Designing a plugin experience

These guidelines will help you define the best user experience for your plugin. As you create a plugin, consider different UX patterns and UI components based on your user’s workflow and the plugin action.

Plugins can interact with a user’s experience at different levels, for example, some plugins in some use cases won’t render an interface, and some will include actions that need an interface.

Designing a plugin

Learn more about the types interfaces available to plugins.

Plugins panel

Plugins dialog

non-blocking UI: This interface is best used when the user should have access to the canvas while using the plugin.

blocking UI: This interface is best used when the plugin needs to run an action and the user shouldn’t modify or change selection of objects on the canvas.

Examples showing the plugins panel interface and the plugins dialog interface

UX patterns

User experience patterns highlight UX requirements and best practices, as well as provide guidance on how to interact with your plugin users within Adobe.

View UX patterns

Designing for photoshop

User interface

The user interface section will have information on UXP Spectrum components you can use to build your plugin interface.

View user interface components