This might be an extra silly question... but do add-ons bog Blender down in any way? Is the reason behind having the built-in add-ons disabled related to performance, or is it just to not have way too many menus/options visible while still allowing us to custom set our preferences?
I feel like at every course I follow I learn of yet another built-in add-on that must be enabled and it got me curious...
Yes, they take a toll for sure. I remember Shawn's Blender taking 5 minutes to load because of the many addons he had enabled. Not to mention the many addons that cause glitches and make Blender misbehave and cause all kinds of headaches. I typically have 3 or 5 must have addons enabled at a time, then what I need I enable to use and then disable it. But there is not a hard rule against addons, try things out, see how it works for you.
Each addon uses resources. On slower or low end systems it will be noticable. Also, addons that come with blender are official or community. Blender Foundation has a policy that no community addon will be turned on by default. That is why node wrangler(a very very popular addon) isn't turned on by default.
Got it! Makes sense! I like that... I feel like I use a few of them all the time, will try your suggestion Omar.
And cool, didn't know that! Thanks Dwayne!
Yeah I have a system that is very low end. So I turn addons on and off all the time. I created an addon that lets me do this in the n-panel of the 3D Viewport and the shader editor. If you want to use it you can download it here
Thank you Dwayne! It hasn't posed a problem for me yet, probably because I just have 4 or 5 enabled that I picked up from courses here. But I'm bookmarking it for when it happens. Thanks for sharing!