MSFS Addon Linker: How to Organize Your Addons for 2020 & 2024

Anyone who has spent serious time with Microsoft Flight Simulator knows the feeling: you install a few airports, grab some aircraft, add a handful of liveries — and before long, the Community folder has turned into an unmanageable sprawl of hundreds of subfolders with cryptic names. Every time the simulator loads, it crawls through all of them, and tracking down which addon is causing a conflict becomes a time-consuming guessing game.

MSFS Addons Linker is a free third-party utility developed by bad2000, first released on October 11, 2020. It allows you to manage addons by organizing them in custom folders outside the main Community folder, then creating symbolic links to activate or deactivate them — without ever physically moving files on disk. What started as a personal solution to a personal problem has since grown into one of the most-used utility tools in the MSFS community, receiving regular updates and continuous development by its creator. Since version 0.22.x, the tool supports both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 through two separate executables included in the same download package.

Getting the Tool and Setting It Up

MSFS Addons Linker is distributed on Flightsim.to. Downloading it is straightforward — open the MSFS Addons Linker 2020/2024 page and click "Download now". Once downloaded, extract the archive into any folder of your choosing. No installer is required. You'll find two executables inside: MSFS_AddonsLinker.exe for MSFS 2020 and MSFS_AddonsLinker_2024.exe for MSFS 2024. The latest versions no longer require administrator rights to run, so launching it is as simple as a double-click. Placing a desktop shortcut for quick access is worth doing early on.

The first thing to set up after launching the tool is the folder structure. Create a dedicated addons folder somewhere outside your Community folder — this can be on a secondary drive or an external HDD if your primary SSD is running low on space. Within that folder, you might organise things into subfolders like Aircraft, Airports, Scenery, and Liveries, though the structure is entirely up to you. The tool will read and display whatever hierarchy you create.

Then, in the options screen, point the tool to this custom folder by clicking the green add button, and set the path to your MSFS Community folder below it. The Community folder path differs depending on your installation: Microsoft Store users will find it under C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_RANDOM\LocalCache\Packages\Community, while Steam users look in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community. One thing worth noting: some Microsoft Store users may run into file encryption issues, so it's sensible to test with a single addon first before moving your entire collection over.

How the Symbolic Linking Works

The core mechanism behind Addons Linker is worth understanding, because it's what makes the tool so efficient. Rather than copying or moving files every time you enable or disable something, the tool creates symbolic links in the MSFS Community folder that point to the actual files stored in your custom location. Enabling or disabling an addon means simply creating or deleting that link — the underlying files stay exactly where they are. From MSFS's perspective, the addon is present in the Community folder; from your system's perspective, the actual data lives wherever you put it.

On the main interface, your custom folder tree appears on the left side, while the right panel shows the current state of the Community folder. Ticking the checkbox next to any addon activates it immediately. Unticking it removes the link without touching the source files. This approach keeps the Community folder clean, saves disk space that would otherwise be consumed by redundant copies, and — particularly relevant for MSFS 2020 — reduces simulator startup times, since MSFS has to scan fewer items on launch when only the necessary addons are active.

It's worth noting that some addons use their own installers that write files directly into the Community folder, bypassing the linker entirely. These will need to be manually relocated to your custom folder structure to be managed through the tool.

Presets, the Map View, and More Advanced Features

Once you've got the basics running smoothly, Addons Linker offers a range of features that genuinely reward deeper exploration. The preset system is one of the most useful: you can save specific addon configurations as named presets and load them with a single click. If you primarily fly in the Alps, for instance, you can create a preset that activates only relevant European scenery, regional airports, and the aircraft you use in that area — and switch to a completely different set for a transatlantic session without manually toggling individual addons each time.

The map screen takes this a step further by displaying all location-based addons as coloured dots on a world map — green for active, red for inactive. Combined with the live simulator connection feature, the map can track your aircraft's current position in real time and keep the view centred on it as you fly. You can also use Ctrl+click on the map to select all airports within a region and activate them as a group, which is a particularly practical workflow when planning a new area to explore.

For users managing large collections, the ICAO scanner is a genuinely useful diagnostic tool. Accessible via Tools > Scan ICAO, it identifies duplicate airport entries across both community and official content, which can otherwise cause silent conflicts that are difficult to trace. Related to this is the dependency management feature: right-clicking any addon lets you define which library packages it requires, so those libraries activate automatically whenever the addon itself is enabled. If you rely on common scenery libraries across many airports, this saves the repetitive effort of tracking them manually.

Managing Executables and the MSFS 2024 Difference

One feature that often goes unnoticed is the ability to manage external executables alongside your addon content. Beyond toggling Community folder items, the tool can handle executables that load with the simulator and automatically terminate them when MSFS closes. This means tools like Simlink can be moved out of MSFS's native exe.xml auto-launch list and managed through the Linker instead — giving you the choice of when to run them, while also ensuring they don't linger in the system tray after you close the simulator.

It's also worth being aware of a meaningful difference between the two simulator versions when it comes to load time optimisation. The content.xml editing feature was particularly valuable for reducing startup times in MSFS 2020, but since MSFS 2024 streams most content rather than loading it locally, it makes little practical difference there. In MSFS 2024, the main value of the Linker lies in organisation and conflict management rather than raw loading performance.

If you run both simulator versions, the SymlinkCreator feature addresses the obvious storage concern: rather than maintaining two separate copies of every shared addon, it creates symbolic links between the two linker instances so both simulators can point to the same physical files. Given how quickly addon collections can balloon into tens of gigabytes, that's a worthwhile saving.

A Long-Running Community Tool

MSFS Addons Linker has been in continuous development since its initial release in October 2020, and it has accumulated a substantial and loyal user base along the way. For anyone who has been managing their Community folder manually up to now, the initial setup does take some time — moving files, building your folder hierarchy, and learning the interface. But it's a one-time investment that pays off every time you sit down for a flight session. You'll spend less time managing addons and more time flying.

✓ Key Takeaways

• Addons Linker uses symbolic links to activate and deactivate addons without ever moving files on disk — keeping your Community folder clean while your actual data stays organised wherever you put it.

• Store your addon folder on any drive, including external HDDs, freeing up space on your primary SSD without losing access to your content.

• Presets let you save and load entire addon configurations in one click — ideal for switching between regional setups or different flight types.

• The built-in map view displays active and inactive location-based addons visually, and can track your aircraft's live position within the simulator.

• The ICAO scanner identifies duplicate airport entries across community and official content, helping you resolve conflicts before they cause problems in-sim.

• Users running both MSFS 2020 and 2024 can use SymlinkCreator to share a single set of addon files between both simulator versions, avoiding redundant storage.