Can you edit Helix presets on an iPad?

Yes. Line 6’s HX Edit runs only on a Windows or macOS desktop, but Helrig opens and edits Helix and HX presets in the browser on an iPad or iPhone — nothing to install, no account, and the preset never leaves your device. What an iPad cannot do is talk to the hardware — loading a preset onto your Helix still needs a computer.

What it is like to use on a touch screen

It is not the desktop layout shrunk down. Helrig changes shape when you are working on a touch screen:

Controls are sized for a fingertip rather than a mouse pointer, so you can change a parameter without pinching in first or aiming carefully at something tiny.
Tapping a value to type a new one does not make the page lurch and zoom, the way mobile web forms usually do.
On a phone you see a useful run of the signal chain at once, instead of one block filling the whole screen.
One tap zooms out to the entire preset. Even on a long chain you can still tell blocks apart by colour and see where the signal splits and comes back together.
Nothing you need to reach hides behind the notch or the home bar.

Helrig open on a phone showing the preset sample38 for a Helix LT. Path 1 reads 66% DSP and its colour-coded blocks — Scream 808, US Super Nrm, Simple Delay — run off the right edge of the screen. — The same preset on the same phone. On the left the chain runs past the edge of the screen; on the right, one tap on Overview has brought both paths into view at once.

The same preset after one tap on Overview: both signal paths and every block now fit the phone screen at once, still told apart by colour, and the control has switched to Full size. — The same preset on the same phone. On the left the chain runs past the edge of the screen; on the right, one tap on Overview has brought both paths into view at once.

Everything else is the full editor: blocks and parameters, snapshots, footswitch and MIDI assignments, parallel routing, per-path DSP, undo and redo, conversion between devices, and export.

Getting a preset onto an iPad

Save the .hlx anywhere the Files app can reach it — iCloud Drive, a mail attachment, AirDrop from a Mac — then pick it in Helrig. A .hxb device backup or a .hls setlist works the same way, and you can pull a single preset out of either.

Your presets will not be greyed out when you go to pick one. iOS dims files whose type it does not recognise, and it does not recognise .hlx, .hxb or .hls — so Helrig asks for any file and works out what it is from what is inside it.

What an iPad cannot do

Helrig does not connect to your Helix or HX unit from a browser, on any platform. Reading a preset off the hardware and writing one back are not available there. Connecting over USB is something only the desktop app can do, and it is still being built.

So the round trip on an iPad is: get the .hlx onto the device, edit it in Helrig, export it, and load it onto the hardware the usual way from a computer. If your goal is editing a preset while away from your desk, that works today. If it is managing the device itself, that still needs a desktop.

Disclaimer

Helrig is an independent, one-person project. It isn’t built by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Line 6, Yamaha or Apple — “Line 6”, “Helix”, “HX” and “HX Edit” are Line 6’s trademarks, and “iPad” and “iPhone” are Apple’s.

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