Can't delete specific plug-ins / audio units.

I installed the demo version of Isotope which also included some VST's and Audio Units. Now I deleted it, but I'm not able to delete it from Logic Pro.

 

First I deleted any Izotope plug-ins I could find in:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/

~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/

 

Then I deleted the com.apple.audiounits.cache to make Logic rescan the Audio Units. It then keeps on mentioning that certain plug-ins were 'incompatible' and when I open the Plug-in Manager, Izotope is still there under Manufacturers and lists a bunch of 'RX 7' plugins. Each saying 'cannot be opened' and unchecked.

 

Now how can I remove the manufacturer Izotope and it's plug-ins that were at some point installed? I'm on the latest Mac running Big Sur and a fully updated Logic Pro 10.6.3.

Never mind. I tried Izotop's own 'Product Portal' app, which also scans for installed products/trials and gives an uninstall option. Looks like there are more audio units plugin locations than those two 'compoents' ones mentioned above. It now has uninstalled all traces of their audio units. Logic scanned for them but couldn't find them this time. It did take a reboot though, not a restart. When I did a restart it still could 'see' traces of that plugin. When I did a full reboot of my Mac it didn't find those anymore.

No, there are only two system-defined audio unit folders.

Still… clearing both folders didn’t help. Logic still saw those audio units after scanning. It was only when I used the isotope uninstaller that they were finally removed. Weird…

I don't know what's happening on your system, but various things could be going on - examples - Waves plugins don't exist in the plugin folders, they just have one Waveshell, and the actual plugins are elsewhere. Similar can be true for wrapped plugins, or plugins can still be actively loaded even if moved to the trash before a reboot.

 

In any case, you cannot clear out your AU plugin folders completely, empty the cache, and reboot your computer, and still find AU plugins available on the system. In my experience here, everyone who's said "I can't find a plugin but it's still on my system" simply just missed it in the plugin folders, or didn't spot how it was named etc.

 

In any case, like I say, no idea what was going on in your case, but it seems to be fixed, so...

I've had the same issue, attempting to delete plugins from the Plugin Manager list would fail. I'll investigate the Izotope uninstaller but I think I had the same problem with ANY disabled (intentionally) plugin. Stay tuned...

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but you can't delete plugins from the Plugin Manager list.

 

To delete a plugin, you must at minimum remove it from whichever one of the Audio Unit component standard folders it's in, then restarting Logic.

 

There are a few plugins that are a little more tricky, like Waves, where the actual plugins are elsewhere and managed by their own shell system - in that case, you must use their own tools to "unregister"/delete a plugin.

Thanks for the clarification, des99. The current Logic Manual (page 599?) refers to "REMOVE a plug-in" by clicking on the plugin entry in Plugin Manager list and pressing the Delete key from there. I suspect this may only refer to creating categories containing plug-ins, not the original plug-in list entry itself. Further clarification welcomed:

 

Use the Plug-in Manager

 

Remove an existing category or plug-in

 

Do one of the following:

 

Select the category or plug-in, then press the Delete key.

 

Control-click the category or plug-in, then click Remove.

 

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. “Logic Pro.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/logic-pro-user-guide/id960809726

Yes, that's to hide the plugin from being displayed in Logic, which is very different to "deleting the plugin from your system" or uninstalling it.

 

You can hide a plugin in Logic, but it doesn't remove it from your system, prevent it from being loaded or scanned, or prevent it being used in other apps on your system.

 

Deleting/uninstalling a plugin as described in my post above removes it from the system - it will not be scanned, it will not be available in any apps, and will therefore use no resources and not be loaded at all.

 

Hope that clarifies the behaviour...

Thanks again for the clarification, however I've found that the manual's procedures have NO effect on the Plugin Manager list, the plugin remains visible. Either procedure does not remove the plugin from the Plugin Manager list. Is removing a plugin from the Plugin Manager list only possible by navigating to the plugin folder(s) and deleting the plugin file from the disk?

By "manual's procedures" I was referring to the "Do one of the following" actions.

Thanks again for the clarification, however I've found that the manual's procedures have NO effect on the Plugin Manager list, the plugin remains visible.

 

I think you're misunderstanding how it works. Hidden plugins are not removed from the Plugin Manager (which shows all plugins installed on your system).

If it did, you've never be able to "unhide" a previously hidden plugin, because you couldn't click on it in the list if it was no longer there.

 

The Plugin Manager lets you manage plugins - by unticking them, those plugins will not appear in any of Logic's menus. In custom categories, "deleting" them (ie hitting backspace) will remove them *from those folders/categories*, because you quite often want to change what plugins appear in your eg "My Favourite Compressors" plugin category/folder, but it won't remove them from the Plugin Manager completely (because you might want to put them in other categories, or hide/unhide at your whim.)

 

(Your post you quote above describes the procedure to remove a plugin *from a folder/category* in Logic using the Plugin Manager, not to completely remove the plugin from the Plugin Manager - as you correctly suspected.)

 

Either procedure does not remove the plugin from the Plugin Manager list. Is removing a plugin from the Plugin Manager list only possible by navigating to the plugin folder(s) and deleting the plugin file from the disk?

 

Correct - the Plugin Manager will show you *all plugins installed on the system*, and let you hide/unhide and reorganise them in the Plugin Manager to customise how they appear in Logic. To completely remove a plugin, as I say, you need to delete/uninstall the plugin from *the plugin folder on disk* and reboot.

 

As those plugins you manually delete are no longer on the system, no application, Logic included, will even show an entry for that plugin, because it's no longer installed.

 

Just remember, Logic's Plugin Manager is to customise how plugins on your system *are displayed in Logic*.

It does not manage the plugins on your system at a system level.

 

Hope that helps.

Very helpful, des99, thanks for your explanation, your closing paragraph should be in the Logic manual.

And I just confirmed that the Izotope Product Portal Uninstall procedure seems to have worked (after running it twice), Plug-in Manager no longer shows the product I just uninstalled. The Izotope Product Portal Uninstall option produced some "folder not empty" error messages but clicking through the messages had the desired result. As long as it works I don't care if it had to be executed twice.

Great!