7. Installed Plugins not shown in the Plugin list on the Mac

Modified on Thu, 10 Oct at 12:57 AM

The MP host will scan

(by scan we mean that it read and display just the filenames at first and fully scan a plugin once you choose to load/use the plugin)

the AU plugins in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components
the VST2 plugins in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
the VST3 plugins in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3

If the VST3 plugins are not shown in the MP Host list, navigate to the host.properties folder and rename it or delete it.

Close any MP Host instances you have running.

Then reset the permissions on the VST3 folder by running in the Mac terminal:

sudo chmod -R 777 /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/

enter your password and hit enter. It should not produce any output on the terminal.

Then

sudo chmod -R 777 /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/*.vst3

enter your password and hit enter. It should not produce any output on the terminal.

Then reopen the MP Host Audio FX plugin and you will need to choose the target monitor from the right click menu. Then open the Plugin List and choose Quickscan. It should show all the VST3 plugins in the plugin list.

As you may have noticed it has generated a new host.properties file.

For more information please see this article on how the MP Host scans and finds plugins.

Plugins also may be removed from the plugin list (after you scan or try to try to load them once) if they are not universal binaries (Apple Silicon ARM and x86). You can find if a plugin is built for both architectures by running lipo -info PLUGIN_PATH in a terminal

For example: lipo -info /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/reverbA.vst3

MacOS Plugins in ~/Library/ and /Library/

It is possible to have the plugins in the user Library as well.

This may result in duplicate plugins.

Check this location: ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/

if you have plugins here delete them.

The correct location is /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/

Force Ableton Live to find new plugins on MacOS and Windows

If you have a large number of plugins and Ableton does not show the new version of the MP Host try the following methods:

1. Rescan Plugins in Ableton Live:

Open Ableton Live.
Navigate to Live > Preferences (or Options > Preferences on Windows).
In the Preferences window, go to the Plugins tab.
Click the Rescan button to force Ableton to rescan the plugin folders.

2. Clear Plugin Cache Manually:

On macOS, the cache files are located in:
- ~/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live x.x.x/
On Windows, the cache files are in:
- C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Preferences\

Inside these directories, locate and delete the file PluginScanV2 (this file holds cache data for your plugins).

3. Rescan AU/VST if Using macOS (for Audio Units only):

If you're using Audio Units (AU), resetting the cache may also involve rescanning AU plugins:
- Open a Terminal and run the following command:
```
killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar
```

This will force the macOS to reload the list of installed AU plugins.

After these steps, Ableton Live should detect the new versions of your VST plugins properly.