why unreal engine does not keep my plugins and preferences

[drnooe]

Hey everyone,
I install many plugins in Unreal Engine, some from Fab and some from other places. I use them a lot. When I open a project I download or get from someone else, Unreal does not load the plugins I use. I need to go into the plugin window and turn them on again. Same thing for my preferences and layout. They do not stay. I always need to set them again.
Is there a way to keep them or load them by default when I open any project?

[mr11647]

Hi,
you have to know that every project you make has it’s own config (a default configuration) you can set a plugin to be active by default like this :

first move all of the plugins to a folder in Plugins directory inside the unreal installation, putting all the plugins inside the marketplace folder is recommended, the path should look like this
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.4\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace

then start going to each plugin folder and find the files with “.uplugin” at the end after opening them you have to add this line somewhere in between those lines :
"EnabledByDefault": true,

hope this helps

[drnooe]

Amazing, this works like a charm. I did exactly what you described for the plugins, and everything behaves just like you said.
Now there’s just one last thing I’m still trying to figure out. How can I do something similar for Editor Preferences presets? You know how in the editor there are different sections like Appearance, Viewport, Blueprint Editor, etc? Right now, the only way I found is to manually save those preferences each section to a .ini file, and then for every new project, I have to import them one by one.
Is there a way to automate this process, like we did with the plugins? A method to apply or carry over editor settings across all projects? That’s the only piece I still haven’t figured out btw.

[mr11647]

Glad it helped, there are config (“.ini”) files inside this path you can change them for a consistent setting across all projects
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.4\Engine\Config
I haven’t worked with these ones so I can’t go into much details hope it helps

[drnooe]

@mr11647, I really have to thank you for pointing me to that path.
The file I ended up needing was BaseEditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini, basically I went back to my backup files, copied each of my custom blocks, and just replaced the existing ones in that file. Now every new project I create opens up with all my custom settings already applied. Super clean, no more manual tweaks per project. :)))

[mr11647]

glad it helped