File mode vs. live mode

Last updated: July 26, 2026

Daxlate opens Power BI files straight from disk. That’s the default and the way almost everyone uses it. There’s also an optional live mode that connects to a running Power BI Desktop instance; it’s hidden by default and you switch it on in settings. Both share the same editing surface (sidebar tree, translation grid, import/export, undo/redo) and differ only in how edits get back to the file.

File mode (.pbix / .pbit on disk) #

File mode opens a .pbix or .pbit directly. The app uses the bundled pbi-tools to extract the model into a per-file cache under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\extracts\, deserializes the model via offline TOM, and lets you edit it without any Desktop running. It’s also the only mode that can translate the report canvas, not just the semantic model. See Translate report visuals.

When you save, the app applies the in-memory diffs, re-serializes, and runs pbi-tools compile-pbix to produce a fresh model file.

There’s one wrinkle: pbi-tools can’t compile a .pbix that contains a data model back to .pbix, only to .pbit. So the first save on a .pbix writes a sibling .pbit (e.g. Finance.pbix → Finance.pbit), leaves the original .pbix untouched, and adopts the .pbit for any subsequent saves in the session. The status bar reflects the new path and a toast explains the redirect on first save.

Trade-offs:

• Doesn’t require Power BI Desktop running
• Translates both the semantic model and the report canvas
• A save on a .pbix with a data model produces a .pbit companion, so your downstream pipeline needs to expect that
• Slightly slower per save (extract + recompile, on the order of seconds for typical models, longer for very large ones)

Live mode (TOM), optional #

Live mode connects to a running Power BI Desktop instance via the Tabular Object Model, editing the model in Desktop’s memory. It’s off by default: the Welcome screen shows only your recent files and Open file…, with no “Connect to a running model” entry until you enable it.

To turn it on, set "liveModeEnabled": true in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\settings.json and relaunch. The Welcome screen then adds a Connect to a running model column listing every Desktop instance with a model loaded, discovered by scanning local Analysis Services ports.

When you click Save changes, the edits are pushed to TOM via Model.SaveChanges(). The change is now in Desktop’s in-memory model. To persist it to the .pbix on disk, you do File → Save inside Power BI Desktop. Daxlate never writes the .pbix itself in live mode.

Trade-offs and limits:

• Requires Power BI Desktop running with the model open
• Reaches only a Desktop instance on the same machine, never a published workspace
• Model only: live mode has no report-canvas layer to translate
• Closing Desktop without doing File → Save loses unsaved translations, the same as any other Desktop edit

Which to use when #

• Almost everything: file mode. Open the .pbix or .pbit, translate the model and the report canvas, and save.
• Bulk import / export round-trip: file mode. It’s built for processing a folder of reports without opening each one in Desktop.
• Interactive tweaks while you’re already authoring in Desktop: live mode, once you’ve enabled it, so a translation shows up immediately in the field list. Remember it reaches the model only, not the report canvas.