Wireshark supports plugins for various purposes. Plugins can either be scripts written in Lua or code written in C or C++ and compiled to machine code.
Wireshark looks for plugins in both a personal plugin folder and a global plugin folder. Lua plugins are stored in the plugin folders; compiled plugins are stored in subfolders of the plugin folders, with the subfolder name being the Wireshark version number.
On Windows:
-
The personal plugin folder is APPDATA
\Wireshark\plugins. -
The global plugin folder is WIRESHARK
\plugins.
On Unix-like systems:
-
The personal plugin folder is
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
/wireshark/pluginsor, if XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wiresharkdoes not exist and $HOME/.wiresharkis present, $HOME/.wireshark/plugins. -
If you are running on macOS and Wireshark is installed as an
application bundle, the global plugin folder is
APPDIR
/Contents/PlugIns/wireshark, otherwise it’s INSTALLDIR/share/wireshark/plugins.