User Manual
User Manual
How the app works, what each tab means, and the day-to-day workflows.
PluginHub scans your Mac for installed audio plugins, checks each vendor's website for the latest version, and tells you which ones have updates available. It supports AAX AU VST and CLAP formats. It is a macOS desktop app: the dashboard opens from the menu bar icon or from the PluginHub icon in the Dock.
Click the menu bar icon — or the PluginHub icon in the dock — to open the dashboard. Click anywhere else to dismiss it. The dashboard does the heavy lifting; the menu bar is a quick launcher with the global update count.
Everything lives down the left side of the window. The sidebar has four sections:
Every count stays live as you work. Install Manager shows in red how many of your pending updates it can download and install for you, so it reads the same way as the Updates Available count above it.
Drag a section heading to put the sections in whatever order suits you. Drag the sidebar's right edge to resize it and its contents scale with the width; double-click that edge to snap it back to the default. Categories starts open and collapses with the chevron on its heading if you would rather keep the list short.
If you prefer the old layout, View > Navigation switches back to the top tab row. Nothing is lost either way; only the placement changes.
The Status section at the top of the sidebar splits your installed catalog four ways, each row carrying its own count. A fifth Pinned row appears first when you have starred at least one vendor or plugin:
Vendors and plugins you've starred. Comes first in the Status list only when you've actually pinned something. The count is "pinned plugins with updates / pinned plugins on the current version" — gold-colored to stand out from the green / red of the other rows. Pinning is the quickest way to keep an eye on your most-used plugins without scrolling through everything.
Vendors with at least one plugin where your installed version is older than what the vendor's site currently lists. Click any vendor card to expand it; click a plugin row to see the latest version and a download link. The number badge in red shows how many plugins (not vendors) have updates pending.
Everything you have that PluginHub successfully checked and confirmed is current. Green badge. The bulk of a normal collection lives here.
Vendors that require a manual check. Either their site doesn't publish version data PluginHub can read, or they deliver updates through their own installer app. Click Visit website or Open installer on any card to check manually. We're working to move vendors from this tab into active checker status.
After you've checked a plugin, right-click it (or open its ⋮ menu) and choose Mark up to date. The row turns green so you can see at a glance what's already handled. If a newer version gets installed later, the row turns blue and the plugin appears in a notice at the top of the tab so you can re-check and re-mark it. Reset marked (N) in the section header reviews and clears every mark in one pass. (Live-checked rows on Updates Available have their own version of this — see Mark a plugin as up to date.)
The blue Export Marked Dates button (it appears once at least one plugin is marked) opens a review of every mark, grouped by vendor with the oldest checks first, so the top of the list is your re-check queue. Each vendor header shows how long ago its oldest check was, and each entry shows the version you marked, the date, and a newer installed flag when the plugin has changed since. Export the whole list as a PDF, copy it for Google Sheets, or copy it as CSV.
Plugins from vendors PluginHub doesn't have a checker for yet. PluginHub still shows them — installed version, format badges, vendor avatar — and gives you a "Visit website" link so you can manually check for updates. We add new vendors continuously.
Some "updates" are actually paid major-version upgrades — FabFilter Pro-Q 3 → Pro-Q 4, iZotope Ozone 10 → Ozone 11, Waves V14 → V16. PluginHub flags these so they don't get mixed in with free updates: any plugin row whose new version is a paid jump gets an amber PAID UPGRADE badge, and a vendor card whose entire upgrade list is paid gets a single card-level badge instead of repeating it per row.
The Paid Upgrades toggle on the right side of the Updates Available section header controls whether those paid items are listed at all:
Useful when you've already decided not to buy a particular major version and don't want it nagging you in the count every day. The toggle only appears when you actually have at least one paid upgrade pending — no clutter when there's nothing to hide.
Sometimes PluginHub is technically right that a newer version exists, but the row shouldn’t be on your to-do list. Two common cases: you’ve decided you’re happy on your current version, or a vendor’s installer stamps a slightly different version number inside the plugin file than the release it came from, so the row can never clear on its own no matter how many times you reinstall.
Right-click any plugin row on Updates Available, or click the ⋮ button at the end of the row, and choose Mark as up to date. The plugin moves to the Up to date tab immediately — the tab counts and the menu bar number follow — and its row carries a Marked up to date note showing the date and the version the checker reported when you marked it. This works everywhere update rows appear, including the All Plugins view.
The mark is version-aware, not permanent. The moment the vendor ships a version newer than the one you marked, the plugin returns to Updates Available on its own — you’ll never miss a real release because of an old mark. To undo a mark early, open the same menu and choose Unmark up to date.
Marking and snoozing are two answers to the same nag, so they never stack: marking a plugin clears any snooze on it, and snoozing a plugin clears its mark. Manual-check vendors have their own version of marking (covered under Dashboard tabs → Manual Check) that records the date you last checked, so the two features stay consistent wherever a row lives.
Sometimes an update is real but not for right now: you're mid-project and don't want to change anything, or you'd rather wait for a fresh release to settle. Right-click any plugin row on Updates Available, or click the ⋮ button at the end of the row, and pick a snooze:
A snoozed update drops out of the Updates Available count and the menu bar number, so it stops nagging you. The row itself stays in its vendor card, greyed out with a snooze label, so nothing silently disappears. To wake one early, open the same menu and choose Stop snoozing (show update).
If you’d rather snoozed rows disappear from the dashboard entirely instead of sitting there dimmed, turn off Show Snoozed Plugins. The setting lives in the menu bar under Settings, and the same toggle appears in every plugin row’s right-click / ⋮ menu and on the snooze note itself — flip it anywhere and every view updates at once.
With it off, snoozed rows are removed from their vendor cards, and any card that’s hiding some shows a “N snoozed plugins hidden” line in its footer, so you always know they exist and nothing is ever silently gone. Turn the setting back on to bring the dimmed rows back exactly as they were.
One housekeeping note: snoozing and marking a plugin as up to date never stack — applying one clears the other, so a plugin is always in exactly one state.
The segmented control in the top bar, next to the plugin count, filters every view by format: All AAX AU VST CLAP. The selection is sticky — switch to AU once and the dashboard stays AU-filtered until you change it.
Next to the format segments sit two dropdowns: Folders, which opens the plugin folders on disk (see Plugin folders), and My Tags, which filters the dashboard by your own tags (see Tags & the Tag Manager). Search takes the rest of the bar, and matches vendor names, plugin names and categories.
The sort dropdown lives in the View menu (see The View menu & layouts). Three modes:
Sort selection persists across launches.
The View menu in the top bar collects every display setting in one place.
The default. One card per vendor, each only as tall as its own plugin list, laid out in columns so more fits on screen without shrinking the text.
Vendors stacked full width with several plugins to a line. Better when you want to read a lot of version numbers at once.
One line per vendor with the numbers in columns: updates, up to date, manual check, and the formats you own from them. Click any column heading to sort by it, and click a vendor to open its plugins underneath.
The dashboard has a handful worth learning: ⌘K jumps into search from anywhere (Return keeps your results and leaves the field, Escape clears the search), the ~ key cycles the format filter the way it switches modes in Pro Tools (All, AAX, AU, VST, VST3, VST2, and CLAP when you have CLAP plugins), Tab moves between the status views (⇧Tab goes backwards), and ⌘R runs a refresh.
Every plugin you own is sorted into one of eleven groups: EQ & Filter, Dynamics, Pitch & Modulation, Reverb, Delay, Distortion & Amps, Utility & Metering, Imaging, Instruments & MIDI, Restoration, and Channel Strips & More. The Categories section of the sidebar lists all eleven with a color dot and a count.
Click a category to filter the whole dashboard. Shift-click to add another category to the selection, and click a selected category again to go back to All. The chip that appears next to the search field clears the filter from its ✕. The filter carries through to the All Plugins view and to Batch Plugin Management, so you can act on a whole category at once.
If you disagree with where a plugin landed, open its ⋮ menu and pick a different category. The change sticks on your Mac. Each category's color comes from the dot beside its name in the sidebar; click the dot to change it.
View > Category labels puts the category name on every plugin row, and View > Collections saves a category and tag selection you use often.
Categories are ours. Tags are yours: any group of plugins you want to keep together, from any vendors, in any combination. A mix session, a mastering chain, a client's rig, the twelve things you actually reach for.
My Tags in the top bar filters the dashboard the way a category does, and shift-click combines tags the same way. The same dropdown creates a new tag and opens the Tag Manager.
The Tag Manager, in the sidebar under Library, is where tags get built. Check a tag on the left and the right side fills with every plugin you own, grouped by vendor, the ones already tagged marked as added. Add plugins one at a time or a whole vendor at once with Add all. Tags can be renamed, recolored, and dragged into the order you want them in.
All Plugins, in the sidebar under Library, drops the vendor cards and lists every plugin on your Mac in one flat table: name, vendor, formats, installed version, status, and the same row actions you get everywhere else.
Everything that works on the dashboard works here: the format filter, search, categories, tags, favorites, and the ⋮ menu. The chips across the top add an Intel only filter and Export Marked, and Back to tabs returns you to the vendor cards.
Apple is retiring Rosetta 2, the translation layer that lets plugins built only for Intel processors run on Apple Silicon Macs. Starting in macOS 28, Intel-only plugins stop working. On an Apple Silicon Mac, PluginHub checks every installed plugin for a native Apple Silicon build and flags the ones that don't have one:
When a plugin is flagged, check the vendor's site for a universal or Apple Silicon build: many products added native support in later versions, and updating clears the badge. For plugins that were never updated, it's worth planning a replacement before you move to macOS 28. Detection runs only on Apple Silicon Macs; on an Intel Mac there's nothing to flag, so you won't see badges or the banner.
Click the star on any vendor card to pin the whole vendor. Click the star next to an individual plugin name to pin just that plugin. Pinned items get their own Pinned row at the top of the sidebar's Status list, sorted with vendors first then loose plugins.
The "Clear pinned" chip in the top bar, visible only when something is pinned, empties the entire favorites set in one click.
Every vendor card has a gear icon in its upper-right corner. Click it to open the Manage panel for that vendor. The panel shows the vendor name and how many of its plugins you have installed, then offers four actions:
Universal Audio users: UA Connect installs every UAD plugin on your drive, owned or not, and PluginHub never reads your license information. Both Universal Audio cards carry an amber line that opens Which UAD plugins do I own? Choose Mark what I own… and follow the three steps: sign in to your UA account, open your full product list, then copy it and paste it into PluginHub. PluginHub marks what you own, lists anything it couldn't match, and offers to hide, move to (Unused) or uninstall the rest in one go. Hidden plugins stay hidden through UA updates. Plugins you moved or uninstalled come back with each UA update, and PluginHub then offers to move or uninstall them again.
The two hide actions are tinted blue (they only change what you see), Move to Unused is amber (recoverable), and Uninstall is red (it touches the Trash). Hidden vendors and plugins are tracked under the Hidden (N) chip in the header. When you hide a vendor the chip briefly lights up so you can see where it went, and the card stays in place for a few seconds with an Undo button before it disappears.
The panel also carries a Batch Plugin Management row — a shortcut into the multi-vendor batch tool for moving or uninstalling plugins across many vendors at once.
Every plugin row, on every tab, has its own actions. Right-click the row or click the ⋮ button at the end of it to open a menu with three choices:
For plugins installed system-wide (in /Library/...), the Move and Uninstall actions ask for your macOS password once, then handle the whole batch.
Sometimes you want to physically remove plugins from your DAW's scan path without uninstalling them. Open a vendor's gear menu and choose Move plugins to Unused…, or use Move to Unused… on an individual plugin row. PluginHub moves the bundle files into a sibling (Unused) folder next to your active plugin folder — your DAW stops seeing the plugin on next rescan, but the files are preserved.
The Move modal lists every plugin from the chosen vendor with checkboxes per format. Pill row at the top for bulk selection:
Confirm requires admin authentication for plugins in /Library/... (system-wide installs) — single password prompt for the whole batch, not one per plugin.
Offload folder (optional). To send every plugin you move to (Unused) to one place, on another drive for example, choose an offload folder at the top of Custom Install Paths. Inside it, each plugin lands in a folder named after the one it came from (VST3 (Unused), Components (Unused), Plug-Ins (Unused) for AAX, a custom folder by its own name), with any vendor subfolder kept, so Restore still puts it back exactly where it came from, and PluginHub never mixes up plugins from different folders. If that drive isn't connected when you move something, PluginHub says so and moves nothing rather than parking it on your internal disk. Clearing the offload folder goes back to parking plugins beside their own folder; whatever is already in the old offload folder stays there and Restore keeps finding it.
After a move, a temporary "↩ Recently moved" chip appears in the header for 20 seconds — click Restore all or any individual Restore to put plugins back. After the chip fades, the persistent path is Plugin folders → Restore plugins from "(Unused)", which scans every (Unused) folder on disk and lets you pick what to bring back. Same pill row for bulk selection, and one row per plugin with all of its format chips — no separate tabs per format.
The per-vendor Move and Uninstall windows work one vendor at a time. Batch Plugin Management works across your whole collection at once: pick plugins from as many vendors as you like, then move them to their (Unused) folders, uninstall them, or restore them in one pass. Great for studios where different engineers use different plugin sets, or for slimming your DAW down to a core set before a session. Open it from the sidebar under Tools, or from the menu bar: Tools ▸ Batch Plugin Management…
Build a selection on the left, watch it take shape in the middle, then act on it with the buttons at the top:
Save selected as list keeps the current selection for later. Click a list to select everything in it, then move, uninstall, restore, or re-save. A list whose plugins have been moved shows under MOVED TO (UNUSED) — check it and hit Restore to bring the whole set back. Lists can be renamed (double-click the name), reordered by dragging the ≡ handle, and updated in one click after you change a selection. Deleting a list never touches any files.
Big batches show a progress window from start to finish: a live bar tracks actual file movement, including the stretch that needs your password, and a clear note covers the refresh that follows while the dashboard repopulates. If anything can't be moved, PluginHub says so plainly, and your files stay safe in (Unused) until a restore brings them home.
Install Manager downloads an update straight from the vendor's own server and installs it for you, one at a time or several together. It sits in the sidebar under Tools with a count of how many of your pending updates it can handle.
There are two ways to use it:
Only files a vendor publishes openly on their own site. Anything behind a login, an account manager, or a vendor's own installer app is left alone, and those plugins keep their Visit website and Open installer buttons instead. Demo and trial builds are never offered. PluginHub never signs in anywhere on your behalf, so it never sees or stores a vendor account, and it never hosts or modifies a vendor's files.
The ⓘ button beside the window title says all of this inside the app too, so nobody has to take it on trust from a manual.
Downloads land in ~/Downloads/PluginHub Installers and stay there until you remove them, so nothing installs behind your back and you keep the original files. Remove Old Installers clears them out when you are done, and the receipt links straight to it.
When you have the same plugin (same name, same format) installed at more than one path on disk, PluginHub flags it. A ⚠ N duplicates chip appears in the dashboard header. Click it to open the Duplicate plugins detected modal.
Each duplicate group lists every copy with its full path, file size, install date, and a ACTIVE or UNUSED badge. Per-row actions:
Two filter rows narrow what you see at the top: Format (All / AAX / AU / VST / CLAP) and Show (All locations / Active folders only / (Unused) only). The bottom-bar Remove all from (Unused) → Trash button moves every (Unused) copy that matches the current filter to the Trash. It never touches an active copy, so the plugins your DAW loads stay where they are. To remove an active copy, use that row's own Move to Trash.
The Dismiss menu inside the modal lets you pause the chip for a week, a month, or only-when-asked. Bring it back any time via the menu bar's Check for duplicates ▸ Show duplicate alerts on dashboard toggle. The toggle and the modal stay in sync.
.dmg / .pkg / .zip in ~/Downloads, sorted biggest first by default, with a running selection total at the bottom.Plugin installers add up. After you've double-clicked a .dmg and dragged the app into Applications, the original installer file usually just sits in ~/Downloads forever. Over a year of buying plugins that's typically several gigabytes of dead weight.
Open Remove Old Installers from the sidebar under Tools, or from the menu bar, to scan ~/Downloads for stale plugin installers. That includes the folder Install Manager downloads into, so a batch install cleans up here afterwards. Each row shows the file name, size, age, and — when PluginHub recognizes the installer — which plugin or vendor it belongs to (e.g. "Blackhole Immersive — eventide is installed"). Files that can't be identified are still listed so you can review and decide.
Two guarantees the modal restates inline so you can read them without leaving the screen:
~/Downloads. PluginHub never touches your installed plugins, support files, presets, or caches.
Send a complete inventory of your installed plugins to anyone — a collaborator, a producer, a friend mixing your record — without exposing your machine. Open Tools ▸ Share Plugin List… from the menu bar to compose a share.
Fill in the modal:
Hit Create share link and PluginHub returns a short code (e.g. PHX3-7K9M) plus a full URL. Copy either, or use the native macOS share sheet via the share button on the result screen.
The recipient opens the link in any browser to see a clean web view of your list, grouped by vendor with format coverage, install dates, and versions where you opted to include them. They don't need PluginHub installed.
From the result screen you can also export the same list as a CSV, push it to a new Google Sheet, or save a printable PDF. The export respects whatever format filter and exclude-vendors selections you set when composing the share.
Import a session file on the share dialog and PluginHub reads out the plugins that session actually uses, then builds a list of just those plugins. Three session types are supported: a Pro Tools session (.ptx), a Logic Pro project (.logicx), and a Cubase project (.cpr). Handy for sharing a session-specific plugin checklist with a collaborator — they can see exactly what's needed to open your session without rifling through their DAW's missing-plugin dialog.
Compare your plugin lineup against another Mac you own on the same PluginHub License Key. Open Tools ▸ Compare Plugin Profiles… from the menu bar on either machine.
The flow has two sides:
PluginHub then runs a side-by-side diff and surfaces the result in a five-bucket modal:
The format filter and sort dropdown at the top of the diff narrow what's shown — switch to AAX only to compare just your Pro Tools coverage, or sort by Most divergent first to focus on the biggest gaps.
When a vendor card in the Version diverged bucket has your Mac on the older side, an Update mine button appears that links straight to the right download or hub app. PluginHub never offers to "update" you to an older version — if the other Mac is behind, the prompt is shown to them, not you.
Compare Plugin Profiles is scoped to Macs activated on the same PluginHub license key. If you paste a code from a Mac on a different license, the dashboard returns "share not found" — the profile data is scoped per-license so unrelated users can't see each other's lists.
Some vendors deliver plugins with their own license key, and that key is always buried in an email, or sitting in your account with that vendor, exactly when you need it. The License Key Vault gives those keys one place to live. Open Tools ▸ License Key Vault… from the menu bar, or right-click any plugin row (or click its ⋮ menu) and choose License Key Vault… to jump straight to that vendor's keys.
Opening the vault takes Touch ID or your Mac password (on Macs without Touch ID, your login password does the same job). The vault stays unlocked while you're using it, then locks itself again when you close it or leave it idle for five minutes.
.freakshow files, for example). Attach a key file… stores the file itself, encrypted in your Keychain like any key, and remembers where it came from. Its row gets a Save a copy… button that writes an exact copy of the file back out whenever you need it again.Built private from the start:
The vault can hand its keys to PluginHub on another Mac with a single encrypted transfer file. Click Export keys… at the bottom of the vault, confirm with Touch ID or your password, and choose how the file is protected:
Move the .phvault file to the other Mac however you like (AirDrop works great), then click Import keys… in the vault there. If the file is passphrase protected, PluginHub asks for the passphrase first. Either way, nothing lands until you review what's inside: pick exactly which vendors and plugins to bring in, with keys you already have greyed out as "already here". Importing never creates duplicates and never touches the keys already in your vault, so repeating the round trip as your collection grows is always safe. Attached key files travel along with your text keys.
The transfer file is encrypted end to end, and PluginHub never uploads it anywhere: it exists only where you put it.
The Plugin folders chip in the dashboard header opens a small dropdown with two tabs:
/Library/Application Support/Avid, AU in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, VST3 in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3, VST in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST). Click any to open it in Finder.(Unused) folders. Only enabled once you've actually moved something there.
By default PluginHub scans the standard macOS plugin folders. If you also keep plugins somewhere else, on an external SSD for example, open Settings ▸ Custom Install Paths… from the menu bar and add those folders. Each format can have as many extra folders as you need.
The Plugin folders dropdown lists each custom folder under its format (for example VST3 · SSD), with its own (Unused) row, and the Restore picker finds plugins in every (Unused) folder. If you chose a separate (Unused) location in an earlier version, it stays listed under its format and Restore still finds what you moved there.
The PluginHub menu bar icon is the global launcher. Click it to see:
Daily / Weekly / Monthly. Default daily. PluginHub runs a quiet check on this cadence in the background; the menu bar count refreshes automatically when it lands.
Off by default. Enable to get a brief audible cue when a scan finds new updates.
Off by default. Adds PluginHub to your macOS Login Items so it starts automatically with the system.
On by default. Controls whether snoozed plugins stay visible in their vendor cards (dimmed, with a snooze label) or are hidden from the dashboard entirely, with each affected card noting how many it’s hiding. Also togglable from any plugin row’s ⋮ menu. Covered in full in Snooze updates.
Opt-in. When enabled, PluginHub sends anonymized aggregate data on which vendors and plugins our user base has installed. We use this to prioritize new vendor support — see Privacy for what's shared (and what isn't).
Add extra plugin folders for each format, on top of the defaults. Covered in full in Custom Install Paths.
Two-step destructive confirm. Clears every PluginHub data file, cache, and preference. Does not remove plugins from disk, the .app bundle, saved vendor logins, or your License Key Vault keys (both live in your macOS Keychain, which a reset never touches). Useful when you want a clean first-install state.
To identify which plugins you have installed and which versions are current, PluginHub reads from two kinds of sources on disk:
.aaxplugin / .vst3 / .component / .vst / .clap bundles.PluginHub never reads:
~/Downloads.)Anonymous data sharing is opt-in and off by default. When enabled, PluginHub sends:
PluginHub never shares:
Vendor login credentials for PluginHub's own vendor-website auto-login feature are stored in your macOS Keychain and never leave your machine.
The same is true of the License Key Vault: keys you add are hand-entered by you, stored encrypted in your macOS Keychain, and never leave your Mac. They are never included in shared plugin lists, exports, debug logs, or anonymous data.
Click Refresh ⌘R from the menu bar. PluginHub builds an in-memory index from the on-disk catalog only when a scan runs.
The vendor's website may have changed how it publishes versions, or it may be blocking automated requests. PluginHub falls back to the cached version from our centralized catalog when this happens. If the failure persists across multiple refreshes, send us the debug log via Copy debug log → email support: support@pluginhubapp.com.
On macOS Ventura specifically, the prompt can sometimes spawn behind another app. PluginHub now brings itself to front before each prompt, but if you ever see "Awaiting password…" for more than a minute, just click Move again — the modal recovers automatically and the next try usually surfaces the prompt correctly.
macOS's App Management system gates apps that move plugin bundles inside /Library. Pick About permissions… from the menu bar for a walkthrough on granting access in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
Menu bar → Copy debug log. Pastes a single block to your clipboard with version info, recent scan results, and any error logs. Email it to support@pluginhubapp.com with a description of what went wrong.
PluginHub installs as a menu-bar app — there's no dock icon. It runs from a single /Applications/PluginHub.app bundle and stores your settings in ~/Library/Application Support/PluginHub. Nothing else on your system, no background services, no kernel extensions, no LaunchAgents.
Three ways to uninstall, in order of recommendation:
The PluginHub installer drops a PluginHub Uninstaller.app into your /Applications folder alongside the main app. Double-click it:
/Applications.The standalone uninstaller works even if PluginHub is currently running or if the menu-bar icon isn't visible for any reason — it force-quits the app and cleans up.
Click the PluginHub icon in your menu bar (top-right of the screen, near the clock) → Tools → Uninstall PluginHub…. This opens the same standalone uninstaller from Option A.
/Applications/PluginHub.app to the Trash.~/Library/Application Support/PluginHub — that's where the local scan cache and settings live.If you originally purchased a license and want a refund, email support@pluginhubapp.com with your order number — we'll process it and your license auto-deactivates.