THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS PROVIDED PRIMARILY FOR PLUGIN DEVELOPERS.
First party modules are now in a new core folder and only official plugins will be loaded from this folder. As part of this shift, we are also unifying where third-party plugins are loaded from and the folder structure for them.
OBS Studio will attempt the new location and folder structure first. If a plugin is loaded successfully, it will skip the same plugin if it is later found in a legacy location or folder structure.
These are the locations that OBS Studio will attempt to load a plugin named example-plugin
Windows
New Format
Module C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\example-plugin.dll
Data C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\data\*This was the previous recommended location but now has a slightly different folder structure.
Going forward this will be the only supported location and structure for plugins.
ProgramData (Legacy)
Module C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\bin\64bit\example-plugin.dll
Data C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\data\*If you have a plugin already installed to ProgramData, you MAY be able to resolve it being flagged as legacy by taking everything in the 64bit folder and moving it up to the main plugin folder next to data.
THIS APPROACH WILL NOT WORK FOR PLUGINS INSTALLED IN PROGRAM FILES OR PLUGINS WITH COMPLEX DEPENDENCIES
Please refer to guidance from plugin authors themselves whenever possible!
Program Files (Legacy)
Module C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit\example-plugin.dll
Data C:\Program Files\obs-studio\data\obs-plugins\example-plugin\*This is the location many plugins are incorrectly installed to and they will not be loaded in OBS Studio 34.0 onwards.
Plugin authors should update their installers or zip distributions for the ProgramData structure.
Developers should ensure that installers remove previous plugin files from this directory during installation.
Windows (Portable)
When using Portable mode, OBS Studio will now load plugins from a new folder named plugins in the root directory of the installation with the same updated folder structure.
Plugins placed in a folder named obs-plugins will continue to be loaded but flagged as Legacy and not load in the future.
Plugins in the ProgramData folder will be ignored by portable launches.
Module G:\portable\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\example-plugin.dll
Data G:\portable\obs-studio\plugins\example-plugin\data\*macOS
Plugin locations on macOS have not been changed.
Linux
Details coming soon.