Installing Arduino ESP8266 filesystem uploader on Windows 10 Arduino App

Just thought to put this information here for anyone else who might be struggling
to figure out where to unpack the "Arduino ESP8266 filesystem uploader" tool
when using the Arduino IDE app on Windows 10.

The installation instructions from the github website are as follows:

Installation
Make sure you use one of the supported versions of Arduino IDE and have ESP8266 core installed.
Download the tool archive from releases page.
In your Arduino sketchbook directory, create tools directory if it doesn't exist yet.
Unpack the tool into tools directory (the path will look like <home_dir>/Arduino/tools/ESP8266FS/tool/esp8266fs.jar).
Restart Arduino IDE.


My problem was that I did not know where the <home_dir> was, plus I had to create the tools directory.
In my case, the <home_dir> turned out to be *C:\Users#UserName#\Documents*

If you have the Windows 10 app:

  • Close the Arduino IDE (v1.8.5)
  • Unzip the ESP8266FS-0.3.0.zip file.
  • Then copy the newly created ESP8266FS folder into:

*C:\Users#UserName#\Documents\Arduino\tools*

  • Create the tools folder inside of the *...\Documents\Arduino* folder if it is not already there.
  • The full location of the .jar file is:

C:\Users#UserName#\Documents\Arduino\tools\ESP8266FS\tool\esp8266fs.jar

  • Start the Arduino IDE
  • You should now see the "ESP Sketch Data Upload" option in the Tools menu

Hopefully this helps someone out there in cyberspace.

Regards
Scott C

I've submitted a pull request with improvements to the installation instructions which I think would have avoided your confusion.

Thank you !

This does not seem to work when you are using the Windows App version of the IDE.
it would be really nice if the IDE would pick up its plugins in the same way as the Libraries or even better if you could assign a directory for things like plugins etc rather than risk breaking all your permissions (like i did) lol.

vangalvin:
This does not seem to work when you are using the Windows App version of the IDE.
it would be really nice if the IDE would pick up its plugins in the same way as the Libraries or even better if you could assign a directory for things like plugins etc rather than risk breaking all your permissions (like i did) lol.

It sounds like you tried to install the plugin to the Arduino IDE installation folder. That's wrong. You need to install it to the tools subfolder of your sketchbook folder. You can find the location of the sketchbook folder in the Arduino IDE at File > Preferences > Sketchbook location. That will work just fine with the Windows App version and will not require changing any permissions. The installation instructions for the plugin explain this clearly.