Me and my colleagues creative cloud apps are not installing plugins when we double click the .ccx files.
We have tried old trusted and tested plugins and newer ones. none want to install. If i double click the .ccx, a cmd window flashes up and disappears again and then nothing happens.
We uninstalled working plugins from CC and then tried reinstalling those exact same plugins and they will not install.
Anyone else experienced this before?
Mostly @gregbenz’s customers 
He has written what may be the ultimate guide to troubleshooting CCX installations: Lumenzia Installation ← Please read through his guide, and report back if any/which of the steps were helpful.
The official Adobe guide is here: Find solutions for installation issues with Creative Cloud app extensions and plugins although it could use some updates about installing CCX files from outside the Marketplace.
Is your problem happening in Windows or macOS? I ask because we see it more often in Windows…
Finally, if you’re still having problems, you can follow the steps here: Allow offline development - #14 by Erin_Finnegan
When that black screen glitches, it’s a failure of UPIA and you’ll have to run from the command line to see the error code.
The majority of issues are ultimately seem to be related to file permissions, but UPIA won’t necessarily give a clear indication of that. The first step should always be to move the CCX to the desktop and double click it there, that frequently gets around permission errors.
Its on windows systems that we are having this issue
On Windows, it does not work when you use e.g. Total Commander with admin privileges. Both Photoshop and the app where you double-click the icon should have the same privileges.
I told @Erin_Finnegan before that CCD app should have some menu item like File > Load plugin .ccx
So it would not rely only on OS file associations and there would be a backup method.
It would be nice if opening in CCD worked, many people try to force that instead of UPIA. No idea why so many people seem to break what’s working, but I see a lot of people try to force use of PS or CCD on systems where UPIA probably would have worked.
This is an increasingly common issue with installing third-party UXP plugins that aren’t on the Marketplace. Installing plugins from the Marketplace still works, it’s just the ones being installed directly from .ccx files that don’t. I had no reports like this when UXP was first introduced, but now get one or two each week, almost exclusively on Windows computers, both Window 10 and Windows 11. There’s definitely a problem here that needs a solution.
UPIA installation has been reported to work on a couple occasions, but command-line installation is beyond the capability of many Photoshop users. So, expecting users to successfully implement this really isn’t viable for many customers.
What does that flash of the command-prompt Window indicate? That’s a feature that almost everyone with the problem reports.
You did - and I still have the suggestion saved in Slack, because I think it’s a great idea.
@agandhi and @pkrishna please note that requesting such a feature from the Creative Cloud desktop app team would unburden me, the community of developers, and potentially the review team of support requests like this one.
We could also potentially ask the app team how often people are using such a menu item, and gather some statistics on how often CCX files are installed using this method…
@Erin_Finnegan Could it be updated to accept a CCX file opened directly in CCD? That would be even simpler than File / Load and would avoid another edge case (users assume they should open with that app since that’s what they see in normal use).
I suggest it as fallback solution. If A does not work, try B (with menu).
Thank you for all your help and comments people. Ive been busy with some other game bugs and have not yet had a chance to deep dive further into the CCD issues. Ive gotten the plugin working with the CMD install, but that’s not ideal for the rest of my team. Ill spend some more time next week to work more thoroughly through your posted suggestions and see if i can find a better workaround and post back if I find anything viable.
Hey guys. So I’ve been messing around for a bit.
The plugins we built for use internally, read and write from very specific locations when working in the background, so having the plugin installed in a location other than what the original was designed for caused issues. I did the UPI route using shell. That installed the plugin but it installed into a strange location and was not compatible with the plugin as it was installed in a different location compared to a creative cloud install. This method also caused headaches for debugging. I was not able to update the plugin easily.
I ended up just unzipping the ccx file and copying the contents into C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2023\Plug-ins
I then just have to restart PS if I want to make any code updates to the plugin, allowing me to debug any file location issues. Now it works like in the old days.