Your toolbar backups

REAPER keeps every toolbar you have in a single file, reaper-menu.ini. Installing VFxM adds one button to the main toolbar, which means writing to that file — so from 1.2.2 the installer copies it, untouched, before it changes anything.

The copies are plain files in a folder you can open. Putting one back needs nothing from VFxM and nothing from us.

The backups start at 1.2.2

There is no copy of a file that was already changed. If an installer before 1.2.2 replaced your toolbar, that happened before any backup existed — so installing 1.2.2 puts REAPER’s own default buttons back rather than the toolbar you had built. See Getting your REAPER toolbar back.

From 1.2.2 onward there is always a copy, because it is made before the file is touched.

Where the backups are

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/REAPER/Virtue/Backups/

The original REAPER keeps is at ~/Library/Application Support/REAPER/reaper-menu.ini.

Windows

%APPDATA%\REAPER\Virtue\Backups\

The original REAPER keeps is at %APPDATA%\REAPER\reaper-menu.ini.

What is in there

File	What it is
reaper-menu.ini.20260828_143012.bak	An exact copy of your file, named for when it was made — one per install or uninstall, newest last. On macOS the ten most recent are kept and older ones are dropped.
reaper-menu.ini.before-virtue	The most recent copy that still contained a real main toolbar — one with items of your own on it. This is what an install restores from.
HOW_TO_RESTORE_YOUR_TOOLBAR.txt	The same instructions as below, in the folder, so they are there when you need them.

reaper-menu.ini.before-virtue is only ever replaced by another healthy copy. A file that has been flattened cannot overwrite it, so the good copy does not quietly disappear the next time you install.

Uninstalling makes its own copy first as well, before it removes the button.

Note

Nothing else in VFxM reads these files. They are inert copies sitting in a folder — deleting them frees the space and breaks nothing, and keeping them costs a few kilobytes.

Restoring one by hand

1. Quit REAPER completely. REAPER rewrites reaper-menu.ini when it closes, so anything you copy in while it is running is overwritten on the way out. This step is the one that catches people.

2. Copy the backup over the original. Either drag it in a file browser and rename it to reaper-menu.ini, or use the command line:

   macOS

   cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/REAPER/Virtue/Backups/reaper-menu.ini.before-virtue \
      ~/Library/Application\ Support/REAPER/reaper-menu.ini

   Windows

   copy "%APPDATA%\REAPER\Virtue\Backups\reaper-menu.ini.before-virtue" "%APPDATA%\REAPER\reaper-menu.ini"

3. Start REAPER again. Your toolbar is back as it was in that copy.

To go further back, pick one of the dated .bak files instead — they are named by when they were made, so the one from before the day things went wrong is the one you want.

If you would rather VFxM did it

Installing or updating already restores from reaper-menu.ini.before-virtue on its own when it finds a main toolbar holding nothing but the Virtue button. The manual route above exists so recovery never depends on that being right.

Related

• Getting your REAPER toolbar back — what went wrong, and the in-REAPER route.
• File and folder locations — everything else VFxM reads or writes.