How to Update Blender Add-ons (2026)
Extensions from a repository update in place. Anything installed from disk never will — Blender's own manual says so. What to do in each case.
Most "my add-on won't update" questions have the same answer, and it is not the one people expect. Blender is not failing to check. It has nothing to check.
Since 4.2, add-ons live in repositories — a change that also reshaped how add-ons are installed. A repository is either remote — it has a URL Blender can query for a version list — or local, which means a folder you put files into by hand. Updates are a property of the repository, not of the add-on. Get that distinction and the rest of this page is bookkeeping.
Which case are you in
Installed from extensions.blender.org Remote repository. Updates work. Skip to the next section.
Bought on Superhive, dragged in from the receipt page Can be remote. Connect Superhive once and it updates in place from then on.
Downloaded a .zip and used Install from Disk Local repository. No updates, ever. Manual only.
Dragged a .zip onto the Blender window Also a local install. Same as above.
A legacy add-on with bl_info
Manual, unless the developer built their own updater into it.
Updating extensions from a repository
The exact clicks, because the menu is easy to miss:
- Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions.
- Open the dropdown menu at the top right of that panel (the one next to the search field).
- Refresh Remote — this is what actually contacts the online repositories and asks what versions exist.
- If anything is out of date, an Update All button appears in the panel. The same action is in that dropdown as Install Available Updates.
Two things worth knowing. Blender does not poll continuously — you check, or you enable the startup check below. And the repository's current version is always treated as the latest, so a developer who ships a bad build and rolls it back will have you "update" downwards.
No internet access? Check Preferences ▸ System ▸ Network ▸ Allow Online Access first. With it off, Blender cannot reach any remote repository and the update controls do nothing useful.
Turn on the startup check
Still in Get Extensions, scroll to Repositories and expand the remote one. Enable Check for Updates on Startup.
Blender then checks when it launches and puts a notification in the status bar — the strip along the bottom of the window — when something is out of date. It is per-repository, so if you have added a third-party repository you need to enable it there too.
The trade-off is a network request at every launch. If your Blender already opens slowly, that is worth knowing about, though add-ons themselves are almost always the larger cost — see speeding up Blender's startup.
Superhive purchases: connect it once
This is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone who buys add-ons, and most people do not know it exists.
Since Blender 4.2, Superhive can be added as a remote repository. Once connected, every extension you have ever bought there appears inside Blender with a one-click install, and updates arrive the same way official extensions do.
How it works: on a product page, the sidebar shows an Extension Type if the product qualifies. After purchase, the receipt page offers a drag-and-drop into Blender. The first time you do this, Blender prompts you to add Superhive as a remote repository, and you paste in your API token from your Superhive account.
The catch: only products that are packaged as extensions qualify. A product with no Extension Type in its sidebar is still a plain .zip, and lands in a local repository like anything else. Check the sidebar before you assume.
Zip files and Gumroad downloads
If you used Install from Disk, or dragged a .zip onto the Blender window, the add-on went into a local repository. Blender's manual is unambiguous about what that means:
This is installed to a Local Repository and no updates will be available.
There is no version list to fetch, because there is no URL. Blender is not being lazy — you handed it a file, and a file has no upstream.
This catches people out because the add-on works perfectly. Nothing is broken. You simply will not be told when version 2.4 fixes the bug you have been working around since 2.1, unless you go and look.
This includes my free ones. GeoCables, Bake a Node and the rest are Gumroad downloads. Install them from disk and Blender will never mention an update to you either. I am not exempt from the problem I built a service around.
Updating a disk-installed add-on by hand
The safe order matters more than people expect.
- Note your preferences first. Open the add-on's preferences and screenshot or write down anything you have customised — asset library paths, keymaps, API keys. Most add-ons store preferences keyed to the module name and survive a reinstall; enough do not that a screenshot is cheap insurance.
- Disable the old version rather than deleting it blind.
- Remove it. In Get Extensions, use the dropdown on the add-on's entry ▸ Uninstall. For the full picture on what gets left behind, see uninstalling add-ons properly.
- Restart Blender. Python does not reliably release a module in place, and half the "the update didn't work" reports are a stale module still loaded.
- Install the new
.zip, then re-enable it.
Do not just overwrite the folder. Files removed between versions stay behind, and a leftover .pyc or an orphaned submodule produces errors that look like bugs in the new release. Installing add-ons covers where those folders actually live on each OS.
Legacy add-ons
An add-on that still declares bl_info and has not been repackaged as an extension is a legacy add-on. It installs into a local repository, so the rules above apply: manual updates, no notification.
Some of these do self-update, because the developer bundled their own updater — most often CG Cookie's blender-addon-updater, which polls a GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository's tags or releases and offers a one-click install from inside the add-on's own preferences. If you see a "Check for updates" button in an add-on's preferences panel, that is usually what you are looking at.
It only works for developers whose source is public and tagged, which rules out most paid add-ons.
Why so many paid add-ons still don't self-update
Put the three routes side by side and the gap is obvious.
| Route | Who it works for | Updates in Blender |
|---|---|---|
| extensions.blender.org | Free and open extensions | Yes |
| Superhive remote repository | Superhive sellers, extension-packaged products | Yes |
blender-addon-updater |
Developers with a public Git repo | Yes |
A .zip from anywhere else |
Everyone else | No |
That last row is most of the paid ecosystem: sold direct, on Gumroad, on a personal site, or on Superhive but not packaged as an extension. The user gets a file. The file has no upstream. Nobody hears about version 2.4. The full explanation of why that gap exists is worth reading if you have ever wondered whether a seller abandoned a product or you simply never heard about the fix.
Closing it does not require a store or a platform. It needs one HTTPS endpoint the add-on can ask "what is the current version?", and a line of UI when the answer is higher than what is installed. That is the entire problem Project LEUC solves, free, for any developer who wants it — and it works regardless of where the add-on is sold.
Keeping a large collection updatable
Once you are past twenty or thirty add-ons, the practical problem stops being how to update and becomes knowing which ones need it.
Keep a list. A plain text file with add-on name, where you bought it, and the version you have takes ten minutes to write and saves an hour every Blender release. A single add-on that keeps that list for you is what Project LEUC is building next, and it will be free.
Update on your schedule, not Blender's. A new Blender version is the right moment to sweep the whole collection; mid-project is the wrong one.
Check the supported version range on the product page before updating Blender itself. A page listing 4.2–5.2 is maintained. One stopping at 4.1 predates the extensions system entirely.
Clean Panels Pro
Relevant here for one specific reason: with delayed add-on loading, your collection is grouped into sets that load on demand rather than all at boot. That grouping doubles as an inventory — the sets are a written record of what you own and what it is for, which is exactly the list the previous paragraph asks you to keep.
Mine, and genuinely not worth it below about fifteen add-ons. Under that, managing extensions by hand is enough.
Common problems
"Refresh Remote does nothing." Check Allow Online Access in Preferences ▸ System. Behind a corporate proxy or firewall, the repository fetch fails silently more often than it errors loudly.
"It updated but the old version is still running." Restart Blender. A module already imported in the session is not swapped out underneath you.
"The update broke it." Check the product page for the supported Blender version range before assuming the update is at fault — the usual cause is a new Blender release, not a new add-on release.
"I updated Blender and half my add-ons vanished." They did not; a new Blender version uses a new config directory. Blender offers to copy your previous settings on first launch, and if you declined, the old folder is still there.
Disclosure
Clean Panels Pro above is mine, and my free add-ons are named as examples of the exact problem this page describes. I use a Superhive referral link, which costs you nothing. Project LEUC is my project and it is free, with no paid tier.