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I’ve been daydreaming about the possibility of OS support for semi-arbitrary plugins for apps and how those apps could expose certain things for the plug-in to

I’ve been daydreaming about the possibility of OS support for semi-arbitrary plugins for apps and how those apps could expose certain things for the plug-in to utilize. It’s a very half-baked idea of mine but I’ve wondered if it’s possible to permit the baseline simplicity of an app while giving an outlet for power users to craft something useful atop them. I’m curious how certain apps even permit a plug in architecture in the first place like vscode extensions etc. What do these apps expose that makes it all possible and is there a way to generalize it to all apps.

concordDance 4y ago
You want open source software.
vineyardmike 4y ago
Like the sibling commented, that’s what open source is for. BUT apple specifically has ExtensionKit, which is a library for arbitrary extensions in arbitrary apps. Of course, the host-app needs to support extensions and build it in. So your theorizing about a way for any app to have a plugin, its there. Many system apps in OSes have this feature, and many more apps (eg vscode) support it. Realistically, web-apps are almost what you want too. Web-apps allow for pretty arbitrary extensions via browser plugins, which can modify the actual UI of the webpage, and make API calls to the backend (by acting as the JavaScript on the page). WebApps are basically open source though (or source available) by nature of how browsers work. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/extensionkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/extensionkit