Bitcoin Forum

While I understand that plugins make Electrum weaker and more susceptible to vulnerabilities, I believe people should still know how to install them.

Electrum comes with a list of pre-installed plugins, but in case you want to use other plugins, here is a short and simple guide:

*Note: This is first of all only possible when you are using the Python bundle - not with the installer, appimage, DMG, EXE or anything like that.

When you download the plugin in a compressed format like a zip file or a tarball, you basically need to extract it to the electrum/plugins folder in the Electrum installation. Then restart Electrum.

I wonder why Electrum devs did not document this.

They do mention that Electrum supports third-party plugins on their main website[1] but other than explaining what they are in their documentation[2], the question to add more indeed gets left out in the open. Perhaps they didn't want people to start adding random plugins that they found in the web only for then be blamed by people misguided use of them (which would never be their fault anyway)?

Where do people go to find Electrum plugins by the way? I only found a hastag on GitHub[3] but for sure that there are more than those plugins available. What are the ones that you have tried/currently use?

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[1]https://electrum.org/ (https://electrum.org/)
[2]https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html (https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html)
[3]https://github.com/topics/electrum-plugin (https://github.com/topics/electrum-plugin)

Personally, I don't use any custom plugins, but they all come mostly from Github where the source code is available.

Wouldn't make much sense to download a closed-source plugin from a random website otherwise, with all the risks that it entails.

I see this some more plugins in this list; https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/tree/83e14794a1e1202ecfd40f0ea779f0b91ccf2032/electrum/plugins
I however don't know how to make out of it as I have never used any plugins before. It might be worth looking in to.

I have to agree, there is no proper documentation. It all looks like a thing only nerdy guys can do.

Probably because it's the plugin maintainer's job to provide a documentation on how to install their plugin.
Because most of the time, it's not just as simple as copy-pasting the plugin folder to Electrum's "plugins" directory.
It also involves installing specific dependencies per plugin.

Having a thread with list of available third-party plugins and their respective dependencies may be a good idea though.

I've noticed a few weeks ago this topic: Coinjoin software joinstr added an electrum plugin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5500677)
One thing I've noticed back then when reading it was exactly that installing a plugin means unpacking it into the Elecrum plugins directory.
It has some python dependencies too, those need to be installed first (nostrj, pyqtspinner, pillow, qrcode).

And with this I'd say we have a plugin in the list :)

Is there any list of all Electrum plugins, both active and inactive?
I can't find anything on their website or anywhere else, and this would be good to have with instructions and links.
All I found is small section in Electrum documentation page:
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html

Currently, they don't have a list of custom or 3rd party plugins the plugins they listed are those that follow Electrum plugin rules (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-docs/blob/master/plugin_rules.rst) and are easy to maintain.

I also tried to search through Google but no one created a list of 3rd party plugins, there are lots of plugins on GitHub for Electrum and I think the reason why they didn't add those plugins like Coinjoin software joinstr it's because it isn't easy to maintain.

They have instructions on how to add a plugin for 3rd party plugins you can find it here https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-plugins/blob/master/README.md

These plugins made available by Electrum, I even tested one of them a while ago, it'd be interesting if someone paid attention to producing wonderful possibilities to add more features to Electrum (which is already an incredible wallet).

There is an interesting plugin (I've never tested it and I don't even know if it's still maintained) BTW which basically makes it possible to connect to the full node (similar to belcher's personal server).

A really cool plugin idea is a plugin for the BIP-85 (but as electrum has its own seed system, it'd be ideal if the plugin was used in a wallet with a BIP39 seed, although it's also possible to derive child seeds from the electrum seed).

I know about the built-in plugins, yeah, but those are bundled with the Electrum package so nobody has to actually think about them being setup or even know that they exist, as they might as well be features in the main Electrum program.


How is that different from just using an Electrum personal server, like Fulcrum or ElectrumX or something like that? It is more actively supported though.