Hi everyone!

I’d love to get your thoughts on something I’m building — a VST Studio Manager for managing plugins and libraries.

What it does:
It scans your VST plugins, Kontakt libraries, Nexus libraries, and UVI libraries, then lists them in a clean, easy-to-use app where you can:

• Add custom tags
• Mark favorites
• Use an intelligent search box for powerful filtering
  

Here’s a work-in-progress prototype:



The idea:
It’s meant to be a power browser and inspiration hub, giving you all your plugin info instantly — locally, on your desktop — with lightning-fast search and filtering.

Why I’m making it:
I’ve often hit composer’s block, and I’ve noticed that discovering a new tool (or just being reminded of one I’d forgotten) can spark creativity again. Web browsing during a session is a distraction, but having an app integrated with your DAW keeps you in the creative flow — like an open workshop at your fingertips.

With thousands of plugins available, it’s easy to forget what you already own — whether that compressor is VCA or Opto, or that you already have five great bus compressors installed. This app makes sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Bonus for REAPER users:
You’ll be able to load a selected plugin directly onto a chosen track with one click, browse RFX chains and track templates, and — if testing goes well — load those chains and templates just as easily.

My question:
Would you use this app if it were reasonably priced? (And I mean really reasonably!)

I’m aiming to finish it within the next month or two, and I’d love to know if this is something you’d find useful.

 

"But it doesn't support MY favourite sampler."
"My DAW already has a search box for most of this."
"I use a file browser for Kontakt."
"There's a Reaper script for that."

Perhaps if it came pre-loaded with a huge, manually verified database of tags, rather than only the plugin's self-identified categories.

 

Yeah, I know all of this - but file browser, search boxes and scripts do not allow to have the flexibility for easy tag browsing, previewing interface before you load the plug or library and power filtering. I use Reaper for years and if it had something that I am making I would not start making it .

I need to be able to browse my tools and select the best for the job quickly and not wonder "what is F 59 by Fuse Audio Labs, what it does, what tracks could benefit from it, when I used last time did I like it? Without going online and losing focus. Tag system that I implemented already is pretty robust - you can add any tag to one of 8 categories and show only tags / columns that you need / like. I thought that if it will make working with my music plugins and libraries easier than maybe it can be useful for others. That's why I ask

 

No. I have a text file inventory of my installed plugins, saved by chatgpt; and it can answer questions based on my already installed plugins.
But I only have so many plugins anyway, so I really don't need help remembering what they do, are my favorites, etc. I have most of my plugins "init" settings saved to be my most common settings so they load that way. If I wanted more options than that, I would put my inventory list into an Excel spreadsheet. I would do that if I had thousands of plugins to sift through, because you have all the sorting, conditional formatting, macros, and formulas if the plugin data is actually large enough to do so. There is no "big data" out there Excel cannot handle masterfully.

The last thing I need is another proprietary program to invest time into like Midiquest or a sample manager app.

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2025 at 9:05 PM

Is your program any better than the kvr plugin manager?

https://www.kvraudio.com/kvr-studio-manager

 

This one is cool and Free, maybe it will inspire you, I am sure there is a need for your software:

OwlPlug - Audio Plugins management - Free --> https://owlplug.com

OwlPlug is a desktop application for Windows, Mac and Linux, that simplifies Audio Plugins management and installation.

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2025 at 6:08 PM

Yep. KVR Studio Manager does not allow you to personalize lists and do fast search, no user tags too. No loading directly into app.

 

I know OwlPlug, nice app but I think it is no longer developed.

 

Nice When it comes to Excel spreadsheet - I used that in the past, but I found it cumbersome and not flexible enough, even with filtering. That's when I thought I want to do something better and more pleasant to browse. You know - when I need some distortion there are 50 or more options in my list. But in my memory - maybe five or six that I used already. And many plugins have names that do not use keyword "distortion" or "saturation" so you cannot search them by keyword. And Reaper categorization is only good until you re-install and suddenly Reaper does not remember what should go into which category so you are building it again ;) My app should avoid all these problems and add one bonus: optionally it will be able to list plugins from the category / keyword you seek that are not available on your system, but maybe they can be interesting to get someday. Like a discovery tool.

 

Logic is the same way in that the plugin menu system was not really created with much customization in mind. You can do it, but it's not about to help you with any of it. You can't just make some sub folders and stick them into them, or anything like that; so it is a decent amount of work if you have hundreds of plugins.

As for Excel data, getting the information into that format is one of the things AI does best (formatting, lookups, etc). So if you upload your plugin inventory to it, it could create a spreadsheet or comma separated values file; and then go out and fill in the columns with the data containing your categories, descriptions, and so on. In an excel file, you could also create a column with hyperlinks to each plugin's user manuals, wether stored on your local drives or on the dev websites. When you get down to the brass tacks of your plugins, you are basically managing an inventory of something. Maybe you could add some features integrating options like those to expand functionality or reduce the time investment getting something like this up and running for users. All the initial setup time is the major hurdle to most of these applications.

 

What about people who dont have excel?

 

Nothing screams out at me 'I must have this'' but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try it. Anything that improves workflow seems a good idea to me.

I wish you every success with it.

 

I did (with @Will Kweks ) something like this. Check this out.

- multiplatform
- blazing fast
- vas, vst3, clap, lv2

https://codeberg.org/deathroit/f-ing-simple-plugin-manager/src/branch/main/README.md

 

Haha, nice work!

 

The only things I'd be interested in a plugin manager would be the ability to completely uninstall the plugins and any traces left, and, besides filtering, the ability to create my own categories/lists.

 

https://www.widebluesound.com/audio-plugin-uninstaller/

It is for Mac only, but it is exactly what this is describing. If there is nothing comparable for Windows, someone should make one. Or it could be a tab on a full app that does other stuff too. That one is 9.00 now, but it has been a free promo from them before.

 

User categories are perfectly doable. User tags are already implemented.

 

Stuff like this will absolutely rely on having curated tags to go along with it. If you can stitch together a community of people doing it and sharing their tags it could work. But either the thing has to be free or the ecosystem already big to get enough folks to do this.

But... I'm a NI NKS user, and NKS is the closest we've got (I think) to something like this. Now the NI/NKS ecosystem is massive and there is (because of it's size) a decent amount of people releasing NKS content (as in, tagged preset libraries) and you got 3rd parties releasing NKS tags and Komplete settings with their libraries/plugins. Even then the problem is the lack of cohesion in the tagging.

Can you komp... compete with something of that size? Could I import all of my NKS kon... content (sorry, I'm gonna stop this now) into this new thingy? Doing same thing but better faster stronger?

And for me as a NKS user... it'd take quite a bit to get me to switch.

Sounds awfully negative, given that I like the idea of having "one library to rule them all", but that's what I think.

 

Yeah, it makes sense, that's easily doable on MacOS. I'm using Windows and Windows has its own quirks when it comes to that, Revo Uninstaller followed by a search with Everything usually does the job, but it would be great to have that built-in in a plugin manager.