How to Manage Multiple Blender Versions (2026)
Running 4.5 LTS and 5.2 side by side, keeping their add-ons straight, and making a .blend open in the version that made it — by hand, and with the free desktop launcher that does it for you.
Anyone who works in Blender for more than a year ends up with several versions installed, and not out of untidiness. A client project is pinned to 4.5 LTS. A new tool needs 5.2. An old file opens correctly in 4.2 and nowhere else. Blender handles this well — better than most applications — but the housekeeping lands on you.
This covers the manual setup first, because it is worth knowing regardless, and then the desktop launcher I built to stop doing it by hand.
Blender is built for this
Every Blender version stores its preferences, startup file and installed add-ons in a user directory named after the version:
- Windows —
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\5.2\ - macOS —
~/Library/Application Support/Blender/5.2/ - Linux —
~/.config/blender/5.2/
Two versions therefore cannot break each other. Different add-ons, different keymaps, different File Paths, no shared state (Blender Manual: Directory Layout).
The install side is just as accommodating. The Blender manual states plainly that you do not have to overwrite an existing installation and that side-by-side versions are fine. Which install method you pick decides how much work that is:
| Method | Multiple versions? |
|---|---|
| Zip or tarball from blender.org | Yes — one folder each, nothing shared |
Windows installer (.msi) |
Overwrites by default; uninstall the old one or install to a different folder |
| macOS DMG | Rename Blender.app before copying the new one in |
| Steam / Microsoft Store | One version, managed for you |
Portable install (portable folder next to the executable) |
Yes, and configuration travels with the folder |
The practical recommendation: keep your everyday version however you like, and use zips for the extras. Updating Blender covers each route in detail.
The two things that actually get annoying
Installing versions is a solved problem. These are not.
1. Opening the right one. Double-clicking a .blend runs whichever Blender owns the file association. Open a 4.2 scene in 5.2 and you get a converted file; the reverse loses data, with a warning and a save confirmation you will eventually click through by reflex (Blender Manual: Compatibility). The information you need — which version saved this file — is sitting in the first dozen bytes of the file, and nothing surfaces it.
2. Add-ons, times the number of versions. Every version needs its own copy of every add-on. Install once per version, update once per version, and a 300 MB asset add-on kept under four Blenders is 1.2 GB of identical bytes. Blender's first-launch import copies your previous setup forward once, which helps at upgrade time and does nothing for the versions you are actively running in parallel — see moving add-ons to a new Blender version.
Both are bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is what software is for.
The launcher
ProjectLEUC — Blender Launcher is a free desktop app that does the housekeeping. Windows, no account, no paid tier: the download page has the current version and the requirements. It is an independent companion tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Blender Foundation, and every build it fetches comes from blender.org.
It finds the Blender you already have
The first scan looks in the usual install locations — Program Files\Blender Foundation, Steam's default library, scoop — and reads each build's real version by running blender -v rather than trusting a folder name. Anything else, portable builds included, you add by pointing it at a folder.
Worth knowing where that stops: Microsoft Store installs are not detected, a Steam library moved to another drive is not found, and the Windows search paths assume C:. Add those folders manually and they behave like any other install.
It installs builds, verified
The Downloads tab lists stable releases from download.blender.org and daily builds from builder.blender.org, newest patch per series by default, every release behind a toggle. Installing one downloads it into the launcher's own library folder — not Program Files, so no elevation — and checks it against the sha256 blender.org publishes for that file before unpacking anything. A 400 MB transfer does occasionally arrive damaged, and the failure that produces is otherwise indistinguishable from "this app cannot unzip".
Downloads can be cancelled mid-transfer. Builds themselves are removed by deleting the folder; there is no uninstall button in the app yet.
It opens a scene in the Blender that saved it
This is the feature I would keep if I had to throw the rest away.
Register the launcher as the .blend handler and double-clicking a scene reads the file's header — under a millisecond, including gzip and zstd compressed files — works out which Blender version wrote it, and starts that build with the file. Exact version, then same series, then nearest installed, in that order. No window appears; Blender opens.
Two details that matter in practice. A folder can pin a version with a .blender-version file or a leuc-project.json, which beats what the header says — useful when a project is standardised on 4.5 LTS and files drift. And the file icon stays Blender's: the association changes what opens a .blend, not what your scenes look like in Explorer. Registration is per-user (HKCU), needs no administrator rights, and can be removed from Settings.
Windows only, this part. macOS and Linux have no equivalent registration in the app.
It moves add-ons between versions
The add-on view scans every Blender version's scripts/addons, addons_contrib and extensions folders in one pass and lists what it finds with versions and sizes.
From there, any add-on can be installed into another Blender version two ways:
- Independent copy — two separate installs. Updating one leaves the other alone.
- Link — one folder on disk, shared. Updating it updates every version pointing at it.
Both directions work; installing an older copy over a newer one is the same action. A backup is taken before anything is overwritten, every time, as plain folder copies kept outside Blender's own directories so a restore works from a file manager on a day the app will not start.
It also spots the space problem: an add-on installed byte-identically under several versions gets a "link them" suggestion that keeps the copy under the newest Blender and points the rest at it. Only identical copies are offered — two different builds of the same add-on are left alone, because collapsing those would silently change what one Blender loads.
One security note on the scanning, since it reads metadata out of thousands of strangers' Python files: bl_info is parsed, never executed. Importing an add-on to read its version would run every author's code on your machine. The parser tokenises the dictionary and converts it to JSON instead — it reads 214 of the 217 add-ons on my development machine, and the three it declines are ones Python's own ast.literal_eval also refuses.
It tells you which add-ons have updates
The launcher reports what you have installed, fetches the current version for each add-on from the CDN, and compares locally. Rows show 4.1.0 → 4.2.0 where there is something newer, along with the store you bought from — Superhive, Gumroad, Blender Extensions, Patreon, itch.io.
Three things it is careful about. Add-ons on a beta or alpha channel are tracked per add-on, not globally. A build that is newer than the current release reads as "ahead of stable" rather than "up to date", which is how testers stay on a beta for a year without noticing. And the launcher never installs an add-on update — it finds them and hands you the link. Downloading someone's paid product on their behalf is not a thing a third-party app should do.
This is the same check the master add-on does from inside Blender, and the launcher will install that add-on into any version you choose. It ships in the legacy bl_info format on purpose, so one folder works from 2.93 to 5.x.
It knows the release schedule
The Schedule tab shows how long each version is supported, drawn from endoflife.date and Blender's own milestone API, plus what is coming: development phases, planned dates, and the open-versus-closed blocker count on the next release. Useful for one specific decision — whether the LTS you standardised on still has a support window left.
Privacy, briefly
No account and no login. Settings, filed tickets and contact details stay on your machine. The update check sends installed add-on ids and versions with a random install id — a dedup key, not an identity. Bug reports have a Redact personal info button that replaces usernames, paths, emails and tokens before anything is sent.
What it will not do for you
Being straight about the edges, because a tool that oversells itself wastes your afternoon:
- No add-on updating. Finds and links. Never installs.
- No add-on enable, disable or uninstall. Do that in Blender.
- No build uninstall in the UI. Delete the folder.
- Windows only today. The
.blendrouting in particular is Windows-specific. - Experimental and patch build streams appear as filters but are not fetched by the shipped version. Stable and daily are.
- Microsoft Store, Flatpak and Snap installs are not discovered, and Steam only in its default location.
If what you want is a lighter footprint — no extra app, no association changes — the manual setup at the top of this page is genuinely fine. One folder per version and a habit of checking the title bar gets you most of the way.
Clean Panels Pro
One optional extra, and the only part of the launcher that needs a paid add-on. Everything above works without it.
Clean Panels Pro's delayed loading boots Blender with only the add-ons on a list. The launcher adds the choice that list cannot make: hover Launch and your sets are there to tick, or double-click a scene and it brings the add-ons it was saved with. Opt-in, undoable, and starting Blender any other way is unaffected.
Relevant only if your startup time is the problem — why Blender takes minutes to start covers how to measure that before spending anything.
Disclosure
The launcher and Project LEUC are mine, free, with no paid tier. Clean Panels Pro is a paid add-on of mine and the link above is a Superhive referral, which costs you nothing. Blender itself is GPL-licensed and belongs to its authors; the launcher only fetches and starts it.