Using Laptop for Editing- Making sure all plugins are available

Hello. I hope a kind soul might know the answer to this question:

I have Ardour6 and Mixbus6 running great on my main desktop (Mac OS X 10.13). Over the years, I’ve downloaded tons of plugins (AU/VST) to this machine and have used them in many projects.

Now, I have set up a new Mac laptop with Ardour6 and Mixbus6, so that I can do editing and mixing of these projects on the go. This works great, except when a plugin is missing from the laptop that was on the desktop. :wink:

Question: What is the best way to make sure that all the plugins I have installed on the desktop computer (where the projects were created) are transferred to the laptop? I understand that I will have top copy them over. Is there a batch procedure? Is there some way to have ardour or Mixbus give me a list of all globally available plugins on the desktop, so that I can make sure I copy them all over to the laptop? Is there a way to do it that is organized and complete, rather than just hoping that I can find all the places the plugins are saved on the desktop and copy them over to the new laptop.

Any ideas?

Thanks so much and thanks to the developers and the community.

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On Mac OS most plugins are installed in various folders in /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/

I would start there.

  Seablade
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TLDR: batching is a messy affair. Keep installing when required.

macOS offers several migration assisting mechanisms which will copy most of your software and data across to the new device.
Be aware though that this will not free you from clutter you amassed on the old system.

Since you already started your new system, migration assistant might not be the best option.

So as @seablade said, you might want to copy

/Library/Audio/Plug-ins

over to the new box.
Be aware though that some plugins require additional files from /Library/Application\ Support or /Library/Audio/Presets.
This is also mirrored inside your home folder.

Also be aware that apple changed the default location for AU plugin presets and samples to ~/Music/Audio\ Apps (from the top of my head, check exact path spelling)
Some plugs are also saving their presets to ~/Documents/

So if you really want to batch this, there is a lot to miss unless you copy entire systems with an Assistent.

To avoid the mess, go through the annoyance of reinstalling the plugins as required. This will also prevent you from mucking your system with plugins you never used anyway.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the reply👍

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Thank you GenGen. Will do as you said!

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