v4 plugin migration: Enabling a plugin

This guide is part of the v4 plugin migration guide designed to help you migrate a plugin from Strapi v3.6.x to v4.0.x.

🤓 v3/v4 comparison

A Strapi v3 plugin was enabled if it was manually installed or found in the plugins directory.

In Strapi v4:

• Installed plugins following the automatic plugins discovery pattern will automatically be enabled.
• While developing a local plugin, the plugin must explicitly be enabled in the ./config/plugins.js file of the Strapi application.

To enable a local plugin in v4 and define an optional configuration:

1. If it does not already exist, create the ./config/plugins.js file.

2. In the ./config/plugins.js file, export a function that:

   • returns an object
   • and can take the { env } object as a parameter (see Environment configuration documentation).

3. Within the object exported by ./config/plugins.js, create a key with the name of the plugin (e.g. "my-plugin"). The value of this key is also an object.

4. Within the "my-plugin" object, set the enabled key value to true (boolean).

5. (optional) Add a resolve key, whose value is the path of the plugin folder (as a string), and a config key (as an object) that can include additional configuration for the plugin (see plugins configuration documentation).

Example: Enabling and configuring a "my-plugin" plugin

// path: ./config/plugins.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  "my-plugin": {
    enabled: true,
    resolve: "./path-to-my-plugin",
    config: {
      // additional configuration goes here
    },
  },
});

✏️ Plugins published on npm

If the plugin will be published on npm, the package.json file should include a strapi.kind key with a value set to "plugin" (i.e. { "strapi": { "kind": "plugin" } }).