open-ephys.github.io for the most up-to-date information.

Plugin Installer is a simple graphical user interface that allows the user to download and install all the plugins hosted on GitHub here. All the plugins on here are either developed by the Open Ephys team or community developed plugins that are officially recognized by Open Ephys.

To open Plugin Installer, go to File->Plugin Installer, or press the shortcut keys Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on macOS). This brings up the interface below:

Layout

At the top is the control panel of Plugin Installer that allows the user to:

Sort the plugins alphabetically in ascending (A to Z) or descending (Z to A) order.
View all the plugins available, plugins that are installed by Plugin Installer, or the installed plugins that have updates available.
Filter the plugins by type: Source, Filter, Sink or Other.

Next is the plugin list, which, as the name implies, shows the list of plugins available on the basis of the selections made in the control panel.

Lastly, the plugin information panel gives information regarding the plugin selected from the plugin list. This information includes the name of the plugin, owner, list of (compatible) versions available, last updated, description, and any external dependencies.

Installing a Plugin

To install a plugin, simply select the desired plugin from the plugin list, the plugin info panel will fetch the information of that plugin and display it. Then, select the desired version of that plugin from the drop-down menu, and click on Install. If everything works fine, a success message should pop-up saying that the plugin installed successfully. Now, the plugin should be loaded in the GUI, and it will show up in the Processor List of the main GUI window. If there is an error while installing the plugin, an error message should pop-up saying what kind of error it was. The error message will also be outputted to the console, if it is open.

Note: Plugins downloaded via Plugin Installer won’t load into the main GUI if plugin-GUI is built from source in Debug mode. Please make sure plugin-GUI is built in Release mode before installing any plugins.

Upgrade / Downgrade a Plugin

To check if any of the installed plugins have a newer version available, click on the Updates checkbox in the control panel. To upgrade that plugin, select the newest version of that plugin in the info panel, and the “Installed” button should change to “Upgrade“. Click on Upgrade, and this should upgrade the plugin to the version that you selected.
To downgrade a plugin to an older version (if available), click on the Installed checkbox in the control panel, click on the plugin you want to downgrade, select the older version from the Version drop-down menu. This should change the “Installed” button text to “Downgrade”. Click on Downgrade, and this should downgrade the plugin to the version that you selected.

Uninstalling a Plugin

Currently, Plugin Installer doesn’t support uninstalling a plugin directly from the GUI. To do that manually, go to the plugins directory which is at the same level as the open-ephys executable (for macOS, the plugins directly used by Plugin Installer is at ${YOUR_HOME_DIR}/Library/Application Support/open-ephys/plugins). Find the .dll / .so / .bundle file of the plugin you want to remove, and delete it. The next time you open Plugin Installer, you should be able to see that plugin as not installed.