Installing and Updating AddOns
This guide describes how you can install (and update) World of Warcraft addons distributed through this site. AddOns are usually distributed as ZIP archives, containing one or more addon folders, which you will need to extract and move to a specific location for them to be loaded by World of Warcraft. Broadly, you will need to:
- Download and extract a ZIP archive containing an AddOn.
- Locate your World of Warcraft installation folder.
- Move the extracted folders to an Interface\AddOns directory in your installation.
- Restart WoW.
Downloading and extracting AddOn releases
You can download addons from this site, or from other sites. Recent versions of Windows and MacOS already support extracting ZIP file contents, so you can just use Windows Explorer (right click on a ZIP file, select Extract All...) or the Archive Utility (double click on a ZIP file) to extract the addon folders from the archive.
Some addons may be organized into multiple addon folders. When you extract a ZIP archive, an outer folder may be created to contain the addon folders, typically named to match the ZIP archive's name. For example, extracting BearFacts-5.67.zip may produce a folder named BearFacts-5.67 containing BearFacts and BearFactsEditor addon folders (and no files). If this occurs, it is important that you only move the addon folders and not the outer folder to the Interface/AddOns directory later.
Locating your WoW installation
You will need to know where the World of Warcraft installation you are using to play the game is located on your system.
You can find this through the Battle.net application: open its Settings (e.g. by right-clicking on the Blizzard/Battle.net logo in the top left corner), and then open the Game Install/Update page if it exists, or the Game Settings page. Look for an "Install Location" or "Folder used for game play" for World of Warcraft or World of Warcraft Classic (if installing Classic addons). This might be something like C:\Games\World of Warcraft\ or /Applications/World of Warcraft/
On Windows, you may also right click on WoW's icon in the task bar while the game is running, right click on World of Warcraft, and select Properties. The install location appears in the Location: line in the General tab of the Properties dialog. To make this equivalent to the location obtained through the Battle.net application, you should ignore the last folder name in that path (e.g. _classic_ or _retail_), which specifies the game variant.
Installing AddOns
Navigate to your World of Warcraft install location in Explorer or Finder, and then to the _retail_, _classic_era_, or _classic_ folder (if installing an AddOn for modern, classic, and classic era WoW respectively). If it does not already exist, create an Interface folder there, and create an AddOns folder inside the Interface folder.
Move the extracted AddOn folders into the Interface\AddOns folder. Congratulations, the addon is now installed.
For example, if World of Warcraft is installed in C:\Games\World of Warcraft\, and you're installing a "BearFacts" AddOn for modern WoW, following these steps would have created a C:\Games\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns\BearFacts folder containing a BearFacts.toc file (its name matching the folder name), and possibly other files or folders. If the .toc file does not exist, the AddOn will not load — you likely copied an outer folder created by the ZIP extraction process instead of the addon folders it contained, and might have created a C:\Games\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns\BearFacts-5.67\BearFacts\BearFacts.toc file instead.
Updating AddOns
Follow the same procedure as installing addons, and choose to replace any existing files in case of conflicts.
In principle, you can opt to delete the relevant folders under Interface\AddOns before replacing them with a fresh copy from the ZIP archive (and doing so would not affect your addon configuration), but this is usually not necessary.
Moving addon settings between computers
AddOn settings are stored in .lua files within the
WTF/Account/
If you have not yet configured any addons on your new WoW installation, it may be easier to copy the entire WTF directory from the old machine to the new.
Restart the game
For some platforms and versions of World of Warcraft, it is necessary to restart the game when installing new addons or certain kinds of addon updates. Skipping the restart may work, or may cause errors, possibly with lasting consequences, depending on the addon. The safe policy is to always restart World of Warcraft after installing or updating addons.
Troubleshooting
If the addon does not appear to work after installing it, check whether it appears in the in-game addons list by clicking the AddOns button on the character selection screen.
If the addon does not appear in the addons list, or if the AddOns button is missing, you have not moved the addon folders to the correct location (you may have multiple WoW installations, or might not have discarded the outer folder created when extracting a ZIP archive).
If it does appear in the list and is checked, the addon is installed correctly but is experiencing other difficulties. It may be helpful to enable script errors (type /console scriptErrors 1 and /console reloadui in-game) and report any error messages that appear to its author.