Blender Extensions v.s. Blender Add-ons

Introducing Blender Extensions with Blender 4.2

With the release of Blender 4.2, there’s been some new and very exciting changes with how Blender add-ons work. This update lays the groundwork for

Here’s the summary:

• Add-ons and theming are officially unified under the term “Extensions”
• Extensions can now be installed and also auto-updated right from within Blender
• Blender now hosts a public repository of open-source extensions to make it easier to find and manage them

What you must know:

• Add-ons and Themes are both considered “Blender Extensions”
• Internet access is not a requirement and offline-only workflows are still available and will be continued to be supported
• The Blender Extensions Portal only support open-source extensions
• Installing Blender extensions can be drag and dropped or installed directly from within Blender.

Fighting Fragmentation in Open Source with the Blender Extensions Portal

Blender has long been praised for its genuine approach to open source and has been a true blessing to many folks onboarding into the 3D world. With its free and open-source nature, most resources you need are readily available with the contributions from other Blender users. This, however, comes with its own unique challenges.

Consequently, Blender add-ons have largely been scattered across the internet because there hasn’t been an authoritative source for finding and obtaining them. Furthermore, obtaining add-ons came with risk on security, maintainability, and usability. Frequently, you’d have to download some .zip file from GitHub, BlenderMarket, BlenderArtists Forums, or just some random link. You wouldn’t know if the developers have maintained the Blender add-on, is compatible with your preferred Blender version, or if the extension was just not useful. To make things worse, when it came time to update, you’d have to find all those links, find the documentation, and do it all over again!

Luckily, Blender’s new portal at extensions.blender.org serves as a unified front for those extensions that are open source. It comes with some nice functionality to easily find and install new ones to try out. 

As seen above, you can search by text (2), browse through add-ons via their tags (1) or even sort by rating (3, 4). Notice that it also has a handy Downloads metrics (right side of 4) to see what’s popular.

This is super useful and helps you understand what can and can’t be trusted, and makes finding a specific new tool to improve your workflow noticeably easier.

Installation and Update Methods

Drag and Drop into Blender from the Blender Portal

Installation is easier than ever before, you can just drag and drop from the portal directly into Blender. This requires you to enable Internet Access, but we recommend you do for easy maintenance.

Download Directly from Blender

You can now directly download from within Blender. Just go to Preferences > Addons Note that this only applies to those add-ons that Blender supports directly. See our section on the Blender Platform for what’s supported.

Download from Disk

This method is still available to those that need it and supports those Blender Addons that are not available on the Blender Extensions Portal. There are no major differences here from previous Blender versions, but this method may be preferable for those who want offline-only access.

Our Take

Blender Extensions is a major step forward for the advancement of the ecosystem. It provides the foundation for consolidating what is currently a bit of a fragmented workflow when maintaining your Blender add-ons. We suspect it might take a while to get used to at the beginning, but if you’re committed to Blender over the long-term, this is the first step towards a far better workflow.

Was this useful to you or just need faster rendering? Check out Renderjuice to help us continue to move Blender forward.