How to install addons in WoW Forever

1. Find the Forever AddOns folder

WoW Forever installs as its own game inside your World of Warcraft folder, the same way retail lives in _retail_ and Classic in _classic_. Addons for one never load in the others, so the folder matters more than anything else on this page.

1. Open the Battle.net app and select World of Warcraft.
2. In the Game Version menu above the Play button, choose World of Warcraft: Forever.
3. Click the gear icon next to Play and choose Show in Explorer (on a Mac: Show in Finder).
4. Open the Forever folder (_forever_), then Interface, then AddOns. On a fresh install these two folders may not exist yet: create them yourself, spelled exactly like that.

Default locations if you never moved the game:

• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_forever_\Interface\AddOns
• Mac: /Applications/World of Warcraft/_forever_/Interface/AddOns

2. Install an addon by hand

1. Open the addon's official page (every addon in our directory links to it) and download the file marked for Forever. If the author only lists retail and Classic files, check our compatibility tracker before trying the retail one.
2. Close the game completely. Copying files while it runs works, but the game only notices new addons when it starts.
3. Extract the zip. You get one or more folders, each holding a file ending in .toc.
4. Move those folders into AddOns. The .toc file must sit one level down: AddOns/Bartender4/Bartender4.toc is right, AddOns/Bartender4-main/Bartender4/Bartender4.toc is not.
5. Start the game. The addon appears in the AddOns list on the character screen.

Big addons often unpack into several folders (a core plus modules, or bundled libraries). Copy all of them; deleting one usually breaks the rest. Downloads from GitHub "Code → Download ZIP" buttons are source snapshots with the wrong folder name and no libraries: use the files under Releases instead.

3. Use CurseForge, Wago or another manager

An addon manager downloads, unpacks and updates addons for you. Every one we know of handles several WoW installations side by side, so the only real step is making sure it is looking at Forever.

• CurseForge app: open World of Warcraft, then use the installation switcher at the top to pick the Forever one. If it is missing, add it in the app's settings by pointing it at your _forever_ folder. Search results then filter to files the author tagged for that game version.
• Wago app: it finds Battle.net installs on its own and shows one tab per game version. Choose the Forever tab before installing anything.
• WowUp and similar: add the Forever folder as a new installation; the app reads the game version from it.

If a manager installs an addon and it never shows in game, open the AddOns folder yourself and check where it went. Nine times out of ten the manager was still set to retail.

4. Turn addons on in game

On the character select screen, click AddOns in the lower left. Tick the ones you want, per character or for all characters. Inside the game, Esc → AddOns opens the same list, but changes there need a /reload.

The Load out of date AddOns box lets the game load addons built for an older interface number. During the first weeks, when authors are still catching up, it can be the difference between having a damage meter and not. Turn it off again once your addons are updated, so a broken addon shows up as broken instead of failing quietly.

5. Move your beta setup to live

Beta and live were separate folders, so nothing carries over by itself. To keep your layouts:

1. Close the game and your addon manager.
2. Copy the Interface and WTF folders somewhere safe as a backup before changing anything.
3. Copy both folders from the beta install into the live Forever folder.
4. In WTF/Account, the folder name is your account's name. If the beta one differs from what the live client creates after your first login, move the files into the live one.
5. Start the game, enable the addons, and check each profile loads before you delete the backup.

6. Troubleshooting

The addon is not in the list

• Wrong folder: retail, Classic or beta instead of Forever.
• Nested folder: the .toc is two levels deep (see step 2.4).
• The game was running when you copied it and you only typed /reload. Exit fully and start again.

It says "Out of date" or "Incompatible"

The addon's .toc lists a different interface number than the client. Look for a Forever file on the author's page; if there is none, try "Load out of date AddOns". To see the number your client expects, type /dump select(4, GetBuildInfo()) in chat.

Lua errors pop up

Install BugSack so errors are collected quietly instead of interrupting you, then disable addons one at a time until the error stops. When you find the culprit, post the first lines of the error on our forum so others can see it, and report it to the author.

Settings reset every time I restart

During the beta many players saw addon settings saved on exit but not read back on the next start. It was a client bug, not something individual addons did, and the author of the best-known workaround addon has retired it, saying Blizzard fixed the bug. If it happens to you on live, check that the WTF folder is not read-only and not being synced by a cloud-storage app, then ask on the forum.

Everything is broken and I want a clean start

Close the game and rename Interface, WTF and Cache in the Forever folder to something like Interface_old. The game rebuilds them with default settings. Renaming rather than deleting means you can copy single addons or profiles back later.

7. Staying safe

• Addons are folders of text files (Lua and XML). An addon download that is an .exe or asks to run an installer is not an addon.
• Download from the author's official page: CurseForge, Wago, the author's GitHub releases or their own site. We link only to those.
• Blizzard's rules say addons must be free. Anything that asks for payment to unlock in-game features breaks those rules.
• WeakAuras-style import strings and profile strings can only do what the addon allows, but treat strings from strangers like any download.

Next steps

Start with the essential addons for Forever, browse the full addon directory, or check the compatibility tracker before launch night.