In comparison to the build process, plug-in installation is very simple. Installing a plug-in is accomplished by copying the compiled plug-in module to <IDADIR>/plugins. Note that Windows systems do not allow an executable file that is in use to be overwritten. So to install a plug-in on a Windows system, you must ensure that any previous version of the plug-in has been unloaded from IDA. Depending on the plug-in loading options, a plug-in may be unloaded when a database is closed. However, plug-ins that have the PLUGIN_FIX flag set may require IDA to be shut down entirely before the new plug-in can be copied to <IDADIR>/plugins.

On Linux and OS X systems, executable files can be overwritten while they are in use, so you do not need to ensure that a plug-in is unloaded before installing a new version of it. However, the new version of the plug-in will not be loaded into IDA until the next time IDA offers plug-ins a chance to load.

Some IDA plug-ins are distributed in binary form only, while others are distributed in both source and binary format. Installing such plug-ins usually involves finding the proper version of the compiled plug-in for your version of IDA and copying that plug-in to <IDADIR>/plugins. Make sure that you read the documentation (if any!) that accompanies any plug-in that you wish to install, because some plug-ins require the installation of additional components in order to function properly.