and two links in the footer, open a small window: say what happened, add an email if you'd like a reply, and include the preset you have open if it helps. It replaces the old feedback forms.

Editor

  • Snapshots in one row. Every snapshot is visible and one tap away; the live one is its own field for its colour and name. On a phone the list works as before.
  • Knobs show their value as an arc, and the parameter grid packs by width, so an amp fits in two rows on a desktop screen.
  • Bypassed blocks stay readable: hatched, with a dashed edge and an unlit LED, instead of faded to grey. The same goes for shared preset pages.
  • An empty path collapses to one line, and opens while you drag a block onto it.
  • Wide screens show the selected block and the controllers side by side, and the Command Center lays itself out to fit its column.
  • Long snapshot lists scroll inside the Controllers card instead of stretching it.
  • Less chrome while editing: a smaller logo while a preset is open, and "Download" in the editor is now "Export .hlx".

1.1.10 — 29 September 2026

No changes to the web editor.

1.1.9 — 28 September 2026

A quicker backup import, and a small fix.

  • Importing a backup is quicker. Its presets go up to your library in batches rather than one request each: a 99-preset backup now takes five.
  • The display settings in the phone menu now label their switch correctly on a first visit.

1.1.8 — 28 September 2026

What a free account's library keeps when it fills up, and a routing fix.

Your library

  • An import is never refused or cut short. When it does not fit a free account's 10 presets, the rest come in locked: you still see their names and signal chains, and you choose which 10 stay editable. You can change the choice any time.
  • A locked preset cannot be opened, downloaded, shared or published until it is unlocked; its private links pause meanwhile. Locked presets do not count against your storage.
  • "All presets" counts every preset, locked and published ones included.

Routing

  • An HX Effects' lower output goes to the Send when you give it an output of its own, as the pedal does. An HX Effects has no second input, so it is not offered.

1.1.7 — 28 September 2026

The editor's toolbar, regrouped around two questions: where a preset comes from, and where it goes. Around it: New that knows your device, a Convert that is easier to find, and fixes to conversion, routing and footswitches.

Open and Save

  • One Open. It shows the file picker, and the file decides what happens: a preset opens, a backup or setlist is browsed. Its menu has your library and the Community. You can also drop a file anywhere on the page.
  • Save goes back where the preset came from: a preset from your library saves a new version of it; anything else saves to your library when you are signed in, or downloads when you are not. The menu next to it has every other place it can go — Export is now Download.
  • Unsaved edits get three answers, wherever a preset is about to be replaced: save first, discard them, or keep editing.

New and Convert

  • New makes a preset for your device straight away, once you tick "Remember my choice"; its menu offers another device. The logo takes you back to the start screen.
  • Convert is in Save's menu too, under "For another device", as well as on the device name above the chain.
  • Converting keeps an amp's paired cab. The cab was dropped, which left the amp pointing at a cab the converted preset did not have.

Routing

  • A path can take a second input for its lower row (dual input): drag the split before the input. An HX Stomp has no dual input, so it is not offered there, and an HX Stomp's lower output keeps its Mono/Stereo setting.
  • The line to Path 2 starts at the output that feeds it, not at every output.

Smaller fixes

  • Changing a block's model keeps its footswitch, and the switch's label follows the new model unless you named it yourself.
  • A hotkey command shows the key's name, not its key code.
  • Momentary or latching is offered only where HX Edit offers it in the Command Center: on CC Toggle, Note On and Hotkey commands.
  • The privacy page lists "Your devices": the models of pedal you connect to the desktop app, never a serial number.

1.1.6 — 24 September 2026

Two weeks of editor work since 1.1.0. The headline is the Command Center, which Helrig now shows and edits, laid out the way HX Edit and the pedal show it. Around it: copy and paste for blocks, more you can do with snapshots, Variax settings you can put on any controller, and a Controllers card with a single way to edit every row.

The Command Center

A preset's Command Center — the MIDI, bank, hotkey, looper and amp-switching commands on its instants, footswitches, EXP pedals and Variax knobs — was carried through a save but never shown. It is now on a new Command Center tab in the Controllers card, where you can see and edit it.

The tab is laid out like HX Edit's Command Center window and the pedal's own screen: the six instants across the top, the footswitches beneath, and beside them the EXP toe switch and the Variax Volume and Tone knobs over the expression pedals. A marker shows which controllers carry a command. Select one and edit its command beside the grid — the menu offers exactly what HX Edit offers for that kind of controller on your device (an HX Stomp has no Ext Amp, for instance). A command's values are kept per snapshot, as on the pedal, so what you see and edit is the selected snapshot's. A footswitch that carries a command also shows it on the Footswitches tab, rather than reading "unassigned".

Copy and paste blocks

Right-click a block to copy it, then right-click where it should go: an empty slot, or a block, which moves along to make room. If the path has no room for it — no DSP left, or no free amp or cab slot — Helrig says which, and offers to replace a block instead.

More you can do with snapshots

  • Delete a snapshot, or copy one onto another, from the snapshot menu.
  • Edit any snapshot's values from the Snapshots list on the Controllers card, not just the selected snapshot's — every snapshot's value for a parameter is in one row.

Converting a looper to an HX Stomp

An HX Stomp has no 6 Switch Looper (the Stomp XL does). Converting a preset that has one to an HX Stomp now swaps it for the 1 Switch Looper, with the same settings, and the conversion notes say so.

Variax

  • Any Variax setting can go on a controller: snapshots, an EXP pedal, a MIDI CC or a footswitch, from the buttons beside each setting in the Variax panel. They are listed and edited on the Controllers card with everything else.
  • Magnetics was the wrong way round. On meant the Variax's modelled sound; it now means the magnetic pickups, as it says.

The Controllers card

  • One way to edit every row: click the row, change it, and leave it. An edit is applied as one step, so it undoes as one.
  • A MIDI CC's minimum and maximum can be set, here and from the parameter's MIDI icon.
  • A block's bypass on an expression pedal — auto-engage — is listed with its position and wait time, and editable.
  • Each row shows where it comes from with an icon: a footswitch, an instant, an expression pedal, a Variax knob or a MIDI CC.

A preset a little over 100% DSP

Helrig's DSP estimate reads slightly high near the top of the range: two presets that run on a Helix Floor estimate at about 102%. Helrig used to refuse to download or save anything over 100%. It now allows up to 103% with a warning that the device may refuse it, and refuses only beyond that.

Smaller fixes

  • A path that starts split is drawn as two inputs, not as a split with nothing before it, and a Path 2 fed from Path 1 says which row it comes from.
  • Importing from a backup, the preset picker finds a preset by its number as well as its name.
  • The keyboard can reach and turn a knob, and dragging a knob no longer selects text on the page or swallows the next click.
  • A Helix LT's FS1 and FS7 are not offered as stomp switches. They are bank up and down on the LT, whatever the manual implies.
  • The site has an Impressum, and the terms name the law they are under.

1.1.0 — 10 September 2026

Everything since 1.0. The headline is the Community Library, but the same span carries HX Stomp XL, Helix Floor and Helix Rack as devices Helrig knows by name, share links, seven reference pages, and a signed-out page load that no longer waits on sign-in machinery it does not need.

Text size and higher contrast

Two people asked for larger text and more contrast, so both are now settings rather than something you have to arrange in your browser. They live behind the sun/moon button in the header — on a phone, under the menu — next to light and dark, which is where the theme now lives too.

Text size goes to 115%, 130% or 150%. It scales the whole interface, not just the words: spacing, buttons, icons and the controls in the editor all grow with it, so a dense editor stays laid out rather than merely magnified. It is a multiple of your browser's text size, so if you have already set that larger, this multiplies it instead of overriding it. Browser zoom still works and still composes with this — the difference is that this is remembered per site, is reachable on a phone, and does not have to be set again on every device.

Higher contrast pushes text, borders and status colours to the ends of the range in both light and dark: black on white, or white on black, with borders you can actually see and focus outlines that are hard to miss. Every colour it touches clears WCAG AAA against the surface behind it, and the warning amber that failed AA outright on a white page is fixed along with the rest. If your operating system already asks for more contrast, you get it without finding this menu — and you can still turn it off if you would rather not have it here.

Both settings stay on your device, like your light/dark choice. The settings you choose are included in the anonymous usage counts, so that "how many people need larger text, and on what" is a question with an answer — see Privacy.

Two layout fixes came with it. The library and Community pages pin themselves to the window height on a wide screen so the list scrolls inside fixed chrome, and at a large text size there was no longer room for the chrome; they now fall back to an ordinary scrolling page instead of overlapping their own footer. And the signal chain draws its splits, merges and connectors from measurements that assumed a 16px browser font — so they landed in the wrong columns as soon as the text was any larger. That one was not new: it had been wrong all along for anyone who had simply set a bigger default font size in their browser, and it is fixed for them too.

The Community Library

Helrig has always let you share one preset by link. You can now publish one to a Community Library — a browsable list at helrig.com/community of presets whose owners chose to put them there. It is per preset, opt-in and reversible: nothing you have not published is listed, searchable, or reachable from it, and your labels, notes and setlists never leave your account.

Browse it as cards or as a list, sorted by newest, most opened or most liked. Search preset names, labels, snapshot names, the blocks a preset contains and the gear those blocks are based on; filter by device, by label, by block, or by publisher — tap any byline or label to see the rest.

Publishing asks you for at least one label, because a name and a device are not enough to find anything in a long list. Those labels are shown and searchable — the dialog says so before you publish, and they are the only part of your library that becomes public. Your notes and setlists never do, and neither does anything at all on a private share link. Open counts are cached at the edge, so they undercount; read them as a rough comparison, not a view count.

You are not stuck with the labels you picked. Edit them where you always have — the pencil on the preset's row in your library — and the published entry follows on the next browse, with no re-publish and no new link. The edit form says so when the preset is published, since those labels are public, and it offers the same suggested labels the publish dialog does.

Publishing a preset that already has labels starts from those labels, rather than from an empty box you would have to retype.

Saving a preset to your library now asks what it is: name, labels, notes and which setlists it belongs to, in one dialog, at the only moment you are looking at the preset and thinking about it. Everything in it is optional and the name is filled in, so a save you want to be one keystroke still is. Saving an existing preset shows its current details, so the same dialog is where you change them.

Two names, now one. A cloud preset has a name in your library and a name inside the file — the one the editor shows and your Helix or HX Stomp displays — and they could drift apart in both directions: renaming a preset in your library changed neither the file nor what opened in the editor, and renaming it in the editor did not change what your library showed. Now a rename in your library rewrites the file too, opening a preset takes the library's name, and saving one sends the editor's. Whichever you changed is the one that sticks, everywhere.

Renaming does not create a version, so your history stays a history of edits. Two consequences worth knowing: a longer name is a slightly larger file, counted like any other byte (and free while the preset is published), and a share link you have already posted will show the new name — the preset behind it is otherwise untouched.

Labels on a preset are now buttons wherever they appear — in your library as well as in the Community Library — so tapping one shows everything else carrying it, instead of only being possible from the sidebar.

Any published preset can be copied into your own library. It is a real copy — yours to edit, and nothing you do to it touches the publisher's entry — and it goes through the same validation and repair as a file you drag into the editor.

Publishing doesn't use a slot in your library

A published preset uses none of your library — no slot and no space — for as long as it stays published. There is no limit on how many you publish, and it works the same on the free plan and on Pro. The file is genuinely stored and Helrig genuinely pays for it; that cost is the offer.

Take it back out any time from its row in your library. The preset then counts against your library again, both its slot and its size — so if your library is full on either, un-publishing is refused until you make room. That is the exemption ending rather than a penalty.

One permalink per published preset, and it never moves

A published preset gets one link and keeps it, so everyone resharing it lands on the same URL with the same preview image instead of each share minting another one.

What people find there is your latest save. Publishing is about the preset, not about one version of it — so when you improve a published preset, the library shows the improvement instead of the save you happened to publish months ago. The editor's save dialog and the version history both say so when a preset is published, and un-publishing is how you keep a save to yourself. Private share links are the opposite and unchanged: each one is pinned to the save it was made from, forever, because a link you posted somewhere should not turn into something else.

Opening it needs no account. Anyone with the link can open the preset in the editor, change it, download the .hlx, or convert it to another device. The account is for browsing the whole list, and for publishing your own.

Community Library pages are indexable and listed in their own sitemap. Private share links are unchanged: still noindex, still unlisted, still reachable only by the link.

Publish anonymously, or under a name that is yours

You can publish with no byline at all. If you want the credit, you claim a handle once — 3 to 24 characters, letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. It is unique regardless of capitalisation, it is permanent, and the server resolves it from your account, so nobody can publish under yours by typing it.

It does not prove identity. Whoever claims a well-known name first keeps it; a short reserved list blocks the impersonations that would do the most damage, and everything past that is a takedown. Better said plainly than implied otherwise.

Reporting, and what a removal removes

Every entry has a Report button, one report per account, and reports go to a queue a person reads. Removing a listing takes away the listing, never the preset: the owner keeps their file, their versions and their history.

Not in this first release: tags, comments, profile pages, an editorial "featured" shelf, and any publisher directory — a handle is something you filter by, not a page. Presets can be liked, but there is no rating UI yet.

Connecting an HX Stomp XL, Floor, Rack or HX Effects

Helrig recognised three USB ids and so could only ever see an HX Stomp or a Helix LT plugged in. It now knows all six units. The four new ids come from the tonepush project's device table rather than from hardware we have here, so treat a first connection on those as untested — they decide only what shows up in the device list, and nothing about how a preset is written.

HX Stomp XL and Helix Rack are marked Beta

Both are offered when you create a preset or convert one, and both now carry a Beta tag there. Everything Helrig knows about those two came out of preset files rather than a connected unit, so their presets go through exactly the same editing and saving as any other device — nobody has yet loaded the result onto the pedal and played it. The other four have either been used against real hardware or have a full factory library behind them.

Every Helix is named, and told apart from the others

Helrig now recognises Helix Floor, Helix Rack, Helix LT and Helix Native individually, instead of showing all of them as "HELIX" — or, in two cases, not recognising them at all. The library filters by each, shared links name each, and you can create a preset for any of the three hardware units or convert one to them.

Two of those were being read as an unrecognised device, which is worse than a wrong name: an unrecognised device falls back to HX Stomp's controller numbering, and on a Helix the number HX Stomp uses for "Snapshots" is a footswitch. Assigning a parameter to snapshots on a Helix Rack preset could have written the same kind of bad file that once crashed HX Edit and hung a reader's Helix Rack. Those presets are now recognised and numbered correctly, and an existing one carrying the wrong number is repaired when you open it.

Nothing about how any of these presets is read or edited changed: every Helix runs the same engine, with the same eight snapshots, two signal paths and controller numbering. What differs is only the name, and which unit a new preset is prepared for.

One option changed name as a result. Creating a new Helix preset built on a blank exported from a real device — and that blank came off an LT. So the app was quietly producing LT-tagged files while calling the choice "Helix". The Helix choices are now Helix Floor, Helix Rack and Helix LT, each built on that model's own blank.

Two smaller fixes came from the same files. The footswitch picker now offers switches 1 and 7, which Helix presets do use and Helrig was leaving out. And the four send/return loops are confirmed against real presets that use loops 3 and 4 — the LT, which has two, still correctly hides them.

HX Effects footswitches

Two fixes on HX Effects, found while checking every device's rear panel against what Helrig assumed.

It has six footswitches, not eight. Unlike the two HX Stomps, whose rear jack is labelled "EXP 1/2 – FS 4/5" and "EXP 1/2 – FS 7/8", HX Effects' rear pair is "Pedal / Ext Amp" — expression pedals, no way to add switches. Helrig was offering FS 7 and FS 8, and converting a preset to HX Effects could put blocks on switches 7, 8 and 9. Those don't exist on the device.

A wah's auto-engage settings are no longer mistaken for a footswitch. Twenty of the HX Effects factory presets showed a phantom switch that isn't assigned to anything, and converting one could overwrite the auto-engage setting behind it.

HX Stomp XL

Helrig now knows the HX Stomp XL as its own device rather than an unrecognised one. Open an XL preset and it says HX Stomp XL with its own hardware icon, shows all four snapshots, and reads its footswitch assignments; the library filters by it, shared links name it, and you can start a new preset for it or convert one to and from it. XL backups (.hxb) open too — all 115 factory presets out of one file.

The reason this matters beyond the label: an unrecognised device fell back to HX Stomp's controller numbering, and the XL numbers its controllers differently. On an XL, the number HX Stomp uses for "Snapshots" is a footswitch instead. So assigning a parameter to snapshots on an XL preset could have written an assignment naming a control that does not work that way — the same kind of bad file that once crashed HX Edit and hung a reader's Helix Rack. It is now written correctly, and an XL preset that already carries the wrong number is repaired when you open it.

What this does not cover: plugging an XL in over USB. Helrig recognises hardware by its USB id, which a preset file does not contain, and that is not something to guess at — it needs a connected unit.

Share a preset with a link

There is now a Share… button beside Save. It asks where the preset is going — a private link, or the Community Library above — and this section is about the private one. It puts the preset in your library and hands you a link you can post — on X, Facebook, Reddit, in an email, or just copied and pasted wherever you were going to paste it anyway.

Opening the link puts the preset straight into the editor — no landing page to click through. Paste it into a chat or a forum post and the preview shows the whole signal chain, laid out in the same block colours the editor uses, rather than a bare URL.

A link points at the save you made it from. Edit the preset afterwards and the link keeps showing what you posted — it does not quietly turn into a different tone under someone who bookmarked it. Share again after an edit and you get a second link for the new version, with the first one still working.

Some things it deliberately does not do:

  • Your library stays private. A link exposes that one preset. Not your name, not your other presets, not your labels, notes or setlists. (Publishing to the Community Library is the exception, and it asks: the labels you pick there are shown and searchable.)
  • A private link is not browsable. It is unguessable, kept out of search engines, and the only way to reach it is a link somebody handed you. There is no feed and no profiles. The Community Library is the deliberate exception and the only one — a preset appears there because you published it there, and publishing is a separate choice you make in the same dialog.
  • Nothing is shared until you press the button. Saving to your library still does not share anything, and neither does opening a preset.

You can revoke a link at any time, from the same dialog that created it. Deleting a preset revokes its links too — and restoring it from the trash does not bring them back, so a delete means what it looks like.

Faster to open, especially signed out

Two changes, both about the wait before the editor is usable.

Helrig used to load Clerk — about 240 KB of sign-in machinery — on every page, signed in or not, before it could know whether anybody was signed in. It now reads the hint Clerk itself leaves in a cookie and skips the download entirely for a visitor who has no session, which is most of them.

And the block catalog now ships as a packed binary loaded in two phases, instead of one large JSON file. What the first screen needs arrives first; the rest follows while you are looking at it.

Bulk delete, and setlists that take their presets with them

Select several presets in the library and delete them in one go, from the card view as well as the table — both now have a select-all. Deleting a setlist can delete the presets in it too, if that is what you meant, and the storage those presets used is released exactly rather than estimated.

Pages that answer the questions people actually ask

Seven new reference pages, gathered under a hub at /helix-presets: what a .hlx file is, how to convert presets between devices, how to import them from a backup, editing on an iPad, where a Helix's DSP goes, and what to do without HX Edit. Each one shows a real preset rather than describing one.

A header you can use with a keyboard, or a thumb

The header menu can now be reached and cycled with Tab, closes on Escape and hands focus back where it came from. Its links are real touch targets on a phone and a tablet — the previous rule treated every screen wider than 640px as a mouse, which every tablet is not. Save and Share have one name each whether you are signed in or out, and every nav link goes through one component, so two placements of the same link cannot drift apart.

Plans, a founding offer, and a way to say thanks

Plans has a place in the header and the footer. The pricing page carries a founding-member offer while it lasts. The About page has a Ko-fi button for anyone who wants to support the work without needing an account for anything.

Converting is out of beta

Converting a preset between devices no longer carries a Beta tag. The behaviour did not change with the label — it came off because the conversion has been run against the full sample corpus and the pages describing it now say what it actually does.

A preset's tempo survives being opened

Opening a preset loads its current snapshot, which should change nothing — the live state already is that snapshot. One field escaped that: every snapshot carries a tempo whether or not the preset uses per-snapshot tempo, and Helrig copied it across regardless. In 137 of 1127 sample presets that silently replaced the tempo the author had set with the untouched default sitting in the snapshots.

Tempo now follows a snapshot only where the snapshots disagree about it. If they all hold the same number, that number carries no information and the live value is the one that counts.

The knock-on was worse than the tempo itself: the preset now differed from what was stored, so the next save wrote a genuine new version — and sharing, which saves first, minted a new link and a new preview image for a preset nobody had touched. Pressing Share on an unchanged preset that already has a link now opens that same link, with no new save and no second link to keep track of.

Smaller fixes

  • The share dialog is no longer clipped on a phone. It was rendered inside the editor's "…" menu, which made position: fixed relative to that menu rather than the screen, so the panel landed halfway down the page with its buttons off the bottom.
  • The Variax panel is Helix-only. It was offered on HX Stomp, which has no VDI port to connect a Variax to.
  • A new preset is saved under the name it was given, rather than the name it came in with.
  • Your plan is read from Clerk rather than inferred from a single webhook, so an upgrade that arrived out of order no longer leaves the wrong plan stored.
  • The accent purple is readable on the dark theme. It was failing contrast against the surfaces it sat on.
  • A page that had stopped shipping in the static export ships again, and a batch of metadata problems a site audit found are fixed.

1.0 — 27 August 2026

Helrig started as a way to look inside a .hlx file. With 1.0 it is an editor you can actually work in — on a laptop, and now properly on a phone.

This release adds undo and a full edit history, an overview that fits your whole signal chain on one screen, MIDI CC control over block bypass, tap tempo, importing straight out of a device backup, a cloud library organised by setlists, and a rebuilt mobile interface, along with a batch of reported bugs fixed.

Works with Helix (Floor, LT, Rack), HX Stomp and HX Effects.

Undo, redo, and a history of every edit

Every change you make is now a step you can walk back — Ctrl/Cmd-Z and its redo pair, or open the history panel and jump straight to any earlier point.

The history is written in plain language: "Add Deluxe Comp", "Bass Big Muff · Sustain". Not forty rows of "Edit". Turning a knob or typing a name records one step for the whole gesture, not one per pixel or per keystroke, so stepping back undoes the thing you did rather than a fragment of it.

Jumping to an earlier step keeps everything after it as redo. Nothing in the history can lose your work.

Your history stays with your preset if you wander off to another page and come back. It lives only in that browser tab, for that session — close the tab and it is gone, and nothing about your presets is stored or sent anywhere.

See your whole chain at once

An eight-block Helix path is wider than a phone screen, so reading the shape of a chain — or screenshotting it to show someone — meant scrolling and stitching together what you saw.

The new Overview button scales the whole chain to fit. On a phone, block names drop away but both paths, the split, the parallel branches and the block colours all stay legible. On a tablet it reads completely.

It is an overview and a screenshot, not an editing size — press it again to go back. The button only appears when your chain is actually too wide for the space, and it steps aside on its own if you widen the window enough to hold the chain. You can still drag blocks around while you are in it.

Bypass can answer to a MIDI CC

Your hardware lets a block's bypass be driven by a footswitch, an expression pedal, or a MIDI CC. Helrig showed the first two. The MIDI option was in your files all along, just invisible.

Now the bypass row has a MIDI CC control beside the footswitch picker and the snapshot camera. A block can have a footswitch and a CC at once, and setting one no longer wipes the other. Bypass assignments show up in the Controllers card alongside your parameter assignments, so you can see every CC a preset responds to in one place.

If a preset used MIDI-only bypass, Helrig used to draw it as a footswitch that does not exist — a phantom "FS 19" on an HX Stomp, a pedal with three switches. That is gone. Converting a preset between devices now carries these assignments through untouched, instead of turning them into footswitches and eating a switch slot something else needed.

Built for phones and tablets

The interface has been rebuilt for touch rather than shrunk to fit.

  • Hold and drag works properly — reordering blocks, and dragging split and merge handles, without the page selecting text underneath your finger.
  • Bigger targets everywhere — knobs, switches, dropdowns, tabs, block cards and library rows are all sized for a thumb.
  • The path and DSP headers stay put while you scroll a long chain, so you always know which path you are looking at.
  • Dialogs scroll properly instead of the page sliding around behind them.
  • Filters open in a sheet. In the library, setlists and filters used to push the results most of a screen down before you saw a single preset. They now slide up over the list, which never moves. Whatever you have filtered by shows as chips above your presets, each one naming what it is — "Helix" on its own never told you whether it was a device, a label or a block — and each removable with one tap.
  • A redesigned header, restructured menus, and consistent styling throughout.

Import from a device backup or a setlist

Helrig can now open HX Edit's .hxb device backups and .hls setlist exports, and pull individual presets out of them.

That means you can get at a preset from a backup without having HX Edit in front of you — browse everything in the file by setlist, search it by name, and open the one you want.

In the cloud library you can select many at once and import them in one go, and Helrig will rebuild the setlists the backup came with. Re-importing the same file refills those setlists rather than creating duplicates of them.

Encrypted premium and commercial setlists are recognised and named as such — Helrig cannot open those, and now says so plainly instead of failing in a way that looks like your file is broken.

Tempo, and tapping it in

The preset tempo is shown next to the device badge and is editable, to the same one-decimal precision HX Edit uses. It can be stored per snapshot with the camera toggle, exactly like any other parameter, and a snapshot-controlled tempo is listed with your other snapshot assignments.

And you can tap it in. The "Tempo" label itself is the tap target: first tap starts the count, and it keeps settling as more taps come in. That is how tempo gets set on the hardware, and it is the only way to match a tempo you can hear but do not know — a record playing, a drummer counting in.

A fix worth knowing about: Helrig previously refused any tempo below 40 BPM, but the hardware accepts 20. Because every tempo write ran through that limit, opening a preset stored at 30 BPM and touching the tempo at all — even just the snapshot toggle — quietly rewrote it as 40. Presets like that are safe now.

Your library, organised by setlists

The cloud library is no longer one flat list.

  • Setlists are how you move around it — the same grouping your device uses, and the one a backup file already carries. They sit at the top of the sidebar with a count each, above the filters that narrow whatever you are looking at. Open a setlist and any filter you had set is dropped, so you never walk into a setlist and find it empty because of something you filtered ten minutes ago. Deleting a setlist deletes the grouping, never the presets in it.
  • Cards or a list, whichever you prefer — Helrig remembers. Cards are for browsing, the list is for scanning and finding, with columns you can sort by. Sorting covers your whole library, not just the presets currently on screen.
  • Find a preset by the gear in it. Search now matches the blocks a preset contains, by the names you actually use: "tube screamer" finds a preset with a Scream 808 in it, "mxr" finds one with a Gray Flanger. It also searches your notes and your snapshot names.
  • Labels and notes. Label presets however you think about them — "church", "drop D", "needs work" — and leave yourself a note. Labels stay with the preset, so restoring an older version never restores an older set of labels. Renaming, labelling and note-taking do not create a new version or count against your quota.
  • The trash now really empties. Deleted presets have always been restorable for 30 days; from now on they are actually removed once that window passes, rather than sitting in storage forever.
  • Add presets to a setlist in bulk, filter by hardware with device icons on the chips, and see your storage bar update as soon as you upgrade rather than after a manual reload.

Convert between devices

Converting between Helix, HX Stomp and HX Effects is out of beta and on by default. Helix ⟷ HX Stomp ⟷ HX Effects, in either direction, with a dialog that shows you exactly what changes before anything is written.

The dialog that shows what has to be dropped now gives you a real decision to make. Each block appears the way it does in the catalog — its proper name, what it is based on, mono or stereo, and what it costs in DSP. Choosing what to cut to fit a smaller device is a choice between a 38% amp and a 2% gate, and the old list showed neither the cost nor even a readable name.

You can also remove more blocks than the minimum required, which Helrig used to refuse.

Converting to a smaller device drops what will not fit — snapshots beyond the target's count, controller assignments it has no switches for, amp and cab blocks on an HX Effects. All of it is reported in the dialog rather than quietly rewritten. Back up your device before converting, as you would before any change you cannot take back.

Reported bugs, fixed

A batch of bugs came in from people sending preset files and screenshots, and they are fixed.

The one most likely to have affected you: some presets carry stale values in their snapshots. A snapshot stores its values under the parameter's name, and that name outlives the block it was written for — so swapping a block into a slot can leave the old model's value behind, under a name the new block also uses. Those values can be well outside what the parameter can hold; one reported preset had a reverb Dwell of 7 for a parameter that runs 0 to 1, which Helrig displayed as 700%.

Helrig now handles those the way the hardware does, tells you when a preset contains one — naming the block and the parameter rather than quietly showing a number that is not in your file — and offers to repair it. Nothing you hear changes.

Parallel paths are drawn correctly

Four fixes to how forked chains are drawn, all reported from real presets:

  • A split and a merge stored on the same column drew one handle exactly on top of the other. Only the top one could be grabbed — and pulling them apart was the only way out of that shape. They now sit either side of the column, like HX Edit draws them.
  • Where the fork and merge cables overlapped, they ran through the same pixels, so one cable looked like it arrived from two places. On one reported preset that was nearly 300px of overlap.
  • A merge that sits to the right of where the lower path ends is now drawn the way the signal actually travels — along the lower row and up once at the merge — instead of cutting through the fork's lane.
  • Two cables sat a pixel or two off their own line, which showed as a visible step where they met another cable.

Everything else

  • Your snapshot selection survives a conversion. Converting from a Helix (8 snapshots) to an HX Stomp (3) left the picker pointing at a snapshot that no longer existed. The visible half was a wrong name; the quiet half was worse — parameter edits, bypass toggles and tempo changes on that snapshot appeared to work, went nowhere, and were gone at the next switch.
  • A privacy policy that describes what the app does, written from the source rather than a template. Your presets are parsed and edited in your browser; Helrig sets no cookies of its own; analytics record that something happened, never what is in your preset, and are processed in the EU.
  • No more browser pop-ups. Every confirmation is a proper dialog now, which means it can say what the buttons do and tell you what actually happens — that the presets in a setlist survive deleting it, that a deleted preset is recoverable for 30 days. The safe option is focused, so a stray Enter never deletes anything. On the desktop app this was more than cosmetic: those browser pop-ups never appeared at all, so some buttons silently did nothing.
  • Blocks look the same everywhere — the same solid fill in the chain, the catalog and the conversion dialog, so a WhoWatt 100 is the same red wherever you meet it.

Good to know

  • The cloud library requires an account.
  • Back up your device before converting a preset or writing anything to hardware. Good practice regardless, and Helrig will remind you.

Thanks

Several of these fixes exist because someone sent in a preset file and a description of what looked wrong — including the two biggest ones in this release. If something in Helrig does not match what your hardware does, that is worth telling us about.

11–22 August 2026

Two weeks that took Helrig from "views a preset and edits its blocks" to "edits the routing too" — and fixed a lot on the way.

Highlights

  • A preset-corrupting bug is gone. Helrig could write controller IDs meant for a different device; one user's Helix Rack hung on "Rebuilding Presets" after HX Edit crashed importing the file.
  • Parallel paths work properly — nothing is silently dropped, and splits/merges are editable by dragging.
  • Preset tempo is shown and editable, per snapshot if you want it.
  • HX Effects support, alongside Helix and HX Stomp.

Fixes

Preset integrity

  • Controller IDs are no longer written for the wrong device. @controller is device-specific — 9 means Snapshots on an HX Stomp but a footswitch on a Helix — and Helrig wrote the HX Stomp numbering regardless. A Helix preset built from a blank template carried 12 bare footswitch records with none of the fields a real one has; HX Edit crashed importing it and left the user's Helix Rack hung on "Rebuilding Presets". IDs are now derived from the preset's own device, pinned against the controller-name table inside HX Edit itself, and verified across 1,230 files. An unambiguous mismatch already in a file is repaired rather than carried forward. Where a device's MIDI ID genuinely cannot be derived, the write is refused rather than guessed.
  • Blocks stopped going missing. Presets whose lower path ran past the merge lost blocks off the end of the grid with no warning — two reported presets were dropping 2 and 5 blocks. The renderer no longer packs rows into a shared column budget, and a test sweeps the whole preset corpus asserting every parsed block reaches the page.
  • A split made at the end of a path collapsed the whole chain into a flat, position-colliding row (reported by mikehguitar).
  • Exports are blocked over 100% DSP instead of handing you a preset the hardware will not load, and the DSP coefficient itself was corrected.

What you see on screen

  • Boolean switches show what their two positions actually are. Reported on YouTube: the LA Studio Comp "had no way to switch from Limit to Comp". The switch was there — it just read Off/On. The catalog names both positions of every one of its 491 boolean params, and about 90 of them say something other than Off/On — Compress/Limit, Chorus/Vibrato, Low/High, Slow/Fast, Triode/Pentode, 9V/18V, Ducking/Gating. All of them read as Off/On until now.
  • IR slots show their number. The IR library's 128 slots have no names in HX Edit's control spec, so every one of them displayed as "-".
  • The split marker sits in the column the file names, matching what the details panel reports. It was drawn a column early on the ~20% of forked presets whose lower path starts before the fork.
  • Cab and IR budgets per DSP path are enforced in the block picker, so you cannot build something the hardware will not hold.
  • HX Effects' DSP and split behaviour were corrected for its 9-slot paths.
  • Preamps show what they are based on, borrowed from the matching amp where the catalog leaves it blank.

Editing

  • The fork and merge can be moved. Previously the split handle could not move at all on some presets, and the merge was bounded by the wrong column so it could not be dragged left of the first branch block.
  • Dragging the merge past the output releases path B into its own output, and dragging that output back onto path A merges them again.
  • A path can be forked on a single block — it used to need a spare one, so the affordance was a dead no-op.
  • Path B's output is selectable and routes somewhere. A freshly released path B showed "None" and its card opened no panel.
  • Touch fixes — creating a split is reachable on a tablet, and dragging a split or merge handle no longer selects text.

Conversion

  • Converted chains keep their order. Gappy or out-of-range positions made the target's slot grid wrap blocks out of sequence.
  • A branch whose blocks you removed no longer collapses onto the merge, stranding the survivor outside its own fork.
  • The preset keeps its name, Variax settings merge onto the target's node shape rather than carrying the source's, and dropped snapshots and controller assignments are now reported instead of vanishing.
  • Removing more blocks than the minimum required is allowed.

New

Parallel paths, rebuilt. Split and merge are now driven by @topology — the field the device actually uses — instead of guessing from marker positions. The parallel region is drawn with doglegs the way HX Edit draws it, the two rows keep their own lengths, and a split that never merges is rendered as one, with each row running to its own output.

Tempo. Shown next to the device badge, editable to the one-decimal precision HX Edit uses. The camera toggle stores it per snapshot, and a snapshot-controlled tempo is listed with the other snapshot assignments.

Editing the chain. Routing options (input source, outputs, Path 1 → Path 2 link), split-type picker, a Variax panel, Send/Return blocks with FX-loop trails, snapshot-controlled bypass, keyboard entry for parameter values, and an accessibility pass.

HX Effects support, alongside Helix and HX Stomp.

Convert between devices — Helix ⟷ HX Stomp ⟷ HX Effects, with a dialog showing exactly what changed rather than quietly rewriting. Off by default while the last fidelity issues are worked through (NEXT_PUBLIC_ENABLE_CONVERT=1 to show it).

Exported files are stamped as written by Helrig, so a file's origin is visible.

Site

PostHog analytics with preset loaded / edited / exported events, feedback links, a back-up-your-device notice in the footer, mailing-list signup, IndexNow wiring, refreshed icons and OG images, updated About page.

Thanks to everyone who sent in a report — several of these were fixed exactly as described, and the .hlx files and screenshots are what made that possible.

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