Asking the user to enable plug-ins right after installing them is cumbersome

If a user is installing a plug-in it is reasonable to assume they want to use it. Therefore it should be enabled automatically.

Or at the very least, add a check box to the nyquist plug-in installer, such as “Enable this plug-in”. This checkbox should remember the last state, so that in the future the user can add and enable plug-ins with less clicks.

Another option would be, instead of the pop-up window after a successful installation that tells the user that they can now enable the plug-in, ask the user if they’d like to have the plug-in enabled, and give the option to “Remember this decision”, so that the user doesn’t need to go through these steps again.

it is reasonable to assume they want to use it.

Maybe not. We have some people who install suites or collections of plugins when they only want one or two in this immediate show or performance. Enabling all of them would be chaos in the editing operating panels, forcing the user to delete all the ones they didn’t want.

And, in addition, Add/Remove Plugins doesn’t always track the actual plugins available. You can have “phantom” plugins. I believe some of that is going to go away in the next Audacity release.

Koz

It’s a technical limitation. The Nyquist Plug-in Installer is itself a Nyquist plug-in.

Prior to this, users had to manually copy the Nyquist plug-in file into the correct location, and ensure that it had the correct “.ny” file extension (some web browsers add “.txt” to the file name, which makes them invalid as plug-ins). A lot of users had trouble doing this, which is what prompted me to write the installer.

Unfortunately it is not possible for Nyquist to also enable the plug-in, which is why this feature is missing.

If you, or anyone else, writes an installer that is able to do what the current installer does, and also enable the plug-in, then I expect the developers would be happy to replace the current installer. Until then, you’ve got the Nyquist version.

Checkbox would take care of that. You could even have individual checkboxes for each plugin added in that case.

Well that’s a real shame. I’ve not been able to install plugins either manually or with the plug-in installer. It feels like the software is actively fighting against me, I want to automate panning a track and right now the only solution I can see is to export the files to audacity and do it there.

As that’s a different question, please start a new topic (on the Linux forum board) and tells us all about it. Remember to include the Audacity version number, and give links to specific plug-ins that you are trying to use.

I’ll leave this topic open in case anyone wants to support your feature request (for possible addition to a future version of Audacity).

I did at the same time I made this post: Can't find Panramp plug-in

I think I’ll just keep my workflow separated, audacity for quick recordings and ardour for editing in depth. I do hope this and other features such as a searchbox for plug-ins (also made a post about that: Please add a search box to the plug-in manager) get added at some point.

Thank you for your help! :smiley: