My friend sent me a zip of his plugins folder. He is on Windows. I am on macOS. I unzipped the file he sent me, and moved all the folders inside of it (names like Fundamental, VCV-Recorder, etc.) into my ~/Documents/Rack2/plugins folder. I chose to replace Fundamental.
Rack still doesn’t seem to think I have any of the plugins installed.
Why?
I should probably wait for an expert to wade in but I’m fairly sure that the plugins on different platforms are a different executable file.
You need the correct binary plugin files for your OS
Just to clarify, the plugins are executable code. Just like you can’t download a program for Windows and run it on a Mac, the same is true for VCV Rack plugins. They come in 3 flavors: Windows, Mac, Linux.
And soon™ 4
plugins must match the architecture and major version (2) of Rack
You would be far better off subscribing to the plugins you want on the VCV library and then downloading them from within the Rack application like everyone else does.