Control surfaces can be supported either with a MIDI Device Plug-in (MDP) or a MIDI Device Script (MDS). Directly supported control surfaces communicate with Logic Pro for Mac via MDPs or MDSes located in the Logic Pro application bundle. On Macs with Intel processors, Logic Pro also checks for control surface plug-ins installed in the ~/Library/Application Support/MIDI Device Plug-ins folder and in the ~/Library/Application Support/MIDI Device Plug-ins folder (the preferred location).
When new control surface plug-ins are supplied directly by the device manufacturer, place them in the folders described above or as advised in the documentation supplied with the plug-in.
Important: All Mac computers support built-in MDPs and MDSes. Mac computers with Intel processors also support control surface plug-ins from manufacturers other than Apple. To use a control surface with an Apple Silicon Mac computer for which no built-in plug-in is available, consult the manufacturer’s support materials for the control surface to see if an MDS is available.
MDSes are located in subfolders by the manufacturer name in the ~/Music/Audio Music Apps/MIDI Device Scripts folder. Logic Pro shows the MDS in the Install window, and the MDS also appears in the Setup window as a generic keyboard icon. You can replace that generic icon with a custom device icon (the icon must be a 256 x 256-pixel PNG file named icon.png placed in the MIDI Device Script package).
For MIDI controllers supported by MDSes (Lua scripts), see Automatic assignment for USB MIDI controllers for details.
Important: For Mac computers with Intel processors, some devices are supported by both a Lua script and a control surface plug-in. In this situation, the plug-in always has priority. When you install a plug-in from a manufacturer other than Apple, any existing assignments of a corresponding Lua script for the device are automatically replaced with assignments generated by the control surface plug-in.
Download the guides:
Logic Pro User Guide: Apple Books | PDF
Logic Pro Instruments: Apple Books | PDF
Logic Pro Effects: Apple Books | PDF