I recently bought a new Apple Macbook Air, and want to do some housecleaning/organization of all my plugins. I was thinking of doing the usual tedious spreadsheet to do this, but perhaps some of you have an easier or more efficient way to do this. How do you organize your digital goods inventory?
Folder in my email for software purchases. It’s not very efficient. During installation I list of what I want on a piece of paper and tickit off as I go.
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don’t have a surplus of plugins is my method, it’s very easy to know what I have.
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Only essentials!
maybe not applicable to everyone but when I moved to mac studio I just decided to ditch everything except handful of vendors so I don’t need to remember stuff anymore, between FabFilter, Tokyo Dawn and Plugin Alliance I have everything I’d ever need so I know I only need to visit these vendors to download or update, my plugins were never this organized.
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1password can track licenses, you can tag them, too. Been using that for over a decade for all licenses I own (plus literally hundreds of passwords, and other stuff, of course)
Worth every penny, highly recommended.
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the problem for many is that 1password is subscription-based.
A lot of good replies. My thinking is also along the digital minimalist path a lot of you have taken. What I want to do is keep all my current plugins, but only load a few of them. If I ever need a ‘new’ plugin, I can just select one from the ones I haven’t loaded. But yeah, I’m probably only going to use stock Ableton, Oeksound, DMGaudio, Valhalla, and Softube.
I’m probably going to do what I did for my hardware serial numbers and just make a custom Mac Numbers spreadsheet.
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I don’t like that either. However, software costs money, and the service they provide (including hosting all that securely in the cloud so that you can access it anytime from anywhere) is absolutely worth the money for me. T
Besides, everyone needs a password manager, and I haven’t seen a better password manager so far. Tracking licenses, secure notes and all the other stuff is a free bonus.
When I had more apps, I used to put everything in sub folders like one for synths /drums/acoustic instruments etc.
I also used to have a sub folder for apps I use regularly and also check in every few months if that’s still true for all of them
Keepass XC, its free, and you can organize stuff , and its secure. (dont want your license stolen/hacked.)
Backup the storage file on usb drive or better NAS.
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wow, there is native Linux version of Keepass XC!
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I archive them in my e-mail.
I do the same and sync the password-db with Syncthing.
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Wow that sync thing looks fantastic, colab sample heaven. Can one set filetype to only allow wav for example?
It isn’t really meant for public sharing, it’s for syncing files between your own devices. Of course you could add someone else’s device and configure a folder to share with this device but there are better ways to do public sharing in my opinion.
I have a spreadsheet that lists all purchases and the cost etc.
I also have a folder with my most used plugins with a simple text file and the latest installer.
But this (for 3rd party plugs) is quite handy. https://www.kvraudio.com/kvr-studio-manager
Yes it spams you unless you unsubscribe from the emails it sends. But if you load this up it is a pretty easy way to track what you have and any updates you might want to be downloading.
It’s been quite a long time since I installed all my plugins and set up my DAW but I had reason to do it the other day, on a new laptop. I took a pretty laid back approach - if I can’t remember I bought it then I probably don’t need to install it. Even so, as I progressed through searching my gmail account for license keys and activation codes, I surprised myself with how many more plugins came back into mind over the course of a couple of hours.
It did make me think I probably should record a list of everything I have, but at the same time I’m still of the mind that if I can’t remember it unprompted, then installing it is probably not going to help my DAW workflow.
You could always start your own personal knowledge base.
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ilok