Welcome to the official guide for everything regarding ESO addons! Here you will find an explanation of what ESO addons are, how to install all ESO addons the easy way and how to find out what ESO addons might be the best for you!
Unfortunately, this guide is only for PC/Mac, as neither Stadia, nor consoles offer addon support for ESO.
What are ESO addons?
Addons are a way to modify the UI in ESO, track items, gather additional information and display it and analyze that data. They can also add more visuality to the game, make things more obvious or play sounds in critical moments. Something they don't do is add new objects to the game or modify the game in a way that makes you able to circumvent game mechanics.
You can find addons on various pages, but the one that is updated the most and has a very important tool is called
ESOUI. ESOUI is the most well kept and very regularly updated page for all kinds of ESO Addons and also offers a great tool -
Minion.
Minion is an addon manager and will, after installation, scan your computer to see where you run ESO from. After that you will be able to search for addons and install them in a very easy manner. This way you can also always keep all the addons up-to-date, if they are still being updated. This doesn't always happen and it can be that there's addons that haven't been updated in months or years, but most of them tend to still work despite not being updated.
If you find yourself with an addon that no longer works after a game-update or maintenance, you might look into ESOUI's commentary section. There's oftentimes a fix or someone saying that it's beyond repair.
How to install ESO addons?
There's two ways, as mentioned above there's Minion and then there's the way of installing it manually, and while we suggest you use Minion, especially if it is your first time, it might also be interesting to know how installing it manually works in case you want to fix something one day.
For this you need to know where your ESO addon folder is. It usually works this way:
1) Go to an addon website like ESOUI's website and pick an addon
2) Download and open the Compressed File (i.e. with WinRar)
3) Click and drag the content folder into your Documents>Elder Scrolls Online>Live>Addons folder, as the addon folder is oftentimes located inside your “Documents” folder
Once you have dropped the Addon folder there, you can start the game as usual. The game will start with the addon enabled, so you won't have to enable it yourself. If, for some reason, you need to enable or disable it, you can do so in the in-game menu under Settings.
If you are looking for a list of addons which are great to use, then you can find them in the
Best ESO Addons Guide!
Libraries
As you can see there's also something missing: the Libs. Libs (short version for Library) are something that can be used by any addon, which is why they need to be installed separately. If you use Minion you can install them easily, otherwise you will have to install them on your own and one by one. It can sometimes be a pain to figure out what Libs you are missing, but thankfully ESO will show yo what is missing and if you use an Addon manager it's also quite easy to find it via the search.
We hope you enjoyed the ESO Addons Beginner Guide and found it helpful!