Plugin workflows
Once you've added a plugin to your developer workspace, there are several things you can do with it. All of the following features are accessed via the •••/Actions dropdown associated with each plugin.
Load plugin
Plugins added to the developer workspace do not automatically get added to their supported host application. Instead, once you launch the host application, you'll be able to tell the plugin (••• > Load) to launch in the host. This allows you to use the marketplace version of your plugin while you're not doing active development, but load up the development version when you need to make a new version of the plugin.
Plugins that load successfully will show a small green notification at the bottom of the screen indicating that the plugin was loaded. If a plugin fails to load, a small red notification will appear with a Details link. If you click this link, the application's logs will appear to help you troubleshoot the reason why the plugin failed to load.
Once your plugin is loaded, you'll typicaly use the Reload action if you need to see any changes in your plugin's behavior. However, if you make changes to your plugin's manifest.json file, you'll want to use the Load action to load the plugin from scratch.
If Photoshop is in a "modal" state (showing a dialog, or a tool's changes has yet to be committed -- say, from a cropping operation), your plugin will not appear to load, but you'll receive no messaging about this. If you don't immediately see an indication of failure or success, check Photoshop and exit any modal states. At that point your plugin will then load. (This applies to all actions related to loading.)
Reload plugin
Clicking Reload will reload a plugin's code and restart execution. This action does not reload the plugin's manifest.
Watch plugin folder for changes
Once loaded, you can click Watch to watch your plugin's code for changes. If changes are detected, the plugin will reload automatically. Once you start watching, you can then stop watching by clicking Unwatch.
Debug your plugin
Once loaded, you can click Debug to launch a customized version of the Chrome Developer Tools to debug your plugin. Full support for breakpoints, the console, source maps, etc., is supported. The tool does have several limitations including the inability to edit CSS styles in the property inspector, but even so, you can now walk through code, inspect elements, and more.
Once you're done with debugging, you can close the debugger window.
Show plugin logs
If you want quick access to the logs your plugin may be generating via console.log and the like, you can click the Logs action. This will launch the debugger, but take you directly to the JavaScript console.
Package your plugins for distribution
Once you've got a plugin that's ready for sharing, you can click Package to get it ready for distribution. Once you select a folder, the plugin package will be written there. The plugin package will always be named after the plugin's ID.
Open your plugin folder
Sometimes with a lot of plugins it may be tricky to navigate your file system to locate the source code. You can instead use Open Folder to open the plugin's folder in Finder or Explorer.
Edit options
Sometimes it's useful to "break on start" when debugging your plugins. When this option is checked, the plugin will immediately break into the debugger when it is loaded so that you can trace through the plugin's initialization routines.
The Advanced section allows you to specify the plugin's build folder, relative to its manifest.json file. This is useful when working with React or other bundlers.
To save changes to these settings, click the Save button.
