Release History

Release Notes & Version History

Official release notes and changelog for Virtue FX Manager (VFxM).

v1.2.5 (Current Stable)

Released: 2026-11-07

✨ Added

Picture Cards In The Plugins Panel: The Plugins panel opens on picture cards: picture, name, Listed/Unlisted lamp, rating and category chips. Double-click or Enter inserts; a single click only selects. Cards do everything rows do: Shift and Cmd/Ctrl selection, drag to a track, the right-click menu, Go to selected.
A Pictures | List Switch: At the top right of the Plugins panel. The list is unchanged, and a saved List choice is kept.
Sort The Pictures: A Sort row in Pictures: Plugin, Rating or Status. Click the lit one again to reverse.
Modern And Vintage Styles: Modern has raised panels with soft shadows, content in pressed-in wells, Library / Active FX as one switch, Listed / Unlisted / All with green and red lamps, category chips with colour lamps, neutral section headers and favourites on small raised cards. Vintage is the classic look; the new controls appear in it with theme colours, flat. Every colour comes from the theme, and all built-in themes and your own still apply.
Every Right-Click Menu Redesigned: Cards, list, empty area, View, Workspaces, Shortcuts, Help, favourites, tabs, chips, Active FX and Notes. The header shows the plugin’s picture.
New Keys: P adds to the open tab, I shows plugin info, Shift+Enter inserts on a new track, Alt+Enter asks for Master, and Cmd/Ctrl+A selects all shown.
Motion You Can Switch Off: Picking a category re-deals the cards in about half a second; the list view does not animate. When you insert, the plugin’s picture flies to the Active FX tab, which glows and shows “+1” (or “+N”). REAPER inserts at once; nothing waits for an animation. Settings → Theme → Animations turns all motion off. It is on by default.
A Hover-Tips Button: A button in the top bar switches every hint on and off. Names and cues always show.
Modern Follows Three Colour Pickers It Ignored: Plugin List Background now colours Modern’s panels and list ground, Window Background the gaps behind the panels, and Modern Button Lit the lit caps and selected chips. A colour you pick, or a theme names, wins; otherwise Modern’s colours are derived as before, so every palette and every theme you saved before looks the same.

Thumbnails, on the Mac and on Windows

Scans Run Outside REAPER: Thumbnail scans run in a separate helper — VFxM Capture Helper on the Mac, virtue_capture_helper.exe on Windows, installed for your user and signed with the installer. The helper opens each plugin editor off-screen, photographs it and closes it, so a plugin that crashes there does not touch REAPER, and on Windows nothing flashes on your screen or takes the keyboard focus.
Only REAPER’s Own JS Effects Use A Track, And Only A Temporary One: The helper cannot open JS effects, so the scan puts each one on a temporary track in a scratch project tab of its own, photographs its whole window, and removes the track. Your open project is never used: no track in it, no undo step, no change mark, nothing saved. If REAPER cannot open the scratch tab, the JS effects keep their plain card and nothing is touched. VST, VST3, AU and CLAP plugins never go on a track.
A Plain Card When There Is No Picture: A plugin the helper cannot photograph — it crashes, draws nothing, shows a dialog that will not close, or on Windows is a VST2 or CLAP plugin — shows a plain card (developer, name, format), and Capture Thumbnail photographs it by hand.
A Crash-Safe Scan: The scan resumes after a crash or a kill, with no duplicates. Broken plugins show in red with the reason. Pause, Stop and Export Diagnostics; the scan window always has Stop, X and Esc.
More Pictures First Time, On The Mac: More plugin editors draw on the first try, CLAP plugins are captured, and a VST2 or CLAP plugin without a picture shows its VST3 or AU sibling’s.
Autocapture On One Card In About 1.7 s: It was about 130 s. The plugin list refreshes in the background.
Screen Recording, Asked Once, On The Mac: The first scan asks once for Screen Recording, with an explanation. Without it there are no automatic pictures: the scan stops with a message, cards stay plain, and Capture by hand still works.
A Scan Never Waits For A Click: A plugin that opens a dialog while it is being listed or photographed — a plug-in file asking you to locate its folder, a licence or login prompt — is closed for you, and a plugin that stops responding is skipped after 30 seconds, with the reason. VFxM’s own messages wait for the end of the scan, and the first-run helper note is a status line, not a dialog. On Windows and macOS.
A Plug-In File That Fails Every Time Is Skipped: After five failures in a row from one file — one file can hold hundreds of plugins — the rest of that file is not opened, and its cards stay plain until the file changes or you capture one by hand.
A Thin Picture Is Shown Whole: A by-hand capture much wider or taller than the card, such as the top strip of a JS window, was zoomed to fill the card and lost its sides. It now fits inside the card as it is; ordinary plugin pictures fill the card as before.
Plug-Ins You Do Not Have Are Left Out: Plug-ins REAPER lists but the computer does not have are no longer listed or scanned. VFxM checks Audio Units, VST, VST3 and CLAP; JSFX is not checked. They are kept if their folder is on a drive that is not plugged in.

🛠️ Changed

Shortcuts Follow Your Keyboard Layout: AZERTY, QWERTZ and other layouts, Redo included.
The Licence Cache Is Encrypted: It is now encrypted with the operating system’s own cryptography.
The Windows Installer Asks What To Do: When it finds VFxM already installed it offers Update to version 1.2.5, Uninstall or Cancel.

🐛 Fixed

No More “<SHELL>” Cards: REAPER’s own marker for a plug-in file that holds several plug-ins was listed as a plugin called “<SHELL>”. It is not shown any more; the plug-ins inside it are, as before.
AU Plug-Ins From A Vendor With A Comma In Its Name now show their own names instead of “<inst>”. Any favourite, note or rating you set on the old “<inst>” card is gone; set it again on the new card.
The Helper Ends With REAPER: On Windows the helper and anything a plugin starts are stopped when REAPER quits or crashes, and a plugin’s dialog is closed within a second without a click.
The Workspace Menu: Update, Rename and Delete are shown only when a saved workspace is ticked. Rename no longer says a name is already used for a workspace that is gone, and an imported workspace file cannot carry an empty name.

Notes for 1.2.5

Going back to an older VFxM after 1.2.5 asks for the licence key again.
Backups from 1.2.3 and later restore in 1.2.5.
VST2 plug-ins get plain cards, and on Windows CLAP plug-ins too; capture them by hand.
JS effect pictures are drawn by REAPER at 1x, so they are modest in resolution, and a few JS effects get no picture.
macOS: universal (Intel and Apple Silicon). Windows: x64.

Known issues in 1.2.5

None of the translations has had a native-speaker review, and Arabic and Urdu still display left to right.
A few JS effects get no picture from the scan; capture them by hand.
On Windows, a plug-in file that holds its own instrument modules can crash inside its own file while it is photographed; the helper survives it and the card stays plain.
On Windows, uninstalling can leave two small files behind.

v1.2.4

Released: 2026-10-08

✨ Added

A Guided Tour, Shown Once And A Click Away After: The first time you open 1.2.4 — new installs and upgrades alike — VFxM dims the window and lights one area at a time with a line or two on what it is, with Back, Next, Skip and a count such as “4 of 11”. Escape ends it. It then offers a Settings tour of the options most people never find, Hijack first; the tour opens Settings and its sections for you and puts them back afterwards. Run it again from the new ? button next to the gear: Guide, Settings tour, What’s New…, Shortcuts window, About.
How To: Ten Short Walk-Throughs: ? → How to… lists them — make a thumbnail, make many thumbnails, add FX to a track, add FX to an item, use Favorites, find a plugin fast, work with Active FX, insert on the Master, a plugin is missing, bring in your REAPER FX folders — and All how-tos runs them one after another. Where it is safe, a card says Your turn, lights the real control and waits for you to do it, then moves on by itself. The tour only watches: it never inserts, captures, scans or saves for you, and Next is always there.
A Hijack Button: A small button left of the ? shows at a glance whether a click on a track’s or the mixer’s FX button opens VFxM (lit green), opens REAPER’s own window (dark, with a slash) or cannot (no licence or trial: dimmed), and toggles it. It is the same setting as Settings → Insert Behavior. Virtue: Toggle FX window hijack does the same from REAPER’s Actions list, with no default key, and Turn on and Turn off versions exist for a key that only goes one way.
A New Shortcuts Window: Press H. Short one-line descriptions sit under small headings, your own keys are shown in blue (it reads your bindings, so a key you changed shows), and a Close button sits at the bottom right. Hover hints show the key you actually bound, and the Active FX view buttons — Thumbnail, Plugin Browser, Favorites — each have their own shortcut, unbound by default.
Drop A Preset Onto Active FX: A preset favourite dropped onto a track’s, an item’s or the Master’s section applies at the drop position; several presets in one drag keep their order and one Undo removes them. Not onto Monitoring FX.
Double-Click Reads Media Items Too: With items selected, a double-click puts the plugin on their takes; with tracks selected, on the tracks, as before. With both, a small Insert on: Tracks / Items popup asks — Tracks is the default, Escape cancels. One undo step either way.
Reorder The Active FX View Buttons: Drag Thumbnail, Plugin Browser and Favorites into the order you use. The order is saved with the workspace, and so is your Favorites tab order now.
More REAPER Actions: Virtue: Show/hide FX Manager on Active FX always lands on Active FX; Virtue: Hide FX Manager and Virtue: Toggle FX Manager are there for a control-surface or MIDI key that cannot hold a toggle and a dedicated show or hide at once.
A New Trial Starts With A Confirmed Email: The trial screen asks for your email and sends a 6-digit code; enter it and the 10-day trial starts, the same as before. Promotional email is a separate box, unticked to start with. If something goes wrong the screen says what — no internet, a wrong code, an expired code, too many attempts. If you are already on a trial you are asked once, optionally, to confirm; skipping never shortens or stops it.
You Can Switch Off The System Information The Licence Check Sends: Settings → License → Send system information with the license check lists what it covers — your operating system and version, CPU type, REAPER version, interface language and scale, and how many plugins you have — and never plugin names, files, projects or your name. Off, none of it is sent; the check itself still runs.

🔄 Changed

The Window Cannot Be Made Narrower Than Its Top Bar Needs: 660 points at 100% scale, where it was 530. In a window narrower than the whole bar, the Hijack button hides first; the ? and the gear stay.
VFxM’s Window Is One Of REAPER’s Own Floating Windows: REAPER stacks it with its plug-in windows instead of VFxM moving itself by hand. Clicking it fronts it at once with no flicker, and it never becomes REAPER’s main window. Coming back to REAPER from another app no longer lets a plug-in window land on top of it.
Windows Names Your Computer To The Licence Server With A Hash: As macOS always has. Your existing activation is recognised and no seat is used.
A Track’s Own FX Button Opens Active FX On The Plugin Browser: Instead of the Thumbnail, when VFxM is standing in for REAPER’s FX window.
Sharper Text: VFxM draws text with the system’s own text engine — Core Text on macOS, DirectWrite on Windows — and a few icons and thin lines sit on whole pixels instead of blurring across two.
Every Language Covers Every String: Every interface language covers all 707 strings the interface can show, including the tour, the how-tos, the Shortcuts window and the trial email-confirmation screen. This is a machine-checked count of coverage, not a native-speaker review — see the known issues.
Stop Scan Keeps Its Place: Press it, come back later, and Resume Scan carries on from the plugin that was interrupted, instead of starting again from the top.
The Scan Names Each Plugin Before It Loads: When a slow plugin holds the screen for a moment, the name in the progress window is the one being waited on.

🛠️ Fixed

Unlisting An Apple AU, Or Any Plugin In More Than One Architecture’s Cache, Survives A Restart: REAPER keeps a plugin cache per architecture and reads only the one it is running as. VFxM read every one, the Intel one first, so on an Apple Silicon Mac that has ever run REAPER under Rosetta, Unlist wrote into a file REAPER no longer reads. It now works on the cache REAPER actually uses. Plugins that exist only in a stale cache leave the list, which REAPER’s own clear-cache and re-scan never did; favourites, notes, ratings and categories stay with their plugins.
An AU That 1.2.2 Unlisted Is Listed If REAPER Lists It: 1.2.2 hid AUs in a form REAPER does not read; VFxM now takes the state from the line REAPER reads.
Far Fewer AU Plugins Sit In Other: AU instruments are filed by REAPER’s own instrument flag, not only by name, and the plugins every REAPER and macOS install has are recognised. Nothing already filed moves.
A Selected Plugin’s Name Stays Readable On The Highlight: A category colour close to the selection colour no longer draws the name invisible.
Escape Closes Menus, Windows And The Tour On macOS: REAPER takes the key before VFxM sees it, so VFxM reads it from the keyboard itself while one of those is open. One press closes one layer.
A Save That Runs Out Of Disk Space No Longer Risks What You Had: The new file is confirmed on disk before it replaces the old one, so a full disk leaves your settings, favourites and workspaces untouched.
The Mac Installer No Longer Leaves Hidden “._” Files: Installing 1.2.4 also removes the ones that 1.1.0 to 1.2.2 left, one of them at the top of your startup disk, by exact name only.
The Insertion Cue Is One Agreed Yellow In Every Theme: A colour you picked yourself is kept.
A Plugin Inserted With Only The Master Selected Lands On The Master: REAPER’s selected-tracks calls leave the Master out, so VFxM made a new track instead. Chains, presets and Active FX capture see the Master too.
The Mixer’s Master FX Button Opens VFxM With Hijack On: REAPER’s View FX chain for master track now opens VFxM on the Master instead of nothing.
Changing The Text Size Keeps The Window On The Screen: It is resized and moved back inside the work area, and going back to the smaller size puts it back where and as big as it was, on Windows and macOS.
Developer Names Are Matched As Words: Vital and plugins with “Digital” or “Metal” in the name are no longer listed under TAL in Developers, Waveshaper and Wavesfactory plugins are no longer Waves, and Quadrafuzz is no longer Universal Audio. Favourites, ratings, notes, categories and thumbnails stay with their plugins.
Windows Folders With Accents Or Non-Latin Letters Work: A user name or folder such as José, Müller or 日本 no longer stops VFxM finding or saving its files, and a file named in another alphabet no longer stops it at start.
No Empty Window Where Direct3D 11 Cannot Start (Windows): VFxM draws with Windows’ software renderer instead of opening an empty window that crashed REAPER on quit.
“Default” Is Reserved For The Built-in Favorites Tab: Renaming another tab to it is refused and an import by that name becomes “Default 2”; a second “Default” tab used to vanish on save. The built-in theme is named in your language.
Uninstall Removes The New 1.2.4 Toolbar Buttons And Actions Too: On both platforms.

v1.2.3

Released: 2026-09-21

✨ Added

Active FX Shows Everything You Selected: Select several tracks and items and every chain is there at once — each track in track order with its own items beside it, and the Master and Monitoring chains at the end. There is no cap; the list scrolls, always as two columns, tracks left and items right.
Act On A Whole Section From Its Header: Add an effect, bypass everything in that section with one toggle, or Alt-click to remove the lot — each a single undo. Headers now name what they point at: the track, or the item’s in and out times.
Categories As Dots Or As Tags: A switch in Settings → Browser. Tags spell the category out beside the plugin name without making the row any taller; on a narrow column a “+N” stands for the rest.
Insert A Plugin Straight Onto The Master: Right-click a plugin and pick Insert on Master… to place it before any effect in the Master chain, or at the end.
Save And Recall Window Layouts: A Workspace dropdown on the top bar saves panel sizes, splitter positions, column choices and the active tab under a name.
Backup And Restore: Settings → Backup writes your whole Virtue data folder — settings, layouts and workspaces, shortcuts, favourites and banks, categories and colour overrides, notes, ratings, FX snapshots, themes, hidden lists and the thumbnails kept in that folder — to one .vfxmbak file you save where you like. Licence and trial files are left out. Restoring shows when the backup was made, by which version, on which platform, how many files and how big before it replaces anything, copies your current data to Virtue/Backups/PreRestore_<timestamp>/ first (the last two are kept), and needs a REAPER restart to finish. An older backup restores in a newer VFxM; one made by a newer VFxM is refused before anything is touched. Backups are manual, and VFxM keeps no list of past ones.
Faster Categorising: K opens the Categorize window for whatever is selected, and Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows) a category chip files every selected plugin into it — or takes them all out of it when every one already has it, so one click never splits a mixed selection. A plugin’s other categories are left alone.
Drag Between Any Two Chains: Track, Item Take and Monitoring FX now trade plugins in all six directions — a plain drag copies, Alt moves. A plugin can also be dropped onto a Virtue Console channel.
Capture, Autocapture, Force Deactivate And Reactivate Act On A Whole Selection: The menu entries say how many they will do and do all of them in one queued pass.
Six More Languages Show Nearly The Whole Interface: Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian and Urdu now cover 569 of 593 interface strings, 96%. This is a machine-checked count of coverage, not a native-speaker review; Arabic and Urdu still read left to right.
The Windows Installer Is Code-Signed: The installer, its uninstaller and reaper_virtue.dll are signed and timestamped with a standard Certum certificate issued to Rodney Florencio da Costa, so Windows names him on the security prompt instead of calling the publisher unknown. The certificate is new, so SmartScreen reputation still has to build and some users will see a warning for a few weeks.

🛠️ Fixed

Installing And Uninstalling Stay In Your Own Folder: Both now read your home folder from the account record instead of cutting it at the first space — “/Users/John Smith” became “/Users/John” — and stop before touching anything if that folder is missing or belongs to someone else.
Uninstalling Removes Only Virtue’s Own Buttons: Matched by their exact action ids, so another product’s toolbar buttons and icons are left alone, and nothing is written while REAPER is running.
Every Change In Active FX Is Checked First: Wet/dry, remove, bypass, offline and dragging a plugin out of a chain now pass the same safety check as inserting and reordering always did.
A Scan That Will Not Start Says Why: Four silent refusals — a scan already running, no licence or trial, nothing left to scan, or REAPER refusing the scan track — now each say so, with counts.
At Your Activation Limit, You Are Told So: Reaching the two-machine limit said the licence key was invalid. It now says how many devices are in use and that deactivating one frees a slot.
The Search Box Behaves: Auto-clear starts two seconds after you stop typing, not the moment you click away.
Alt-Dragging A Plugin In Active FX Moves It Instead Of Deleting It: Alt now removes only on a click and moves on a drag.
Closing The VFxM Window Keeps It Closed, and REAPER’s own FX window opens again the moment the FX-window hijack option is turned off, with no restart needed.
One Click Acts On The Window: Clicking a VFxM button while another window had focus used to spend the first click only bringing VFxM forward.
REAPER No Longer Hangs On “loading plugin: reaper_virtue.dll” (Windows): On some machines REAPER never got past that line on its splash screen, every launch. VFxM started a Windows imaging library while Windows was still loading modules, and an antivirus hook or a graphics or Discord overlay could deadlock it. It now starts the first time an image is actually handled. Found by auditing the load path; if this was your hang, we would like to hear it is gone.
Nothing Sweeps The Windows Temporary Folder At Startup: A tidy-up for leftover restore folders ran at every REAPER launch. It now runs only when a restore starts.
The First Switch To Active FX Is Fast: The first time that tab opened in a session there was a visible pause. The work is now spread over idle moments in the Library tab.
Your Licence Key Works Exactly As Emailed: The VFXM- key from your purchase email is accepted in any case, with or without spaces. A licence no longer reads “0 of 2 activated” while machines are active, and pasting the internal licence id now says so instead of calling the key inactive.
The Top-Bar Logo Makes Room Again: On a narrow window the logo hides so the buttons keep their space, and the Library / Active FX switcher slides left with a small margin.

v1.2.2

Released: 2026-08-28

🛠️ Fixed

Your Toolbar Is Backed Up Before Anything Touches It: Installing now copies reaper-menu.ini to REAPER/Virtue/Backups/ first, alongside a plain-English file explaining how to put it back. If an earlier version left you with a toolbar containing only the Virtue button, this one rebuilds it from your backup rather than from REAPER’s defaults. A machine flattened before 1.2.2 has no backup to read, so it still gets the default repair — the protection starts here.
Uninstalling No Longer Breaks The Toolbar: The uninstaller removed its own line from the toolbar file entirely. REAPER stops reading at the first missing position, so anyone who had moved the Virtue button towards the front of their toolbar lost everything after it — and reinstalling added past the gap, so it never came back. The slot is now cleared rather than deleted, and installing repairs a toolbar that already has a gap.
Plugins You Removed Stop Appearing: VFxM was combining plugin lists from every processor architecture, while REAPER only maintains the one it is running. Plugins uninstalled long ago kept showing up from the lists REAPER had stopped updating. It now reads the same list REAPER does.
A Crashing Plugin Is Not Tried Twice: When a plugin crashes REAPER during a thumbnail scan, VFxM records it so the scan can resume past it. That record was being written to one location and read from another, so the same plugin could be opened again and crash again. Both now agree, and Resume Crashed Scan works as intended.
The Search Box Keeps What You Typed: The search cleared itself ten seconds after you clicked away — while you were still reading the results. It is now yours to control in Settings: on or off, with a delay from 0 to 30 seconds. Zero clears it immediately, and the default is twenty.
Hidden Panels Stay Hidden: Updating could bring back panels you had deliberately closed. Your choice is now kept across versions.
Scan Files Live In The Virtue Folder: Two files used by the plugin scanner were written loose in your REAPER folder instead of inside Virtue/. They now move across on update, so an existing scan blocklist is carried over rather than lost.

v1.2.1

Released: 2026-08-27

✨ Added

Five Languages, Finished: Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian now cover the whole interface, not part of it. Settings and the Plugin Manager were the largest gap and are complete; so are the trial and licence screens, which had been the first thing a non-English speaker read while deciding whether to buy.
A Toolbar That Repairs Itself: If a previous install left you with a toolbar containing only the Virtue button, installing this version detects that and puts REAPER’s own default buttons back. A toolbar you customised yourself is recognised and left alone.

🛠️ Fixed

The Installer No Longer Replaces Your Toolbar: REAPER keeps toolbar layouts in reaper-menu.ini. With no [Main toolbar] section, REAPER draws your theme’s default toolbar — but the moment that section exists, it is the toolbar. The installer created that section containing only its own button, which silently replaced everything else. It now writes REAPER’s defaults first and adds Virtue after them, on both platforms.
VFxM Stays Behind REAPER’s Own Windows: While the startup splash was showing, VFxM was promoted above every window — including the FX window you had just opened by clicking a track’s FX button. From the outside that looked like VFxM had taken over the button. It is now only promoted while VFxM itself is the window you are using.
Cancelling A Thumbnail Scan Keeps Your Thumbnails: Regenerating all thumbnails cleared the existing set before capturing anything, so stopping partway — or a crash, or quitting REAPER — lost the lot. Nothing is deleted up front any more. Each thumbnail is replaced as its own capture finishes, and stopping early simply leaves the rest as they were.
Thumbnails Take Far Less Memory: Captures are written at a sensible size rather than full screen resolution, and the images held in video memory are capped and released when unused. On a large library that is roughly 1.8 GB down to 256 MB.
Drop Onto Item Take FX: The Item Take FX section of the Active FX list now accepts a dropped plugin, as the Track FX section always did. All four section headers are drop targets rather than only the gaps between rows.
The macOS Installer Leaves Your Files Alone: After installing, it offered to move the disk image to the Trash — and did so for whatever file backed the image, including copies on shared network volumes. It now only offers this for disk images inside your own home folder.

v1.2.0

Released: 2026-08-23

✨ Added

Arrange The Window Yourself: Preview, Favorites, Notes, Plugins and Filters are no longer fixed in place. Drag a panel by its tab to move it, dock it beside another, or drop it onto another so the two share an area as tabs. Drag the dividers to resize. Your arrangement is remembered — positions, sizes, what is hidden, and whether tab bars show — through closing VFxM and quitting REAPER.
A Shortcut For Everything, And You Pick The Key: Every action has a single-key shortcut and every one can be changed in Settings > Shortcuts. Press H for the full list inside VFxM, showing the keys you actually bound. A key already in use is refused and the row names the action holding it, so nothing ends up double-bound.
Panels On The Number Row: 1–5 show and hide the five panels, 0 resets the layout, V hides the tab bar of the panel under the mouse and A does it to all of them.
Straight To A Bank: F1–F7 jump directly to a favorites bank. B steps to the next bank that actually holds something, wrapping at the end and skipping empty ones.
The Bank You Are On, Visible: The folder button shows the bank number beside its icon. Two banks can share a colour and an uncoloured bank had nothing to identify it; the number always does.
Reordering Banks Reads Properly: Bank names are positional, so swapping two used to renumber both instantly and look like nothing happened. The rows now keep the numbers they arrived with for a moment, then fade into the new ones.
Getting Around: Q and W move between Library and Active FX, S jumps to the search box, F finds the selected plugin in the list, X clears every filter.

🛠️ Fixed

A Finished Trial No Longer Takes REAPER With It: If your trial had ended — or if VFxM simply could not read its trial file, which could happen after a reinstall — VFxM still stepped in front of REAPER’s own FX window, closed it, and put itself there with nothing to offer. You could not open any effect at all, including in an already-saved project. VFxM now requires a positive entitlement before standing in front of REAPER; anything else and it leaves your FX windows completely alone. The trial itself is unchanged.
Filters Recovers Its Width: Narrowing the window took space from the Filters column and never gave it back, leaving labels stuck reading “Develop” and “Categor”. Widening restores it.
Nothing Clipped At Any Size: The window will not shrink past the point where the toolbar is readable, and the shortcut list measures its own column so a longer name is never cut off by the key beside it.
The Window Stops Disappearing: On macOS, switching to another application could leave VFxM apparently gone. It now stays where you left it and sits behind the app you moved to.
What’s New Stays In Its Frame: On a shorter display its checkbox and OK button could be laid out past the panel’s own background. The notes now scroll inside it and the buttons are always fully visible.
One Copy Of The Plug-in, Not Two: The macOS installer left a second copy in the system-wide folder. REAPER loaded both and could keep running the older one after an update. Only one is installed now.
A Cleaner Windows Installer: It no longer carries stray macOS metadata files into your fonts folder, and is 2 MB smaller for it.

v1.1.1 (Superseded)

Released: 2026-08-13

🛠️ Fixed

Your Licence Stays Put: On some machines the serial had to be entered again after every restart. That is resolved, and licences carry over automatically when you update.
No More Reconnecting: Activate once and the machine stays licensed — indefinitely, even on a studio computer that never goes online.
Calmer Dialogs: Windows stay inside VFxM, nothing dims behind them, and Escape closes what is on top rather than the whole app.
Imported Chains Behave Like Everything Else: Artwork, notes and renaming now work on chains brought in from disk.
Reliable Reordering: Dragging effects into a new order in Active FX now takes effect immediately, and changes made in REAPER are reflected straight away.
Readable at Every Size: Buttons fit their labels in all supported languages, and text is no longer clipped on macOS.

✨ Added

Favorite Banks: As a favorites collection grows the tab row becomes a long, crowded line to hunt through. Banks add an optional second level above tabs: seven complete, independent sets of favorites, switched from the folder icon at the left of the tab row. Right-click the icon to give a bank its own colour; banks holding favorites show in bold, empty ones dimmed. Each bank remembers which tabs you had open, and any tab can be sent elsewhere with Move to Bank.
Custom Categories From the Sidebar: A + button creates your own category without opening the Categories manager, and right-clicking any category chip opens a colour wheel to set its colour.
Category Protection & Reset: Renaming, recolouring or deleting a standard category now warns you first and offers to make it a user-defined category instead. A new Reset Categories to Default action restores scanned categories and clears overrides.
Multi-Category Indicators: The colour square beside each plugin shows every category it belongs to — up to four — instead of one blended colour, with a hover tooltip listing them all by name. Larger, better spaced and right-aligned so plugin names stay flush left.
Categorize as a Normal Window: The Categorize dialog is a movable, resizable panel rather than a blocking modal, and the right-click menu merges two near-identical entries into a single Categorize.
Remembered Layout: VFxM reopens at the position, size and panel arrangement you left it in, and returns to a visible screen if a monitor is removed.
Broken Plugins Made Obvious: Effects that failed to load are flagged in red in Active FX, with controls to take them offline, restore them or remove them.
Sortable Browser Columns: Click Rating, Plugin or the new Developer column to sort; click again to reverse. The header row stays pinned while scrolling, columns have visible dividers, and a Color/Uncolor toggle sits at the bottom of the list.
Cleaner Names & Search: Redundant developer suffixes are stripped from plugin names automatically, and a visible × clears the search box.
Drag Preview Thumbnails: Dragging a plugin to a track carries its thumbnail with the cursor, not just its name.
Bring Your REAPER Setup Across: A new section lists your existing REAPER FX folders and saved .RfxChain files, each with a one-click Import to Favorites. Imported chains appear in the grid with their own badge and load on double-click or drag.
Rename Inside a Tab: Give an individual plugin or chain its own display name within a favorites tab, without changing it anywhere else.
Track-less Action Feedback: Hovering Add FX Preset or Add FX Chain with no track selected shows a clear orange prompt on the button instead of interrupting with a popup.
Display Scaling 50%–150%: Comfortable on a laptop screen or a 4K display, with panels fitted to your real window size on first launch. (The range in 1.1.1. It is called Interface Scale now and runs from 75% to 200% in eight steps.)
Splash Screen Controls: Shows your installed version, can be switched off from the splash itself or Preferences, and has a solid background so it stays readable on light themes.

v1.1.0 (Superseded)

Released: 2026-08-07

✨ Added

Integrated Customer & Analytics Portal: Real-time download trends and portal tools.
Direct Support & Inquiry Service: Seamless contact support routing and ticket management.
Automated Test Verification: Extended suite of internal stability and integration test coverage.

⚡ Changed

Extended 10-Day Evaluation: Free trial evaluation extended to 10 full days with no credit card required.
Enhanced Device Verification: Improved online verification reliability across different network environments.

🛠️ Fixed

Stability & Crash Prevention: Resolved potential REAPER stability issue when refreshing plugin lists during heavy sessions.
Smoother Large Libraries: Reduced slowdown when working with very large plugin collections.
Activation Reliability: Fixed rare activation response errors when initializing trial licenses.

v1.0.0

Released: 2026-08-02

Initial Commercial Launch

First commercial release of Virtue FX Manager (VFxM) for Cockos REAPER on macOS and Windows.
Visual plugin browser with custom thumbnails, favorite tabs, and preset chains.
Secure online license activation and multi-machine device management.
Signed native installers with Apple Developer ID and notarization validation.