Fill FL Studio's picker with pictures of your plugins. Sort your VST3 and VST plugins by developer. Check, turn off and remove them, all in one window.
Free and open source. For Mac with Apple Silicon or Intel, macOS 11 or later.
In FL Studio
In FL Studio a thumbnail is a manual job, one plugin at a time, so many third-party plugins stay plain text in the picker. Plugin Sorter fills the plugin picker in one go, with a shot of the real interface wherever a plugin has an Audio Unit version. Your third-party plugins finally look like FL's own.
In your plugin folder
After a few years of production the plugin folder turns into a flat wall of hundreds of files. Plugin Sorter is a VST plugin manager for Mac that works out who made each plugin and puts things in order.
VST3 and VST plugins move into one folder per developer. The name comes from the plugin itself, so OTT lands in Xfer Records. You see every move first, and one click undoes it.
Illustration. The plugins with warnings are made up.
Every plugin gets a test load in the background. The lamps show what works, and a problem comes with plain words and often a one-click fix.
A plugin leaves with its preferences, caches and installer receipts. A developer's folder is never ticked for you.
Old versions and extra copies are listed for you. Nothing is ticked until you decide.
Hide a plugin from every DAW without removing it. Turn it back on any time.
Keep licenses in the macOS Keychain, add tags and colours, export the list.
Flip the list into picture cards and pick a skin. Graphite panels and status lamps, like the plugins you already love. A tool you open every day should feel good.
Colour skins
Side by side
Plugin Sorter works alongside FL Studio, not instead of it. FL still scans your plugins. Plugin Sorter takes on what its Plugin Manager leaves to you.
| What you need | FL Studio Plugin Manager | Plugin Sorter |
|---|---|---|
| Scan plugins into FL Studio's database | Yes | No, FL Studio does this |
| Find and check installed plugins | Yes | Yes, in plain words, with fixes |
| Picture for each plugin | By hand, one at a time | All plugins at once |
| Favourites under the picker's tabs | By hand | One click |
| Sort plugin files by developer | No | Yes, with undo |
| Hide a plugin from every DAW | No | Yes, and bring it back any time |
| Uninstall with preferences, caches and installer receipts | No | Yes |
| Send old versions and extra copies to the Trash | No | Yes |
| Keep licenses in the macOS Keychain | No | Yes |
| Export the plugin list to Markdown, CSV or JSON | No | Yes |
Three steps
Get PluginSorter.dmg from the latest release.
Open the file and drag Plugin Sorter onto the Applications folder.
macOS refuses to open the app the first time. You only do this once.
The warning appears because the app is not notarized by Apple. The source code is open on GitHub, so you can read it or build it yourself.
Mac only. Reading on a phone? Open this page on your Mac.
Yes. It is free and open source under the MIT license.
Yes. It is a universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, macOS 11 or later.
You see every move before it happens, each run writes a log, and Undo puts everything back. DAWs identify plugins by their IDs, not their paths, so existing projects normally keep loading them, and if another plugin loads a moved bundle, a one-click fix puts it back. Sorting asks for an administrator password, and FL Studio needs a rescan afterwards.
The app is not notarized by Apple, so macOS stops the first launch. Allow it once. On macOS 15 and later that's in System Settings, Privacy & Security. On older versions right-click the app and choose Open.
They stay in the Components folder. macOS only registers Audio Units that sit directly in it, so Plugin Sorter never moves them into developer folders.
No, they work side by side. FL Studio still scans your plugins. Plugin Sorter adds the pictures, the categories and the tidy folders.
Pictures and categories are for FL Studio. Sorting, checks, turning off and clean uninstall deal with the plugin files, so they help whatever DAW you use.
From the author
I made Plugin Sorter because my plugin folder was a mess and many plugins in my picker were plain text. If it helps you too, that's the best thanks. A star on GitHub helps other musicians find it.
Mac only. Reading on a phone? Open this page on your Mac.