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QGIS Plugins

QGIS has been designed with a plugin architecture. This allows many new features and functions to be easily added to the application. Many of the features in QGIS are actually implemented as plugins.

You can manage your plugins in the plugin dialog which can be opened with Plugins > Manage and install plugins ....

When a plugin needs to be updated, and if plugins settings have been set up accordingly, QGIS main interface could display a blue link in the status bar to tell you that there are some updates for plugins waiting to be applied.

The Plugins Dialog

The menus in the Plugins dialog allow the user to install, uninstall and upgrade plugins in different ways. Each plugin have some metadatas displayed in the right panel:

  • information if the plugin is experimental
  • description
  • rating vote(s) (you can vote for your prefered plugin!)
  • tags
  • some useful links as the home page, tracker and code repository
  • author(s)
  • version available

You can use the filter to find a specific plugin.

mActionShowPluginManager All

Here, all the available plugins are listed, including both core and external plugins. Use [Upgrade all] to look for new versions of the plugins. Furthermore, you can use [Install plugin], if a plugin is listed but not installed, and [Uninstall plugin] as well as [Reinstall plugin], if a plugin is installed. If a plugin is installed, it can be de/activated using the checkbox.

Figure Plugins 1:

../../../_images/plugins_all.png

The mActionShowPluginManager All menu nix

plugin_installed Installed

In this menu, you can find only the installed plugins. The external plugins can be uninstalled and reinstalled using the [Uninstall plugin] and [Reinstall plugin] buttons. You can [Upgrade all] here as well.

Figure Plugins 2:

../../../_images/plugins_installed.png

The plugin_installed Installed menu nix

plugin Not installed

This menu lists all plugins available that are not installed. You can use the [Install plugin] button to implement a plugin into QGIS.

Figure Plugins 3:

../../../_images/plugins_not_installed.png

The plugin Not installed menu nix

plugin_upgrade Upgradeable

If you activated checkbox Show also experimental plugins in the mActionTransformSettings Settings menu, you can use this menu to look for more recent plugin versions. This can be done with the [Upgrade plugin] or [Upgrade all] buttons.

Figure Plugins 4:

../../../_images/plugins_upgradeable.png

The plugin_upgrade Upgradeable menu nix

mActionTransformSettings Settings

In this menu, you can use the following options:

  • checkbox Check for updates on startup. Whenever a new plugin or a plugin update is available, QGIS will inform you ‘every time QGIS starts’, ‘once a day’, ‘every 3 days’, ‘every week’, ‘every 2 weeks’ or ‘every month’.
  • checkbox Show also experimental plugins. QGIS will show you plugins in early stages of development, which are generally unsuitable for production use.
  • checkbox Show also deprecated plugins. These plugins are deprecated and generally unsuitable for production use.

To add external author repositories, click [Add...] in the Plugin repositories section. If you do not want one or more of the added repositories, they can be disabled via the [Edit...] button, or completely removed with the [Delete] button.

Figure Plugins 5:

../../../_images/plugins_settings.png

The mActionTransformSettings Settings menu nix

The Search function is available in nearly every menu (except mActionTransformSettings Settings). Here, you can look for specific plugins.

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Core and external plugins

QGIS plugins are implemented either as Core Plugins or External Plugins. Core Plugins are maintained by the QGIS Development Team and are automatically part of every QGIS distribution. They are written in one of two languages: C++ or Python. External Plugins are currently all written in Python. They are stored in external repositories and are maintained by the individual authors.

Detailed documentation about the usage, minimum QGIS version, home page, authors, and other important information are provided for the ‘Official’ QGIS Repository at http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/. For other external repositories, documentation might be available with the external plugins themselves. In general, it is not included in this manual.