# Plugins

**In the desktop app.** Plugins belong to the desktop app; the web studio cannot load them.

## What a plugin is {#plugins}

A **plugin** is a device made by someone else: a synth, an effect, a sampler from another company or an open-source project, installed on your computer separately from Flesance. Musicians use plugins for sounds a studio does not have built in, a particular synth they love, or a library of recorded instruments that needs its own player. In the studio a plugin sits in a track's chain like any [device](/manual/devices): it can be bypassed, moved and removed the same way, and its knobs can be [automated](/manual/automation).

The devices that come with Flesance are drawn and explained the same way everywhere. A plugin's knobs are shown in the inspector under the plugin's own names and in its own units, so they may read less plainly.

Plugins come in several formats. The studio loads **CLAP** and **VST3** plugins.

## Adding a plugin {#plugins-add}

When the studio starts it looks for the plugins installed on this computer in the usual places. Effects then appear in the **Add effect** menu of the inspector, after the studio's own devices; instrument plugins appear in the track's list of instruments under **Plugins**. Notes, the sustain pedal and the pitch wheel reach an instrument plugin the way they reach the studio's own instruments.

Looking happens in the background. A plugin that crashes or hangs while being looked at is listed as unusable with the reason, and the studio carries on.

## The plugin's own window {#plugins-window}

Most plugins have a window of their own, drawn by whoever made them. The window button on the plugin's device in the inspector opens it as a separate window, named after the plugin and its track, kept above the studio. What you change there is kept with the song: once you let go of the plugin's controls and a moment passes, the change becomes one step in the history, so undo takes it back like any other edit.

## Finding a knob {#plugins-knobs}

A plugin can have hundreds of knobs. The inspector shows a handful on the plugin's face; the search button finds any knob by name, and you choose which knobs stay on the face. That choice is kept with the song.

## Listening to another track {#plugins-listen}

An effect plugin that can be keyed by another sound, such as a compressor that ducks under the kick, gets the same **Listen to** choice as the studio's own [Compressor](/manual/compressor#compressor-listen). Choose the track it should hear; the plugin still works on its own track's sound.

## When a plugin crashes {#plugins-crashed}

Every plugin runs in a program of its own, separate from the studio. When one crashes or stops answering, the rest of the song keeps playing: an instrument plugin goes silent, an effect plugin lets the sound through untouched. The status bar says once which plugin stopped, and the device in the inspector shows why.

### Restarting a plugin {#plugins-restart}

Press **Restart** on the device to bring the plugin back with its settings.

This is the main difference from studios that load plugins into themselves, where one faulty plugin takes the whole program down and the unsaved work with it.

## When a plugin is missing {#plugins-missing}

A project made on another computer may use a plugin this one does not have. The project still opens: the plugin's device stays in the chain with its knobs and its settings, the track plays without it, and the status bar says which plugin is missing. Nothing is lost when you save, so the sound comes back on a computer that has the plugin.