A quick guide to finding your World of Warcraft (WoW) addon folder for retail and classic players.
Knowing how to find your addon folder is key if you want to manually install addons or back them up to protect against computer problems. Unfortunately, navigating to the addon folder can be confusing. In this guide, I’ll show you a straightforward way to find your addon folder so you can spend more time playing the game.
Where is the WoW addon folder?
The WoW addon folder is located in the same path as your World of Warcraft installation.
On Windows, the default path is C:\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns. If you are looking for Classic WoW files, the path will be the same except the “_retail_” should be replaced with “_classic_”.
If you are playing on a Mac, you can see the default locations listed in the following table:
| OS | Version | Addon Folder Location |
| Windows | Retail | C:\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns |
| Windows | Wrath Classic | C:\World of Warcraft\_classic_\Interface\AddOns |
| Windows | Classic Era | C:\World of Warcraft\_classic_era_\Interface\AddOns |
| Mac | Retail | Macintosh HD/Applications/World of Warcraft/_retail_/Interface/Addons |
| Mac | Wrath Classic | Macintosh HD/Applications/World of Warcraft/_classic_/Interface/Addons |
| Mac | Classic Era | Macintosh HD/Applications/World of Warcraft/_classic_era_/Interface/Addons |
My WoW addon folder isn’t in the default location!
If you can’t find your addon folder in one of the locations listed above, chances are that your World of Warcraft game files are installed somewhere else. This can happen if you choose a different location when you first set up the game.
Luckily, it is super easy to find your game files.
You can follow these steps to find the exact location of your WoW addon folder:
- Open your Battle.net application
- Click on the Options cogwheel next to your ‘Play’ button.
- Select ‘Show in Explorer’ from the list.
- Navigate to the version of the game you play (_retail_, _classic_, or _classic_era_)
- Open the Interface folder and then click on “AddOns“
If you have a working installation of the game, this approach will work 99 out of 100 times. However, what if you can’t find the folder because it doesn’t exist?
I have no addon files!
Let’s say you find your World of Warcraft installation and navigate to the appropriate game files (retail or classic) and do not have an AddOns folder in Interface. If this happens, you can actually just create a new folder in its place.
Just make sure to follow the exact capitalization because it is case-sensitive.
The AddOns folder is empty by default, so you don’t need to add anything else to it. From there, you are free to fill it up with the files for the addons you want to use. Just make sure you unzip the addons before placing them in the folder.
Most addons downloads come in a zipped format, which will not load into the game properly if not unzipped first.
Installing addons with an addon manager
Chances are good that you stumbled on this article because you are trying to install or update addons. As an alternative to manually unzipping and placing addons in your folder, you can use an addon manager.
An addon manager allows you to download and update addons with a single click. Even better, it usually automatically detects the location of your WoW addon folder.
Even addons that traditionally required manual installation, like ElvUI, are now installable and updatable through addon managers.
The manager I recommend is WowUp. It is lightweight, free, and open-source. It supports addons on Windows, Mac, and Linux!
If you want to read more about addon managers and installing addons, check out my article: How to Install WoW Addons.
I actually managed to find a workaround for this. If you browse to:
1. X:\Wherever\Wow\Is\_retail
2. Highlight ALL of the folders
3. Right Click
4 Click on Copy (or click on Show more options first.
5. Go back a directory to: X:\Wherever\Wow\Is
6, Right Click on an empty area in explorer (e.g. no icons or textx).
7 Paste 🙂