How to view Plugin Manager in Notepad++

Question

As of Notepad++ version 7.5, plugin manager is no longer shipped with Notepad++

From the Notepad++ release notes:

You may notice that Plugin Manager plugin has been removed from the official distribution. The reason is Plugin Manager contains the advertising in its dialog. I hate Ads in applications, and I ensure you that there was no, and there will never be Ads in Notepad++.

A built-in Plugin Manager is in progress, and I will do my best to ship it with Notepad++ ASAP.

If the above doesn't put you off, and you want to proceed and install the plugin manager anyway, it looks like there's a GitHub repository for nppPluginManager - though I haven't personally used it, so cannot comment on it's validity.

The nppPluginManager installation instructions state:

To install the plugin manager, simply download (links below) the .zip, and place the PluginManager.dll file in the Notepad++ plugins directory, and the gpup.exe in the updater directory under your Notepad++ program directory. (e.g. "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\updater")

In fact, if you prefer, you can just add the PluginManager.dll to the plugins directory, then do a reinstall of Plugin Manager from the plugin itself, which will place the file in the right place! Of course, if you're already using an earlier version of the plugin manager, you'll be able to just update from the update tab (or when you get the notification that the update has happened).

The GitHub repository also contains the latest release.

Follow the steps given below:

1. Download Plugin Manager from here.

   • You can find the most updated version in the release section in the Git repository:

2. Extract the contents of zip file under "C:\Program Files\Notepad++"

3. Restart Notepad++

That's it !!

To install a plugin without Plugin Manager:

1. Download your plugin and extract contents in a folder. You will find a .dll file inside. Copy it.
2. Open C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\pluginsand paste the .dll
3. Run Notepad++

1. You can download the latest Plugin Manager version PluginManager_latest_version_x64.zip.

2. Unzip the file.

3. Copy

PluginManager_latest_version_x64.zip\updater\gpup.exe

into

path-to-installed-notepad\notepad++\updater\

4. Copy

PluginManager_latest_version_x64.zip\plugins\PluginManager.dll

into

path-to-installed-notepad\notepad++\plugins\

5. Start or restart Notepad++.
6. Enjoy!

Notepad v7.6 includes a Plugin Admin and from this you can install Plugin Manager(note1) but it doesn't work fine with npp v7.6(note2)

On the other hand Plugin Admin is only available on NPP "Setup version" and after following conditions

• on Custom installation, "Plugin Admin" checkbox is enabled
• on Choose Components "Don't use %APPDATA%" checkbox is disabled

Plugin Admin will place plugins at C:\ProgramData\Notepad++\plugins

(note1)Installation from Plugin Admin is not complete and \updater\gpup.exe is missing (note2) Plugin manager is not using new plugins path and folder structure; from version 7.6 npp Plugins will be stored in individual folders (having same name than file.dll)

If you want to use npp7.6 portable, you can copy updater folder from Setup version, copy plugins from Setup version, or copy Plugins from npp v<7.6 and place each one in a individual folder.