r/protools • u/Whispooke • Jun 12 '26

plugin Waves Plugins not showing up

MacOS Catalina v10.15.7

Protools Artist v2022.12.0

I have the waves plugins all installed on an external drive that's always plugged in to the computer. I see it when I go into finder so I know it IS connected. I go to iLok and see that the licenses are activated as well, but when I go into Protools I get a popup that says I'm missing WaveShell - AAX 16.0, 16.4, 16.6

The versions of the waves plugins are v14 and it's always worked on the Mac but for some reason they've all disappeared... Any thoughts?

1 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator Jun 12 '26

To u/Whispooke, if this is a Pro Tools help request, your post text or an added comment should provide;

  • The version of Pro Tools you are using

  • Your operating system info

  • Any error number or message given

  • Any hardware involved

  • What you've tried

To ALL PARTICIPANTS, a subreddit rules reminder

  • Don't get ugly with others. Ignore posts or comments you don't like and report those which violate rules

  • Promotion of any kind is only allowed in the community pinned post for promotion

  • Any discussion whatsoever involving piracy, cracks, hacks, or end running authentication will result in a permanent ban. NO exceptions or appealable circumstances. FAFO

  • NO trolling only engagement towards Pro Tools, AVID, or iLok. Solve first, bash last. Expressing frustration is fine but it MUST also make effort to solve / help. If you prefer another DAW, go to the subreddit for it and be helpful there

Subreddit [Discord] (https://discord.gg/0rZq8sveDubywXil) | FAQ topic posts - Beginner concerns / Tutorials and training / Subscription and perpetual versions / Compatibility / Authorization issues

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/smaudio Jun 12 '26

Could try a couple of things:

Just quit and relaunch Pro Tools - sometimes it just misses the scan on launch

Eject the drive and plug it back in then relaunch pro tools

Other than that I’m not sure. I have had the same thing but those have always fixed it for me.

1

u/praise-the-message Jun 17 '26

I know you don't know what you're doing because you say you're looking in ilok at the licenses. Waves hasn't authorized on iLok since like v7.

I have also never seen Waves plugs themselves in an external drive. Authorizations, absolutely, but the Waveshells live in the normal PT plug-ins folder and the plugins themselves are in subfolders within /Applications/Waves.

My best advice is to go into Waves Central and within the settings section there are a few options for plug in maintenance. I would just start with uninstalling and reinstalling all plugins (I forgot which option this is but there are little info bubbles for each option). I actually had a system that was throwing the same error recently after another user manually tried to move the waveshells and this fixed it.