ComfyUI Custom Node (Plugin) Installation Guide

This article will take the installation of ComfyUI-Manager https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager as an example for explanation. Due to the variety of ComfyUI plugins, the installation methods and requirements are diverse, and here I will only explain the most common installation method. ComfyUI Manager is a practical plugin that can help you automatically install plugins, download models, etc. You can use this plugin as a large resource library to download content at any time, but if you are in China, you may experience poor usage due to network access issues.

• ComfyUI Manager Installation
• Manual Installation: Manually install ComfyUI plugins from a compressed package
• Git Installation: Install using Git commands
• Use aaaki ComfyUI Launcher to install custom nodes

1. ComfyUI Manager New Version Menu Location

As shown in the image, if your ComfyUI is installed correctly, the ComfyUI Manager location in the latest version menu interface is as shown above.

2. ComfyUI Manager Old Version Menu Location

If the installation is successful, after opening the ComfyUI interface, you should see the following effect (old version) In the menu options, a new Manager option will be added, which is the entry point for ComfyUI Manager.

I. Installing Plugins with ComfyUI Manager

Step 1: In the ComfyUI Manager Menu that pops up, you can see the Custom Nodes Manager(Install New Plugins) entry, click the corresponding button as shown below

Step 2: Below is the corresponding Custom Nodes Manager interface

1. At position 1, enter the name of the plugin you want to install in the search box, such as ComfyUI-Manager
2. At position 2, find the plugin you need and click the Install button to install
3. At position 3, you can also use the corresponding Git address to install
4. Wait for the installation to complete, sometimes you may need to restart ComfyUI to apply the installation

II. Using Git to Install ComfyUI Plugins

If you’re not familiar with git, I recommend trying GitHub Desktop for installation. GitHub Desktop is GitHub’s official graphical git client that’s very user-friendly. Here I’ll introduce two installation methods:

1. GitHub Desktop installation (more user-friendly for those unfamiliar with git)
2. Git command line installation

1. GitHub Desktop Installation and Plugin Updates

1. First, you need to register a GitHub account. GitHub registration address: https://github.com/
2. Then download GitHub Desktop from: https://desktop.github.com/
3. After downloading and installing, open the software and complete the account login

Follow these steps to install plugins using GitHub Desktop:

1. Click the File menu and select Clone repository

2. In the pop-up window, choose the Clone method using URL 3. Select the directory for your plugin installation, typically the custom_nodes directory in your ComfyUI installation folder. In my screenshot, I’ve set it to D:\ComfyUI_windows_portable\ComfyUI\custom_nodes, which is my ComfyUI installation directory

You might see a message saying “This folder contains files. Git Can only clone empty folders” - don’t worry about this. The message will update and disappear once we enter the GitHub repository address

4. Enter the Git repository address of the plugin you want to install in the URL input box, such as https://github.com/kijai/ComfyUI-Hunyuan3DWrapper. You’ll notice the installation directory updates as we enter the address 5. Click the Clone button and wait for the installation to complete

Restart ComfyUI and wait for the interface to complete necessary dependency installations. This completes your plugin installation.

From the screenshot above, you can see I’ve installed several git repositories from different authors using Git Desktop

1. Clicking position 1 will open the git repository address installed using GitHub Desktop
2. If there are updates available for the plugin, you’ll see an arrow indicator like at position 2
3. Click the corresponding menu, switch to the repository, and you’ll usually see an update notification like at position 3. Click the Pull Origin button to complete the plugin update

2. Git Command Line Installation

Installing with Git requires you to have some knowledge of Git and to have Git pre-installed and configured.

• Git software download: https://git-scm.com/

First, find the Git repository of the plugin you want to install, such as https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager

1. Click the green <>code button on the page.
2. Click the copy button after the input box of the https option in the pop-up window.
3. You will copy the link https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager.git
4. Open your CMD terminal, first use the cd command to enter the folder where your ComfyUI plugins are located, such as E://ComfyUI_windows_portable/COmfyUI/custom_nodes

cd E://ComfyUI_windows_portable/COmfyUI/custom_nodes 

Then use the git clone command to clone the corresponding code repository

git clone https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager.git

5. Wait for the success notification.
6. Restart ComfyUI to check if the plugin has been installed successfully.

Note: Using GitHub in the domestic environment can easily lead to failure. You can synchronize the corresponding plugin repository to a domestic code repository such as Gitee to increase the success rate.

III. Manual Installation: Installing ComfyUI Plugins from ZIP Package

First, visit the repository address: https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager

• The repository usually provides installation instructions in its Readme, which you can follow for installation

1. Click the green <>code button on the page.
2. Click the Download ZIP button in the pop-up window.
3. After downloading, unzip the compressed package.
4. Copy the unzipped folder to the comfyui/custom_nodes plugin directory.
5. Restart ComfyUI and check if the plugin is installed.

IV. aaaki ComfyUI Launcher Plugin Installation

If you are using the aaaki ComfyUI Launcher, the installation success rate will be much higher in the Chinese domestic environment.

1. Make sure ComfyUI is not running
2. In the aaaki ComfyUI Launcher, select Version Management\Install Extension (the following picture uses the English version interface)
3. Search or browse to find the plugin you want to install and click to install it
4. If there is no plugin, you can use the Extension URL in this interface to install the corresponding plugin git address here, and you can install it using git

However, due to recent issues with GitLab access in China, this method might not have a high success rate anymore. It’s recommended to either use a VPN or mirror the GitHub repository to Gitee, then use git commands for installation.