Windows VST plugins on Linux: Wine, yabridge and Tabify

How it works

• Wine runs Windows programs on Linux — plugin installers and the plugins themselves.
• yabridge is a bridge between Wine and Linux programs. For every Windows plugin it creates a VST3 wrapper in ~/.vst3/yabridge, so any Linux program sees the plugin as a native one.
• Tabify scans ~/.vst3 with all its subfolders, so yabridge bridges show up in the plugin list with no extra setup. Tabify plays sound through PipeWire directly — it needs no JACK, qjackctl or pw-jack.

Native Linux plugins (VST3 and LV2) are found without any of this — in ~/.vst3, ~/.lv2, /usr/lib/vst3, /usr/lib/lv2 and their lib64 variants. Wine and yabridge are only needed for Windows plugins.

At a glance

1. Install Wine

yabridge needs a recent Wine, ideally Wine Staging.

Fedora

Fedora’s wine package is already built with the staging patches:

sudo dnf install wine winetricks

Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint

The Wine in the stock repositories is too old for yabridge — install Wine Staging from the WineHQ repository. For Ubuntu and Linux Mint:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings
wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key -
codename=$(. /etc/os-release; echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME)
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/$codename/winehq-$codename.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging winetricks

On Debian it is the same, only the repository address differs — replace the codename and wget -NP lines with:

codename=$(. /etc/os-release; echo $VERSION_CODENAME)
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/dists/$codename/winehq-$codename.sources

If the commands fail, check the current instructions on the Wine website.

Arch, Manjaro

Wine Staging lives in the multilib repository. If it is not enabled yet, uncomment the [multilib] section in /etc/pacman.conf (Manjaro has it on by default) and install:

sudo pacman -Syu wine-staging winetricks

Libraries for plugins (all distributions)

Many plugins won’t start without them or draw their interface without fonts:

winetricks corefonts vcrun6sp6 vcrun2019 d3dcompiler_47 dxvk

2. Install yabridge

Arch, Manjaro

yabridge is in the official multilib repository:

sudo pacman -S yabridge yabridgectl

Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint

Download yabridge-<version>.tar.gz from the yabridge releases on GitHub and extract it into ~/.local/share — you should end up with ~/.local/share/yabridge:

tar -C ~/.local/share -xzf ~/Downloads/yabridge-*.tar.gz

To run yabridgectl from the terminal, add the folder to PATH (put the line at the end of ~/.bashrc, then open a new terminal):

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/share/yabridge"

On Fedora you can also install yabridge as a package from COPR patrickl/yabridge.

3. Install Windows plugins

Run the plugin installer with Wine:

wine ~/Downloads/PluginSetup.exe

Install the VST3 version into the default folder — C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3. On Linux that is ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/VST3.

4. Bridge the plugins with yabridge

Tell yabridge once where the Windows plugins live:

yabridgectl add "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/VST3"

And create the bridges:

yabridgectl sync

Your plugins now appear in ~/.vst3/yabridge. Run yabridgectl sync again after every plugin install or removal and after updating yabridge. To see what is set up — yabridgectl status.

If a plugin has its own folder (like Kontakt), add it with the same yabridgectl add.

5. Add the plugins in Tabify

1. Pick your audio interface: Preferences → Audio.
2. Scan for plugins. The ~/.vst3 folder is scanned by default, no need to add it. Open the “VST Plugins” window and click “Scan” — or turn on “Rescan on launch” in Preferences → Plug-ins/VST.
3. Add a plugin to your guitar or to a tab track — find it with the search in the “VST Plugins” window.

The first time a Windows plugin opens takes a few seconds while Wine starts its process. If a plugin hangs or crashes while scanning, Tabify skips it and carries on with the rest.

Your own plugin folders (say, ~/.lv2 on an external drive) can be added in Preferences → Plug-ins/VST → “Add”.

If something goes wrong

• The plugin is not in the list. Check that it has a VST3 version and that you ran yabridgectl sync after installing it, then click “Scan” again. Tabify does not load VST2-only plugins yet.
• The plugin interface is too small on a HiDPI screen. Open winecfg → “Graphics” and set the screen resolution to 192 dpi — plugins then scale to 200%.
• Clicks miss the plugin’s buttons or it draws offset. yabridge has an editor_coordinate_hack option for such plugins. Create ~/.vst3/yabridge/yabridge.toml and add the plugin path relative to that folder:

  ["Plugin name.vst3"]
  editor_coordinate_hack = true

• The plugin wants activation through its own app (iLok, Native Access and so on) — install and run it with Wine the same way as the installer.

FAQ