I’ve had customer reports of all their plugins disappearing from Photoshop since about as soon as UXP launched. I never experience it myself . . . until today. Plugins installed from the Marketplace as well as those installed directly from .ccx files are gone. My plugins are gone and so are those from other developers. I rebooted my computer and they did NOT come back.
I’m on Windows, and it seems this is likely a Windows-only problem based on what I’ve heard from my customers. I checked the following path:
and both the “PluginData” and “SettingsStorage” folders are now gone for all of them. They get recreated when I reinstall them, but something deleted these two folders, and it wasn’t me.
I’ve know this has been a real problem for sometime now and was hoping it would happen to me so I could at least see what’s going on in the file system. Based on the feedback from other customers, once it starts, it also keeps happening. I can’t verify that yet, but given the amount of data that needs to be recreated for my plugins, it wold be a real PITA to have to reinstall AND reenter all that stuff.
I wish I had more info and a solution, but I don’t. Will post more if I can figure something out.
I reinstalled one plugin using a .ccx file.
Rebooted Photoshop.
All my installed plugins are now back in Photoshop’s “Plugins” menu.
However, all the saved plugin data is gone. All my plugins are at default. None of my personalized settings have come back. Not surprising since the “PluginData” folders were missing on the file system.
Can confirm. Had same happen twice some time ago. Also Win10. It’s been a while now, when all plugins are still there, but I guess this might happen any time again. And this happened just by restarting Ps - no upgrade or anything…
That has happened for some of my users too. Also, the missing data folders still happen too where the Enternal and Internal folders are missing. I typically just do a remote screen share with the users and add the folders in because it is too confusing trying to explain to the users how to do it themselves. It is a relatively low percentage but it still happens. I have to do this a couple times per month it seems which is a pretty low percentage of the users, but still happening.
Curious why you have to add them back manually, @ddbell? Is that your method to restore the user’s plugins without them having to run the .ccx installer again?
Sorry for the confusions. I guess there are 2 separate issues.
One issue is where the plugins just get removed for no reason. For those occurrences, it seems just reinstalling the plugins fixes it.
The other issue is for the missing data folder, but the plugins are still installed, In these cases, the Internal and External folders are missing from the plugin data folder path. In those cases, I always have the users try reinstalling the plugins first before I intervene. If there are still issue then I log in to help. It seems that sometimes those folders need manually added because reinstalling the plugins won’t fix the paths for the data folder. Maybe reinstalling Photoshop or the creative cloud app itself would fix this issue too, not sure on that.
I’ve seen the missing “External” folder issue too, but just once, and that was on a Mac. Do you know if it happens on Windows too @ddbell? Yes, it seems that is a different issue than the “PluginData” folders disappearing as the “External” and “Internal” folders are still present.
Honestly, I probably need to take better notes on these things for later reference but so much else going on that I have not done good enough note taking… so this is what I think based on memory…
I have seen a few of times in the last few months on Mac where I have had to create the Internal and Extenral folders under PluginsStorage\PHSP\23. After I create the External and then reinstall the plugins, it will autmatically create the folder with the plugin ID in the External Folder and then the PluginData folder in the PluginID folder. I think I may have seen this on windows quite a while ago but I can’t say for certain. Since the Internal Folder is also missing missing too, I just create that for the users while I am logged in to their computer.
I have had quite a few issue that I know for sure have been on both Windows and Mac where the user’s plugin data files disappear. In those cases I don’t know if the data folder itself is deleted or not. For those issues, when the user creates new data file then it works without me getting involved.
Anyway, I will try to make better notes for any more missing folders and files. Just so much going on as I have 10 plugins and have been converting all of them to UXP and then to UXP API 2 so I’ve had so much else going on. It’ hard to keep track of everything happening and it becomes foggy in my minds weeks or months later.