Pedalboard Pluginary is an independent Python-based package and command-line tool that scans and lists VST-3 plugins on macOS and Windows, and Audio Unit (AU) plugins on macOS. It’s intended as a companion for the Pedalboard Python library by Spotify, but it’s not affiliated with Pedalboard or Spotify.

With Pedalboard Pluginary, you can scan and list VST-3 and AU audio plugins installed on your machine, including their default parameters.

• It automatically scans and catalogs VST-3 and AU plugins installed on your system.
• Provides a command-line interface (CLI) for quick access to your plugin library.
• Saves the plugin information in a JSON file. This file has the information about the plugin parameters and their default values.
• Works on Windows and macOS (Windows is currently untested).
• It bundles an ignores.json file, which “blacklists” some plugins that are known to cause issues with Pedalboard. It will not scan these, and will not include them in the cache. If you find that some plugins are not working with Pedalboard, you can add them to your ignores.json file. See “Contributing” section below.

I plan to extend the package with another functionality, “jobs”, which will allow to load a stack of plugins with their parameter values from a dictionary or JSON file, and run them in a batch using Pedalboard.

To install Pedalboard Pluginary, run:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pedalboard-pluginary

For the current development version:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/twardoch/pedalboard-pluginary

After installation, you can use pbpluginary from the command line.

• pbpluginary list displays the plugin information stored in the cache, as a JSON. If no cache exists, it will scan your system and create the cache.
• pbpluginary scan scans all available plugins, and caches the information. Run this if you’ve installed or upgraded some VST-3 or AU plugins.

You can use Pedalboard Pluginary as a library in your Python scripts. Here's a quick example:

from pedalboard_pluginary import PedalboardPluginary

pluginary = PedalboardPluginary()
print(pluginary.list_plugins())

This snippet will list all plugins that have been scanned and cached, as a JSON.

• v1.1.0: Added update CLI command which only scans plugins that aren’t cached yet. Not perfect. Added json and yaml CLI commands. Additional refactorings.
• v1.0.0: Initial release with basic scanning and listing of both VST-3 and AU plugins, and command-line interface for easy interaction.

• Pedalboard Pluginary is written by Adam Twardoch, with assistance from GPT-4.
• Copyright (c) 2023 Adam Twardoch.
• Licensed under the Apache-2.0 license.
• Pedalboard Pluginary is not affiliated with Pedalboard or Spotify.

• If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, feel free to open an issue on GitHub.
• If you find that some plugins are not working with Pedalboard, open an issue that lists the key, which is the plugin type and the base filename, like "aufx/CoreAudio" or "vst3/RX 10 Connect". You can also modify the default_ignores.json file, and submit a pull request.
• If you want to contribute code, please open a pull request.