This is for everybody trying to avoid cluttered plugin folders and plugin lists and saving disk space by removing plugins you don't have licenses for.

Background: if you install Universal Audio Plugins you cannot select which plugins and formats will be installed. Instead it just installs everything – about 190 plugins per plugin format (Audio Units, VSTs, AAX and the actual main plugins in Application Support) which is really annoying. You waste like 16 GB of space in various locactions for a couple of plugins you may own.

What to delete? Delete all the "UAD" Plugins you don't own/need from the following locations:

Audio Units: Library > Audio Plugins > Components
VST Plugins (Stereo): Library > Audio Plugins > VST > Powered Plugins
VST Plugins (Mono): Library > Audio Plugins > VST > Powered Plugins > Mono
AAX Plugins: Library > Application Support > Avid > Audio > Plugins > Universal Audio
RTAS Plugins: Library > Application Support > Digidesign > Plugins > Universal Audio
And finally: Library > Application Support > Universal Audio > UAD-2 Powered Plugins

After that you gain back a lot of disk space and have only the plugins you have licenses for in your DAW's plugin list.

NOTE: The only downside to this method is that have you do this all over again once an update is released and/or if you decide to buy a license for a new/different plugin which you have deleted previously. In this case you have to run the installer again to get the missing plugin.

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any issues with plugins that may occur after doing something wrong. If that happens just re-install the plugins and you're fine.

 

Last edited: Feb 29, 2020

This is the one thing I absolutely HATE about UAD. That said, what I do is at each update, I go to the plugs in list view in alpha order and highlight all in each folder, then I open my UAD plug auth window, then I uncheck the ones that are authorized, then I send the rest to the trash, rinse and repeat till done. What an unnecessary waste of my time. And while I'm on the rant, another thing that bugs the hell out of me is when any dev's installer doesn't allow you to uncheck things like aax plugins during the install for instance.

 

Or, you can make your life easier by using the "Hide & Seek UAD Plugins" app.

http://sheepbox.dlinkddns.com:8445/

You'll need the latest version of the app, from the link above, everytime you update your UAD software.

 

Cool, I didn't know this existed. Probably easier to use than deleting everything by hand. I've got to check out how works.

EDIT: In my case the App crashes when opening the UAD System Profile. I'll test it again when a new version is out since I already deleted plugins I don't use manually.

EDIT 2: looks like this site is dead.

 

Last edited: Jun 16, 2020

Hello.
New link is:
http://sheepbox.ddns.net:8445

 

Will give this a try. problem compounded in Luna too.

 

Worked like a charm. My Pro tools plugin list looks much cleaner now. You still have to go in the the "UAD-2 Powered Plugins folder to manually delete from there. Deleting from this folder is what frees up the most space.

 

how do I download this?

 

Just remove the plugins manually. This is one of the worst hosted software I know of. Links are always down, the site is not working, searching leads to nowhere.

 

tbh, kind of a big thing for UAD to ignore...
and it cant be a difficult fix. But i guess they put more effort in their marketing and security departments