VST3 and AU Not Showing In Ableton on Mac

MacOSX and iOS
1

I am currently developing an audio plugin and have hit a bit of a snag. My audio plugin works as a standalone app, but when I try to load the VST3 or AU in Ableton it refuses to load. When I rescan plugins, it shows the name of my plugin in the status bar but never actually shows it. I am assuming it has to do with something about signing/security since I was able to load the AU in Garage Band after being prompted to lower the security requirements. The VST3 and AU both are signed with codesign and notarized with notarytool. However, when I use spctl to check if Gateway likes it, I get the message “rejected (the code is valid but does not seem to be an app)”. I am guessing this may be why Ableton refuses to load my plugin.

I have searched far and wide looking for the solution to my problem but I am truly stumped. Any help is greatly appreciated.

2

Does the plugin pass pluginval at level 10?

3

Yes, the AU does. There are two warnings but I don’t think they are problematic.

This one seems odd but I didn’t change the default code from JUCE for this.
“Changing program
!!! Warning: Current program is -1… Is this correct?”

Then there is this one as well.
“WARNING: Secure coding is not enabled for restorable state! Enable secure coding by implementing NSApplicationDelegate.applicationSupportsSecureRestorableState: and returning YES.”

The VST3 also passes but without the warnings.

I’m not sure if it matters, but I wrote all the code on Windows and ported it over to my Mac into a new project.

4

Those two warnings do not matter.

I don’t think that matters. I have just built a plugin locally (without notarization, build it directly from CMake). GarageBand can load it without the need to lower the security requirements. AFAIK signing/security does not matter if you build & run on the same machine. BTW, if there is a signing/security issue, pluginval will also show a warning message.

Perhaps it is an Ableton specific issue? (just guessing, not familiar with Ableton).

5

Interesting. I tried building one of the demo projects and it doesn’t show up in either Ableton or Garage Band. Ableton does seem to be giving more of an issue than Garage Band though. I was able to get a brand new default project to show up in Garage Band.

Maybe I need to try completing removing JUCE and doing the whole process over again.

6

Check if the host is running native or under Rosetta and your plugins are built for the appropriate processor

7

You are a life savor. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been trying to fix this. Thank you this worked

8

I do have a follow up question. Do you happen to know why when I have both arm64 and x86_64 selected it won’t make a universal binary?

Edit: I figured out why. I just needed to override the Schema in Xcode to use Universal

9

For future reference,
I got a similar problem on my M1 mac (VST3 not showing up, AU showing up but not loading) and needed to code-sign the binaries