Published 19 Sep 2022

Blendermarket | AEscript App | Addon manager

Blendermarket is getting more addons, while the interface panels for Blender addons is too chaotic at the moment, if you have 10 addons installed. As you can see in the pic below, it's hard to see my addons.

Although there is an existing addon to organize your addons called Clean Panels , I think Blender should have their own addon manager like AE script app manager.

A category in the addon preferences that separates the internal addons and your installed addons e.g. |Official|Community|Testing|Blendermarket|Gumroad|Github| .
It should be easier to update your addons with a single click such as "update all" button. The category that are highlighted will get updated if "update all" is clicked. e.g. (If Community, Blendermarket, Github category are highlighted, update all button will trigger addons to update)

Mockup:

Much love #BlenderSupremacy

75%

Development Status: Open

ktorenz03

19 Sep 2022

3 Comments

xan2622 19 Sep 2022

There are several suggestions in your post. Please next time, consider separating each of them in a different post, it makes easier for people to upvote or downvote each idea.

1- The sidebar tabs clutter is a known issue.

A developer (Guillermo, aka "guishe") submitted a patch (not reviewed, not merged yet) to make add-on tabs in the sidebar not shrink when there are too many of them:
developer.blender.org/D15395
blenderartists.org/t/patch-ui-scroll-sidebar-category-tabs/1396725

2- You quoted CleanPanels but there are other alternative add-ons: such as SimpleTabs , N Panel Manager , etc:

3- I doubt that the Blender Foundation would ever accept to change the Preferences > Add-ons UI to add all these "add-ons marketplaces".

They recently changed the "add-ons submition guidelines": wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Addons
...and removed Archipack and BlenderKit from the default add-ons (it doesn't sound like they want real integration between Blender and commercial add-ons).
At least, they don't want, in Blender by default, add-ons that connect to the internet (except to Blender.org ) or "lite" add-ons that suggest users to buy "premium" versions of these add-ons. blenderartists.org/t/archipack-free-removal/1340851

4- That would be ideal indeed but some code (many lines of code maybe) would have to be added to support updating add-ons from BlenderMarket, Gumroad, Github... and if you read my anwser #3 above, I doubt this will ever happen.