The 45 Best Addons for World of Warcraft

Image: Blizzard

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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

World of Warcraft addons have come a long way from their humble beginnings back in 2004. Back then, they were mostly minor interface modifications — a simple extra panel here or a minor display there. These days, the best addons for WoW Shadowlands can completely transform how players interact with the game.

Want to redesign the UI entirely? Display all hidden information and analyze every minute detail? Alert you to the presence of that one troglodyte who camped you five months ago so that you can rend their limbs from their body? Well, addons can do all of that and more.

With that in mind, we’ll be going over our list of the best addons for WoW Shadowlands, breaking them down into various categories to fit what you’re looking for.

Let’s get started!

Installing and Managing the Best Addons for WoW Shadowlands

Before you can start picking and choosing your favorite addons, you’ll need to know how to install them. The simplest and sponsored (by Blizzard) way to download addons is via the new Overwolf client and CurseForge app.

You’ll need to download both for this to work, but the programs are simple to obtain and non-intrusive. Most importantly, anything you get via CurseForge is vetted and guaranteed to be safe for download — any other sources carry the risk of malware.

Overwolf Download — *Image: Curseforge via HGG*

Here’s a step-by-step guide to downloading WoW addons:

Click on the “Download Overwolf” button at the top right and run the program to install the client. Once it’s complete, it’ll open up Overwolf.
From the Overwolf client, download the CurseForge app to manage your WoW addons. Click on the search magnifying glass at the top right, and type in “wow” to get it to appear.
Install the app and launch it to reach the CurseForge manager.
Click on “Get More Addons” at the top, and you’ll be able to search for and install any addon you want.

You’ll have to periodically update your addons whenever their creator patches them, which you can do from the “My Addons” tab at the top. Be sure to check back frequently to keep them updated! You can also delete any addons that you no longer need from this tab.

Occasionally, an addon will be abandoned by its creator and will not be updated for future WoW patches. You can continue using out-of-date addons by clicking on the “AddOns” button in the bottom-left corner of your character selection screen and clicking “Load out of date Addons” in the top-right of the pop-up menu.

Addons Menu — *Image: Blizzard Entertainment via HGG*

You can also manage which addons you want to load for your characters through this menu. If you want to disable an addon temporarily, simply uncheck it. You can also click on the drop-down menu at the top-left and selectively choose which addons you want active per character, which is excellent for some class-specific addons.

With that out of the way, let’s get started on our list of the best WoW addons!

Best Addons for UI in WoW Shadowlands

These addons are designed to improve your game’s interface, giving you control over its layout and operation for a more customizable experience.

1. Bartender4

Launched: September 2008 | Total Downloads: ~50 million | Download Link: Bartender4

First on our list of best addons for WoW Shadowlands is the go-to beginning addon for rearranging your UI. It lets you configure up to ten action bars, their placement on the screen, and the layout of the bars themselves. It’s incredibly useful for players who want to have their main buttons centralized and clustered for easy access.

2. ElvUI

Launched: August 2016 | Total Downloads: ~1 million | Download Link: ElvUI

ElvUI is the definitive choice for players looking for complete and absolute control over their UI. You can customize every last feature, making your UI as clean or as detailed as you want.

Be warned that this addon has a lot to go through before your UI is up and running — you might want to watch a tutorial on how to set it up. You should also be prepared to spend hours getting it right, singe it’ll be hard to go back to the default UI once you’ve put your custom one together.

3. Dominos

Launched: June 2008 | Total Downloads: ~15 million | Download Link: Dominos

If you’re looking to edit the bulk of your UI but don’t want to drive yourself insane over ElvUI, I recommend Dominos. It lets you move most of your UI around in a much more simple and intuitive manner. It may not be as customizable, but it’ll more than get the job done.

4. MoveAnything

Launched: October 2008 | Total Downloads: ~20 million | Download Link: MoveAnything

As the name suggests, this addon allows you to move anything on your UI. It’s fairly simple to use and ideal if you like the default UI but want to move a single element, like the mini-map.

5. Bagnon

Launched: December 2005 | Total Downloads: ~70 million | Download Link: Bagnon

Let me be frank — inventory management sucks more than having a black hole spontaneously opening up next to you. The default bag UI is an affront to existence itself. This addon condenses your bag space into a single panel, both for your inventory and bank, and enables Quick Sort on your belongings. You can edit the settings to ignore certain bags and determine how your items are rearranged, so be sure to play around with the settings a bit.

6. SexyMap

Launched: October 2008 | Total Downloads: ~22 million | Download Link: SexyMap

A nice little UI addon that replaces the game’s default minimap with a much more stylized one. Choose from various presets such as a druidic Emerald Dream, shamanistic Elemental Fury, and more.

All you have to do is head into your interface and click on the addon’s specific menu to adjust the border to your liking. Some people have noted that this occasionally conflicts with other minimap addons, but we have personally not run into any issues.

7. DynamicCam

Launched: July 2016 | Total Downloads: ~800 thousand | Download Link: DynamicCam

A neat little addon for those of you looking to add a little bit of dramatic flair to your adventures in WoW. You can play around with the settings in this addon to set up alternate camera angles. They might not be incredibly noticeable at first, but as you travel, you’ll see how the camera takes on a more cinematic approach while following your character. Alternatively, it’s also good if you just hate the default camera angle and want to be able to see more on your screen.

There are only three presets by default, but you can import more from other players online or create your own custom one. Just be prepared to do a fair bit of work if you plan on creating your own. We recommend going with the “Immersive” preset option at first if you want to play around with the addon.

8. Master Plan

Launched: November 2014 | Total Downloads: ~40 million | Download Link: Master Plan

For those of you still spending time in your garrison from Warlords of Draenor, we recommend this addon to trivialize your mission table planning. Besides giving recommendations for the highest chance of success, this addon lets you immediately form a team and send them on a mission simply by right clicking a mission.

Additionally, it lets you view all your followers with a more bird’s-eye view to analyze their traits and plan out which abilities need to be retrained.

9. MinimapButtonBag Reborn (MBB Reborn)

Launched: January 2007 | Total Downloads: ~6 thousand | Download Link: MBB Reborn

If you have downloaded even half of the addons we’ve mentioned in this list, then your minimap is going to look extremely cluttered with multiple buttons overlapping with one another. This godsend of an addon takes all those excess addon buttons and keeps them out of view until you click on the addon button to display all the other ones in a neat little row.

If you use a specific addon button frequently and don’t want to always have to click on MBB Reborn, you can Ctrl + Right Click that specific addon to have it display on your minimap like usual.

10. Mount Journal Enhanced

Launched: November 2014 | Total Downloads: ~425 thousand | Download Link: Mount Journal Enhanced

This addon takes the mount journal and refines it to be a cleaner look and with more details. The filter option is also enhanced for you to sort by additional criteria such as faction, which expansion, type of mount, etc.

You can also keep track of how much time you’ve spent on each mount, what is needed to obtain each one, and you have an improved preview of how your character looks on each mount, their special animation, and more camera options.

Best Addons for PvE in WoW Shadowlands

Among the best addons for WoW Shadowlands, these are ideal for PvE encounters and ensuring you have the best chances of quickly taking down NPC enemies.

11. Deadly Boss Mods (DBM)

Launched: April 2008 | Total Downloads: ~340 million | Download Link: DBM

If you do any PvE content, get this addon. If you don’t have it, may every person who groups with you spit in your face. This absolute life-saver of an addon warns you when important boss mechanics occur, provides timers for enemy abilities so you can plan ahead, and marks allies when you need to work in tandem. I cannot stress enough how vital this addon is for being prepared for each enemy mechanic. Proper usage of this addon will prevent you from ever being caught off guard.

You won’t need to do any initial setup, but you’ll probably want to adjust some of the settings. The most common adjustments include moving where the boss timer bars are (namely out of the center of your screen), choosing what sound plays for your warnings, and the size of warnings. It’ll take you about fifteen minutes to have everything set up the way you like. If you absolutely do not want to deal with this, BigWigs is an alternative addon to DBM.

12. Details!

Launched: July 2013 | Total Downloads: ~90 million | Download Link: Details!

This is the go-to addon for keeping track of your performance metrics during a fight. You’ll have a customizable-sized window pop-up telling you how you and your group are performing based on the selected metric. The main use is keeping track of your DPS or HPS, but you can also use it for other metrics, like seeing how much damage you took by avoidable mechanics.

It’s incredibly simple to use, and you can click on a player’s name in the Details window to get a much more detailed breakdown by ability. You can also use it to compare your performance against other players and to check how you performed on specific fights or overall in general.

13. WeakAuras

Launched: September 2013 | Total Downloads: ~100 million | Download Link: WeakAuras

Out of all the best addons for WoW Shadowlands, this is quite possibly the single most powerful addon in the game. WeakAuras effectively allows you to set up alerts to any possible combination of conditions you can think of. Want a notification when your 30-second maintenance buff is about to fall off? Automatically mark locations for players to go when specific mechanics happen? This addon can take care of all of that for you.

However, setting up your own custom WeakAuras is difficult. You don’t necessarily have to worry about it — plenty of smart people have already made custom WeakAuras to share. Simply import their auras from a guide online or click a WeakAura link shared by another player in-game.

If you do plan to create your own custom WeakAura, be prepared to spend a few hours setting it up. We strongly recommend looking up tutorials on YouTube before diving into this, as it is not remotely easy for beginners.

14. Exorsus (Method) Raid Tools

Exorsus Raid Tools — *Image: Blizzard Entertainment via HGG*

Launched: May 2014 | Total Downloads: ~25 million | Download Link: Method

This is a handy addon for those who manage (or assist in managing) raid groups. It enables many convenient features, such as checking for all buffs on players to see which ones are missing, maintaining raid attendance, setting up on-demand marking for specific players, etc. As you can see in the image below, there are many different settings you can play around with to make your raid management easier.

15. Decursive

Launched: January 2007 | Total Downloads: ~20 million | Download Link: Decursive

This addon is for classes with abilities that cleanse ailments. It displays a small, simple side panel that lets you quickly cleanse a group member. You’ll see a panel of small squares neatly arranged together — healthy members’ squares are green, while afflicted ones are purple. Simply click on a purple square to cleanse them without having to click off your current target.

You can play around with the settings if you don’t consider certain debuffs worth cleansing and want to ignore them. All in all, it’s a very nice addon to have to help out your healers.

16. Mythic Dungeon Tools

Launched: February 2018 | Total Downloads: ~20 million | Download Link: Mythic Dungeon Tools

This addon allows you to plan and set up varying routes for your mythic+ key runs. You can create multiple paths depending on the weekly affixes and settings to plan out your pull order, set notes for specific pulls, and keep easy track of your enemy forces depleted bar.

If you don’t feel like setting up one yourself, you can also easily import any routes you find online from the best mythic dungeoneers.

17. Raider.IO Mythic Plus and Raid Progress

Launched: October 2017 | Total Downloads: ~160 million | Download Link: Raider.IO

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “What’s your IO score,” when queuing for a dungeon. Well, this addon tells you what that score is. As an aggregate of your progression in the latest raid and mythic+ dungeons for the season, Raider IO is a scoring system used to gauge how competent you are without seeing you in action. You can hover over yourself or another player and see how far that player has gotten in the current raid tier, how many mythic+ keys they’ve completed, and what the highest difficulty of a key they’ve timed is.

Blizzard is planning on introducing their own version of Raider.IO in the next big patch, but we still expect it to be different from how the addon scores players, so it may be worth keeping this one around.

18. Maze Helper (Mists of Tirna Scithe)

Launched: December 2020 | Total Downloads: ~2 million | Download Link: Maze Helper

This is a very niche addon that helps you track and solve the maze section in the Mists of Tirna Scithe dungeon. Simply click the four images that appear in the addon panel, and it’ll tell you which image is the correct one. Useful for when you don’t want to commit memory and time to solving it.

As a bonus, it also identifies which mob is a boggart in one of the Ardenweald world quests and skips the dialogue to save the Night Fae in the rampant spriggan world quest.

19. Astral Keys

Launched: April 2017 | Total Downloads: ~4 million | Download Link: Astral Keys

A nice little addon to immediately check what mythic+ keys you, your friends, and guild members can access. Save the time and hassle of asking everyone you know what their mythic+ key is for the week.

20. Simulationcraft

Launched: July 2014 | Total Downloads: ~20 million | Download Link: Simulationcraft

This addon is a bit more involved and requires you to use a website called Raidbots. With this addon, you can type in the command /simc at any point to generate a string of text that reflects what your character is currently wearing and has access to in their inventory. Copy and paste this text into the raidbots website, where you can simulate the best possible gear combination for your toon (at least for DPS).

When people say to sim your best gear, they’re usually referring to this. You may find the website a bit confusing at first, so we recommend learning to use the “Top Gear” tab first. Simply paste in the simc string, choose which pieces of gear you want to compare, and run the simulation. As a heads up, you can only simulate so many pieces of gear at once unless you buy a membership to the website for premium access (which is unnecessary unless you’re one of those people running hundreds of sims a day).

21. Threat Plates

Launched: October 2009 | Total Downloads: ~10 million | Download Link: Threat Plates

Clean up enemy and friendly nameplates alike with this addon. Besides color-coordinating nameplates based on the class they’re playing, ThreatPlates colors enemy NPC nameplates depending on the amount of threat you’re generating.

If you’re playing DPS/healer, enemy nameplates will vary from green to red depending on your threat level. Tanks will see loose mobs as red nameplates. You have access to all the standard visibility options, such as opacity, to play around with.

22. What’s Your Covenant

Launched: January 2021 | Total Downloads: ~250,000 | Download Link: What’s Your Covenant

This small addon lets you see what covenant a player has when you hover over them. Albeit fairly simple, it’s still one of the best addons for WoW Shadowlands and comes in extremely handy when scrutinizing players.

23. Healbot Continued/VuhDo/Healium

Launched: August 2006 | Total Downloads: ~50 million| Download Link: HealBot Continued

For healers, choose from any of the above three addons to help you heal. The default UI is rather… impractical for selecting a heal target. These addons keep your group’s health panels in a nicely compact manner and enable you to set up macros for easy, one-click healing on your target.

You will most likely have to look up a tutorial on YouTube to get the full mileage out of any of these addons, but it will make your healing exponentially easier.

Best Addons for PvP in WoW Shadowlands

These best addons for WoW Shadowlands are good for optimizing your encounters with other players.

24. weizPVP

Launched: August 2018 | Total Downloads: ~100,000| Download Link: weizPVP

This incredibly useful addon ensures you never lose track of your priority kill target. If you have enemy nameplates on and click on a target, it will put a crosshair marker around your target. This is great for when you’re in a large brawl or your target tries to use the environment to hide from your view. It also displays nearby PvP enemies and can alert you with a custom sound byte when a new target gets within range (you’ll probably end up turning that off under settings except for kill-on-sight players).

25. Spy

Launched: May 2009 | Total Downloads: ~2 million| Download Link: Spy

Unlike weizPvP, Spy does not offer the luxury of a crosshair. However, it does have a much better Kill-On-Sight list. Similar to weiz, you can add players to the list, but you can also set the reason for why they’re on your list and view it at any time. I recommend this solely because I’m an incredibly petty player and my kill-on-sight list is probably near the thousand mark.

26. H.H.T.D.

Launched: May 2009 | Total Downloads: ~10 million| Download Link: H.H.T.D.

Healers have to die. This is the law of PvP, and this addon will uphold that law. Enemy healers will have a large, prominent red cross symbol above their heads, and you can let your allies know to target them. This is critical in most PvP situations. I suggest going into the settings and making sure that you exclude self-healing classes like Death Knights from being pinged as healers.

27. Gladius – Shadowlands

Launched: August 2013 | Total Downloads: ~5 million| Download Link: Gladius

This addon lets you keep track of your enemies’ big cooldowns, know who they’re targeting, and time when to hit them with another CC to avoid diminishing returns. Gladius is the premier addon to have if you’re doing any form of hardcore PvP, such as arenas. Customize what relevant information you want and cut down your enemy before they can react.

28. Capping Battleground Timers

Launched: July 2009 | Total Downloads: ~5 million| Download Link: Capping Battleground Timers

Use this addon to know exactly how long until you cap a base/point in battlegrounds, when vehicles/flags respawn, and how long until victory is achieved based on current held objectives.

29. BG Defender

The BG Defender — *Image: Blizzard Entertainment*

Launched: August 2007 | Total Downloads: ~500,000| Download Link: BG Defender

This is a simple addon to quickly and instantly call out how many incoming enemies are attacking your point and whether or not the situation has been handled. No one has time to type for help, so this is huge in maintaining information in a random battleground.

Best Addons for Quality of Life in WoW Shadowlands

These next best addons for WoW Shadowlands are crucial for improving your overall gameplay. If nothing else, choose these addons to make the day-to-day experience of WoW just a little easier.

30. TomTom

Launched: April 2009 | Total Downloads: ~30 million| Download Link: TomTom

Out of all the best addons for WoW Shadowlands, this is the go-to option for enabling coordinates. We know that Blizzard has implemented an in-game pinning system, but it’s still somewhat obtuse. This addon allows for precision coordinates and sets up a Crazy Taxi-esque arrow system guiding you to the waypoint. The only downside is if you have a list of coordinates, you would have to input them one by one, which brings us to our next addon.

31. Paste

Launched: November 2012 | Total Downloads: ~1 million| Download Link: Paste

This addon simply allows you to enter multiple console commands at once. It’s usually used in tandem with TomTom to enter in multiple coordinate waypoints at once, such as when you copy and paste a list of coordinates from WoWHead.

32. CovenantMissionHelper

Launched: January 2021 | Total Downloads: ~1 million| Download Link: CovenantMissionHelper

If you want your covenant mission table to succeed a majority of the time with minimal thought and damage done to your units, you’ll want this addon. It allows you to optimize the placement of your units and calculate your odds of success.

33. SilverDragon

Silverdragon Mod — *Image: Blizzard Entertainment*

Launched: March 2008 | Total Downloads: ~10 million| Download Link: SilverDragon

This is our recommended go-to rare tracker addon. It keeps track of which rares you can still loot, what unique drops come off each rare, where you can find them, and notifies you when one is within scanning distance.

34. Rarity

Launched: August 2011 | Total Downloads: ~10 million| Download Link: Rarity

This addon keeps track of how many attempts you’ve made at obtaining a mount, pet, or toy drop off a mob. It also helps you identify which mobs can drop the item you’re after if you hover over them.

35. WorldBossTimers

Launched: July 2018 | Total Downloads: ~1 million| Download Link: WorldBoss Timers

This is a small addon that helps you keep track of the time that’s passed since a world boss died in old expansions like Mists of Pandaria, since they’re all on a 15-minute spawn timer.

36. Rematch

Launched: September 2013 | Total Downloads: ~5 million| Download Link: Rematch

This is a godsend of an addon that redesigns the entire battle pet UI. Besides giving you more information on your pets, it lets you set up and save teams for any battle pet fight that you plan on doing more than once in your life.

37. Battle Pet BreedID

Launched: October 2012 | Total Downloads: ~5 million| Download Link: Battle Pet BreedID

This addon automatically identifies what stat line a pet has without the need for annoying math or checking. It’s incredibly useful if you’re looking for a specific stat line for a pet.

38. Auctionator

Launched: May 2008 | Total Downloads: ~40 million| Download Link: Auctionator

This is a simple and beginner-friendly addon for tracking some statistics of auction house items. Its main use is getting an eyeball estimate of how much an item is going for on the market, though it can be used for more advanced features if you choose to put in the time.

39. TradeSkillMaster

Launched: October 2010 | Total Downloads: ~30 million| Download Link: TradeSkillMaster

This is the addon you want and need to learn if you plan on playing the auction house. From providing graphs and analysis of market trends to setting up automated sell prices based on expectations, this addon can do it all. You’ll have to go through multiple tutorials to get the full usage out of this addon, but it is by far the most useful auction house addon.

40. TomCat’s Tours

TomCat Tours — *Image: Blizzard Entertainment*

Launched: October 2018 | Total Downloads: ~15 million| Download Link: TomCat’s Tours

More so a master hub addon, this one requires you to also download specific addon modules for the task you’re interested in. Examples include farming routes for holiday events, locations of hidden away achievement crystals, farming routes for reputation-specific items, etc.

41. ALL THE THINGS

Launched: May 2017 | Total Downloads: ~9 million | Download Link: ALL THE THINGS

For those of you who are looking to collect everything in the game, this is the best addon for the task. Besides providing information on all possible locations and methods of obtaining an item or objective, it will also list all alternative options/pieces of gear that accomplish the same goal.

If you’re tired of wondering if you have a transmog appearance for a different armor class, then this addon will take care of that problem for you. It’ll also give you an idea of just how rare an appearance is, so you don’t accidentally vendor some rare transmog.

42. GatherMate2

Launched: September 2010 | Total Downloads: ~25 million | Download Link: GatherMate2

This addon keeps track of all gathering nodes for various resources in the game like herb nodes and is considered the best addon for gatherering. You can choose to either have it populate naturally as you discover and interact with nodes or immediately fill out your map by importing data sets from online.

Since nearly all resources have set spawn points coded into the game, it helps you save some time from wandering around aimlessly looking for active nodes. You can also setup which resources you would actually like to see and how far away you have to be for them to show up on your minimap.

43. SavedInstances

Launched: September 2008 | Total Downloads: ~7 million | Download Link: SavedInstances

A very useful addon for those who run multiple alts. Want to easily keep track of which raid instances you’ve run for the week without swapping to each toon to check? Want to be able to see how much of a specific currency you have across your account? Well this addon lets you do so from a single neat menu.

Simply type in “/savedinstances show” without the quotation marks and a menu will pop open showcasing all your toons and whatever criteria you’ve set up. Hover over each option for a more detailed breakdown if you’re curious, such as seeing which bosses you’ve specifically killed in a raid.

44. Azeroth Auto Pilot

Launched: November 2017 | Total Downloads: ~13 million | Download Link: Azeroth Auto Pilot

This is the best addon for leveling, if you want to speed through the leveling process as fast as humanely possible for your alts. Utilizing the data provided by players who plotted out the single most efficient route for leveling quickly, this addon provides you a list of activities and what order to do them to hit 60 in the least amount of time.

Most of you will be content with just using the Auto Path Helper function and selecting Speed Run. However, if you want to plan out a different route through specific zones, you can simply drag and drop which zones you’re interested into your Custom Path route to get an efficient route.

45. HandyNotes

Launched: August 2008 | Total Downloads: ~31 million | Download Link: HandyNotes

Considered a master hub addon, HandyNotes does exactly what its name implies, providing useful notes on various treasures, rares, and encounters in the world. You typically search CurseForge for specific HandyNote modules such as “HandyNotes (Shadowlands)”.

These notes can save you a lot of time from looking up things on Wowhead and are non-intrusive enough to not even cross your mind until you need them.

Become a High Grounder

And that’s it for our list of the best addons for WoW Shadowlands! If there’s an addon out there that you think we should mention in the future, be sure to leave it in the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more content like this! Happy gaming!