Like Sonar´s "Archive track". Takes no memory, no cpu.

Sure, but I don't think it should be high priority. You can already do this with a macro I'm sure.

You can't.
The only thing you can do with macros is turn offline media item with the properly erase risk.

Without macros you can move tracks to other project. But this is very slow and inefficient.

You can.
There's no need to set media offline.
Check my post in your thread for further information.

you can mute, unload fx, offline and lock media and minimize track now.

only thing missing it seems to me is 'lock track height' which is requested elsewhere...

An option for this could be a right-click menu on the mute to fully disable/archive track.

I don't want to mute the track becouse it will be unmuted when you use the very usefull 'unmute all' action.
Mercado_negro proposes 'mute all track items' and 'hide track' across 5 chained actions.
Seems to be functional for me all the chain until hide track which is not usefull for me.
The only thing i lose now comparing with other DAW is the visual feedback you get with disabled/archived tracks, that normally appear like grayed and blocked tracks.

I've provided some "workarounds" in Reaper Forums as you know now but I think this FR could be solved by adding Locking Options for Tracks. If we had a way to lock all or some of the tracks features we could easily achieve an accurate way to "Disable tracks".

Maybe we could have some options in tracks' context menu:

*Lock mute button (it keeps current state of mute)
*Lock solo button (it keeps current state of solo)
*Lock record arm button (it disables recording)
*Lock volume fader
*Lock pan
*Lock phase swtich (it keeps current state of phase)
*Lock FX button (it blocks FX's from insert/remove/(un)bypass/online/offline keeping current state)
*Lock envelopes (it locks in time all envelopes and their points as well as modes, keeping current state)
*Lock inputs/outputs/sends/receives (they can't be sent or receive from other tracks)
*Lock label (it blocks single or doubleclick to change tracks' names)
*Lock record options (Monitor input, Monitor input (auto tape style), monitor track media when recording, etc., are blocked and keep their current state)
*Lock ALL

With these options in context menu and their proper actions we could be able to completely or partially disable a track.

EDIT: Of course this means more work for themers because buttons should have a new icon for Locked state so users can tell which one of them are disabled.

also "lock height" please

great idea.

Locking can be indicated as semi-transparent? (so no need for new icons)

Merc, I skimmed through your workarounds and they involve setting up macros and relying on extensions. I appreciate the effort but as always, I prefer the native/simple/direct implementation wherever possible. Because some users (me) are stupid and we need some love too.

The original FR is as simple and as effective as it gets.

Nice going Mercado.

On a side note, Protools has done this for 10 years, calling it 'De/Activate Selected Track(s)'. This was of course in the days of DAWs when resources were expensive, but we still do that today.

So once we've locked down what we wish should happen to a track, shouldn't that be brought to Reaper by the developers as a "De/Activate selected track(s)" function ?

After all, who'd want to hunt down the information for such an enormous macro ? Most people would just assume that function doesn't exist, and thus simply mute the track, and do all kinds of other laberous work, assuming quite correctly that nobody was smart enough to build in a simple function for the convenience of all users.

This is no specialist function.

i've been running into this problem for a while now. typically what i do is save my song as a new name and remove the old tracks out of the project entirely. if i need the old tracks again (to run fx on them or something) i have to go back and splice in the tracks from the previous project file. this feels really clunky, it'd be nice to have an attic i could stash tracks in without losing them from the project file altogether.

Btw, this is also what Bins can be for.

Management for everything, and in this case it's tracks and their content. Just imagine saving a Bin file that contains all your tracks you wish to keep for future use.

No need to keep an extra session around, but a small database file with all kinds of contents.

Duplicate and some interesting additional ideas for this great FR:

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=1073

Thanks,
Mario