FLStudio RPC

1. The start

   Discord didn't know I was making music

   I produce music in FL Studio and spend most of my day on Discord. Discord can show which game you're playing, but it had no idea I was in a DAW, let alone which track. Friends and collaborators kept asking what I was working on, and I kept typing the same answer.

2. The goal

   A status that keeps itself up to date

   Put the answer where people already look: my Discord status. When FL Studio is open, show the project I'm working on and how long I've been at it. When I switch projects, follow along. When I close FL Studio, clean up. All of it without me touching anything.

3. The adventure

   Reading a DAW from the outside

   FL Studio has no API for this, so the app watches it from the outside. A small Python process checks whether FL64.exe is running, reads the project name from the window title, and sends it to Discord's Rich Presence with a session timer. I packaged it with PyInstaller and added a batch launcher that opens FL Studio and the status together, and creates a desktop shortcut the first time.

   

4. The difficulties

   Invisible, accurate and resilient

   A background app has to stay out of the way, so the process checks had to be cheap enough to never show up in Task Manager. FL Studio's window title changes with the state of the project and can carry special characters, and an unsaved project has no name at all. And Discord can restart at any time, which mustn't crash the app.

5. The end

   One click, then nothing to think about

   It's released on GitHub with a one-click launcher. The status reads "Working on" plus the project name, follows a project switch within 5 seconds and clears itself when FL Studio closes. It's a small tool, but it taught me a lot about system-level programming: monitoring processes, reading other apps' windows, and building something that runs quietly in the background.

• Automatic detection

  Notices when FL Studio starts and turns the Rich Presence on by itself.

• Project name in your status

  Shows the project you have open, so friends and collaborators can see what you're working on.

• Session timer

  A live timer counts how long you've been on the current project.

• Window detection

  Finds FL Studio's window and reads the project information from its title.

• Follows your projects

  Open another project and the status updates on its own, within 5 seconds.

• Cleans up after itself

  Close FL Studio and the status disappears, so it never shows stale information.

In Discord

The app uses Discord's own Rich Presence, so the status looks like any game's: on your profile, in the member list and in your friends' activity feed.

Setup

1. Download

   Get the latest release from the project's GitHub page.

2. Extract

   Unzip it wherever you like.

3. Run

   Start FLStudioRPC.bat: it opens FL Studio and the status together.

4. Done

   A desktop shortcut is created the first time, so from then on it's one click.

Once it's running there's nothing to do. While FL Studio is open your status reads "Working on" plus the project name, with the session timer. Close FL Studio and the status clears and the app stops.

The loop

A Python process runs in the background and repeats the same four steps every few seconds.

1. Process check

   psutil looks for FL64.exe, a cheap lookup instead of walking every window.

2. Window title

   pygetwindow reads FL Studio's window title, which carries the project name.

3. Presence

   pypresence sends Discord the project name and a session timer.

4. Cleanup

   When FL Studio closes, the status is cleared and the app exits.

Architecture

• Process monitor

  psutil

  Enumerates processes efficiently to spot FL Studio, with a polling interval that keeps the CPU cost negligible.

• Window detection

  pygetwindow

  Identifies FL Studio's window and extracts the project name from its title, for named and unnamed projects alike.

• Discord integration

  pypresence

  Keeps a Rich Presence connection open and only sends updates when something changes, to keep API use low.

• Session management

  State

  Restarts the timer when the project changes and clears the presence data when FL Studio closes.

Challenges

Skills I gained

• System programming in Python

  psutil

  Process monitoring and background services that run continuously without getting in the way.

• Discord Rich Presence

  pypresence

  Status integration and management through Discord's Rich Presence API.

• Window detection

  pygetwindow

  Finding another application's window and parsing its title into usable information.

• Packaging and distribution

  PyInstaller and batch

  A packaged executable, plus batch scripting for the launcher and the automatic desktop shortcut.