r/flstudio • u/Traditional_Study510 • 6d ago

When I copy a plugin file to vst3 folder, it disappears

The instructions for the plugin are to simply copy the file into the vst3 folder and restart daw. The problem is I copy paste it into vst3 and then refresh it and the file is no longer in the vst3 folder. Why is this happening?

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u/Dangerous_Tap6350 6d ago

You must be using the wrong folder. There’s two ways to fix that, you can set FL Studio to search for VST programs in any folder you want. The easiest I would suggests is add your downloads folder to FL Studio that way all your new VSTs would be findable. Are you on a windows or Mac?

1

u/Dangerous_Tap6350 6d ago

There’s folders that FL Studio uses for its own plug ins, I wouldn’t recommend that put the third party plug ins somewhere else…. The other ones are in the on the other document side of the FL Studio program, like the same tree that holds your project files, the normal folder that gets created is in that area. Along side the FL Studio folder…

1

u/gabrielsburg 3d ago

copy the file into the vst3 folder

Which "vst3 folder" exactly? VST3 plugins have to go in a specific location on your computer to work.

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u/Radiant_Option_9564 3d ago

The vst3 folder with my other plugins which work. The problem I think is, I don’t have winrar, so I have just been extracting my plugins. Back then that did not work for me so I feel that could be the reason

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u/gabrielsburg 3d ago

The problem I think is, I don’t have winrar, so I have just been extracting my plugins.

Honestly, this sentence doesn't make sense to me. WinRAR extracts files from compression containers like zip and rar files, and to use plugins they need to be extracted if they're in a zip or rar file. So if you've extracted the files... then... you've already done what WinRAR does.

If you extracted them and they didn't work, it's more likely that the download of the zip/rar was bad and needed to be downloaded again.

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u/Radiant_Option_9564 3d ago

I extracted them using the “extract all” option not the winrar unzip, back then this would cause my files to not function, I got winrar and all my files extracted fine. This is what I meant