Uploaded May 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Hey! I started a new channel and an instagram page full of REAPER tips, check it out 💙
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Reaper Tip #5: Now your tracks, markers, and regions can be auto colored with the amazing SWS extension feature. Not only you can set the colors, you can also set icons, layouts, and many other possibilities that would make your workflow way faster.

Reaper tips is a series of short tutorial clips where I show you some of my favorite Reaper tricks.

Skip to:

Demo: 0:11
Setup: 0:54

✔ Setup:

1. Download and install the SWS extension: bit.ly/1ZPsrxD
2. Open Reaper
3. In the extension drop down menu, select Auto Color/Icon/Layout
4. Click options, and enable all options you need. (auto track coloring, auto track icon…)

✔ To auto-color/icon tracks:
1. Click add rule
2. Double click where it says “(name)" and put the name of the track you want to set the color of.
3. Right click right next to it where it says “none", click set color, and choose a color for the track.
4. Put an icon by right clicking in the empty space in the color column.

✔ To make children tracks same color as parent:
1. Click add rule
2. Right click where it says (name)
3. Select (children)
4. Right click where it says “none” in the color column and select “parent"

✔ To auto-color master track:
1. Click add rule
2. Right click where it says (name)
3. Select (master)
4. Right click right next to it where it says “none", click set color, and choose a color for the track.

✔ To auto-color regions:
1. Click add rule
2. Right click where it says “track”
3. Select “region”
4. Double click where it says “(name)" and put the name of the region you want to set the color of.
5. Right click right next to it where it says “none", click set color, and choose a color for the region.

✔ Keep in mind:

The auto coloring list is ordered by priority and you can see the numbers in the first column. The smaller the number the highest priority.
For example, if you have “Guitar” set to yellow #1 in your list, and “Acoustic Guitar” set to red #2 in your list. It is going to color the track according to the color with higher priority. In this case just drag up your “Acoustic Guitar” in the list making it higher priority than the “Guitar” track.
So tracks named Acoustic Guitar are going to be red but tracks just named Guitar are going to be colored yellow.

Feel free to get creative and find other cool stuff you can do! You can go even more in depth and even set layouts for each track.
Let me know if you come up with another cool idea for this, I really love this thing!