Dear list, to avoid the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem I'm going to tell you my goal first, then my current route to a solution, with a missing piece. I work with several midi instruments. Some of them USB, some of them DIN, all of them have different names. Only ever one is connected at once. I want my programs to accept data entry from my instruments, no matter which of them is plugged in. What is the easiest way to do this? My current idea is to establish a virtual jack midi thru port. All software can use this port as midi data source. Hardware instruments then get be connected via one of the many auto-connector solutions: The one built into QJackCtl or https://github.com/SpotlightKid/jack-matchmaker , which is what I am using already. The virtual jack midi port is the missing piece. What is the best way to get one? "Best" means least resources, least administration overhead. E.g. any answer involving the words "plugin host" is already too much. Ideal would be a simple daemon program I can autorun after starting jack (with qjackctl script-after-start) So I am either looking for that midi thru port or a different solution that works even better. -hgn P.S. In case the JACK devs are reading: AFAIK Jack works under the assumption that audio System out 1 and 2 are the main abstracted stereo outputs and are available on any system. This leads to great portability across all systems. I consider midi data entry with a single instrument an equally typical use case and would like to propose to add a single midi thru port to JACK directly. No more, no less, nothing to configure, nothing to check for as user or developer.