Hi tfmeier,
claude Ai response for what you are searching
Before going down the “read djay’s database externally” road (which I’d also looked at — see below) — there’s a much simpler path that might get you what you actually need: djay Pro supports Ableton Link, on both Mac and iPad, and so does Lightjams.
Link broadcasts tempo + beat position + phase live over your local network to any other Link-enabled app — no jailbreak, no sandbox workaround, no reverse-engineering, and it works identically whether djay’s running on the iPad or a Mac:
- In djay: Settings → General → Sync mode → Beat and Tempo Sync, then Settings → Ableton Link → enable it (iOS: steps here; Mac: here). Both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network.
- In Lightjams: enable its Ableton Link session — it exposes beat count, tempo (BPM), and phase (current beat position) directly to its own scripting/command-line functions (
midi.clock.bpm,midi.clock.beat,midi.clock.sawtooth, etc. — Lightjams’ own dev added these specifically for tempo-locked lighting, per this thread).
No bridge app needed — Link is peer-to-peer over the network, nothing to route or configure beyond enabling it on both sides. (For what it’s worth, I also checked: djay has no MIDI Clock output at all, Link is its only sync protocol, and there’s still no public djay API in 2026 — so Link genuinely looks like the best/only current option here, not something I’m overlooking a better alternative to.)
This won’t give you djay’s own named cue points directly (Link is tempo/beat-position only, not “hot cue 3 fired”), but for triggering lighting changes off the music, it might actually be more useful than reading cue points: you’d build your light cues in Lightjams itself, keyed to beat count (e.g. “every 32 beats, trigger scene X”) rather than depending on cue points you set in djay ahead of time. That also sidesteps the “how do I know djay updated the database” problem entirely, since you’re not touching djay’s data at all — just its live Link broadcast.
(v1 draft, for reference — the database-reading approach, if Link’s tempo/phase-only data isn’t enough and you specifically need djay’s own stored cue point positions/names):
Since Algoriddim confirmed djay can’t send event-triggered MIDI/OSC natively (earlier thread), reading the database externally (read-only) was the only other path I could see — I’ve been down that exact road recently for a similar project (a phrase-analysis companion tool for djay on Mac). A few things that might help:
On “how/when djay updates the database” — you likely don’t need to detect that at all. djay’s main SQLite database runs in WAL mode, designed for safe concurrent reads while djay is writing. Polling it directly on an interval (e.g. once a second) works reliably — no need to watch for a specific update signal.
The harder problem is almost certainly the iPad’s sandbox, not the database format. On macOS, external read access works because you can reach djay’s SQLite file directly on disk; iPadOS won’t let another app reach into djay’s container the same way without jailbreaking. A couple of things worth checking if Link above doesn’t cover your need:
- Whether djay’s iCloud sync (Settings → enable for djay, syncs cue points + loop regions across devices with the same Apple ID) gets you close enough — though heads up, I found mixed reports on this forum about its reliability, and it only syncs when you load a different track afterward, not live during playback, so it may not suit a real-time trigger use case anyway.
- Screen-mirroring the iPad to a Mac (AirPlay/QuickTime, no jailbreak) + OCR/computer-vision on the video feed — inelegant, but sidesteps the sandbox since you’re reading pixels, not the filesystem.
- If djay Pro on Mac is ever an option for this particular rig, external read access is much more tractable there — happy to share specifics.
For reference, I open-sourced the read-only database/cue-point reverse-engineering I did (binary format details, extraction code, the WAL-mode read-safety finding, etc.) here: GitHub - yanchau/djay-phrase-tool: Live phrase analysis companion for djay Pro (macOS) — read-only, reverse-engineered · GitHub
Good luck with the Lightjams integration — sounds like a fun build.
