Safe Mode permanently disabling ALL add-ons (is not useful)

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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When starting the MSFS 2024 in Safe Mode all 3rd party add-ons are permanently disabled. I am sure that is a “feature” and not a bug, but it is wasting time for users that have more than a few add-ons.

I activated a few new add-ons, after which I got an “unusually long loading time” message and had to stop the loading of MSFS 2024 using the task manager. After that I started MSFS 2024 in Safe Mode (for the first time) to disable the add-ons I had just activated to see if that fixes the problem. However because Safe Mode deactivates everything permanently I now have to go through more than a hundred (actually more like 200+) add-ons and activate them again individually. Add-ons that have worked fine for me.

Doing that once is annoying, but since it is highly likely that there will be more add-ons causing problems in the future, it becomes the one issue that actually causes me to question if MSFS 2024 is worth my time. at least for now.

Obviously there are still lots of other problems, but those can usually be avoided or ignored. I don’t need to do everything at once, I have been having fun with 2024, and I am sure a lot of the issues will be fixed in time. However especially those basic “quality of life” issues make a bad impression.

I file this as a bug although it could be considered a feature request, because bad user interfaces and other design decisions, especially the once wasting users time, are bugs (in my opinion).

Thank you for all the development effort. The new simulator is often quite amazing. :slight_smile:

2

Basically it would be useful to have more states, than “enabled” and “disabled”. I mean “not available” is already a third state. At least two more states like “temporarily disabled (safe mode)” and “hidden” would be useful. “Hidden” could be used to hide add-ons from active management, that are not needed anymore in 2024 or that currently have non-sim-crashing bugs like invisible terminal buildings in airports. Right now I have to remember the add-ons that have major visual issues.

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3

The sim functions as designed in this respect, so this is not considered a bug.
Any desired changes should be submitted to the Wishlist category.

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4

Don’t use safe mode, use addon linker instead to manage your community folder.

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5

Thank you! However my add-ons are mostly Marketplace bought, because I started on XBox before getting a PC. I am still flying on both systems.

Also, while I see the potential problems with the new streaming approach of MSFS 2024, it has freed up a lot of space of my drives and overall has been working pretty well for me. So there isn’t much that can be managed locally.

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6

Thank you, I will create a Wishlist topic. I assume there is no way to move this topic to the proper place.

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7

I use addon linker in 2020, to LINK folder of downloaded content to my community folder (as well as some to official).

But how does a linker work with content that has to always be downloaded … ? or is that a limitation of addon-linker with 2024

8

It only works with items in community.

9

I think, if you read the advanced section in the documentation, addon-linker can also link folders into Official… at least it can in 2020
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10

I agree with OP this is a terrible design. I had the same problem and also have many marketplace addons. The new library is worse than the old content manager which is really disappointing because we really needed something better to manage hundreds of addons.

11

Inside the FS24 AppData there is a file LocalCache/Content.xml which is where the sim stores the enabled status of each addon. Back this up before enabling any marketplace addons and then if you get a startup hang or crash then simply copy back your backup to overwrite the original, and avoid safe mode at all costs. This will reset you to a working state and let you try again without starting from scratch.

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