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Participant
August 25, 2026
Open for Voting

Make native commands like Merge Clips scriptable in the UXP API

  • August 25, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 17 views

Hi all, I'm trying to build a UXP panel that helps batch-process making merged clips from a full sequence of synched audio, and I've hit some walls that make this kind of workflow much harder than it needs to be. I have tried to tee it up as best I can by making the steps as few as possible, but cannot finish it out because of some limitations in what Adobe makes available to be scripted:

1. Native commands aren't scriptable. Commands like Merge Clips and other “right click” actions have no equivalent in the DOM API, and there's no generic way to invoke a menu/context-menu command from a plugin either. This means a plugin can prepare everything perfectly (select the right clips, know exactly what should happen next) but still can't finish the job—the user has to manually right-click and choose the command every single time. Every work around I look for runs into this...I understand why this could be an issue to allow access here, but I should be able to limit the parameters safely but don’t have the option.  

2. Plugin commands can't be bound to keyboard shortcuts. Even a plugin's own custom commands don't show up in Premiere's Keyboard Shortcuts editor to be assigned a hotkey, unlike how native commands work. This makes it hard to build even a keyboard-driven workflow around a plugin at all.

What I'd love to see:
- A scriptable way to invoke native commands like Merge Clips (ideally as an Action, consistent with the create*Action pattern already used elsewhere in the API), OR at minimum an event that fires when a command like this completes, so a plugin can react to it.
- Support for assigning keyboard shortcuts to plugin commands via the standard Keyboard Shortcuts editor, the same way native commands work today.

Either of these (even just one) would make it possible to build genuinely fast batch-editing tools instead of ones that still require a manual click-through per item. Not to jump on a negativity bandwagon, but if Adobe won’t build in simple native features like “batch merging” already synched audio, please let me do it myself...I think opening up these commands would make endlessly useful plugin builds possible and really solidify my loyalty to the program. Happy to share more detail about the specific workflow if useful. Thanks for considering it!

    1 reply

    bbb_999
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    August 25, 2026

    Hi Chris,

    1 : Correct! Our priority is getting UXP to functional parity with what’s possible via CEP+ExtendScript; feature requests will follow. 

    2 : Makes sense. Full disclosure: That will not be among the earliest UXP API feature requests we implement, as contention for existing keyboard shortcuts is already fierce within Premiere. 

    Broadly: You’re right, there are lots of Premiere features that are frustratingly unavailable, via API. We’ve been focused on getting UXP to where CEP+ExtendScript already is, resulting in very little API expansion. New APIs in UXP would be of no help to existing integrations, if lacking ‘parity’ functionality prevented them from doing what they’ve always done.

    Ray of hope: Many of the newer features in Pr are built in UXP, making exposing UXP APIs around them much more straightforward, than replacing block-the-whole-UI-and-run-on-the-main-thread ExtendScript calls.  [Ahh, simpler times.]

    Thanks for writing, and thanks for integrating with Premiere! 

    Potentially interesting/helpful = Pr UXP Developer Forum (patrolled by my team).