ESP32_s3 Does not appear in Board Manager

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

As the App image does not run* in Debian Trixie, I installed the Arduino IDE v1.8.19 from the package manager.
I added :
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json,https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_dev_index.json
to the Additional boards manager in preferences,
However NO ESP boards show up in Tools>Boards Manager list:

Screenshot from 2025-12-24 10-27-20
Screenshot from 2025-12-24 10-27-201230×989 155 KB

Can someone please help with this....????
BTW: every time I open the IDE I get an 'install this package' message, which if it contains an ESP32S3 type, I do, but still no ESP's in the Board manager.

2

Just adding the URL is not enough. You need to install the platform using the boards manager (first entry in the menu that you showed).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

3

Thanks a lot! I thought that that was just the title of the drop down menu.

4

image
image597×179 17.1 KB

This message.

5

I do not think that I ever saw a message like that. I use both IDE 1.x and IDE 2.x; but I probably never encountered your scenario.

6

This message appears when Arduino IDE discovers a port that is identified as being a board model for which the boards platform is not already installed. Some details about the way the feature works are available here.

7

Thank you, I've never seen it. But I live in an AVR only world so no surprise.

8

ok, but with my ESP32S3 plugged in it has prompeted for about 4 different boards, only one of which was an ESP. But thanks for the information.

9

The board model identification system is based on properties of the port, which are associated with a given board definition in the Arduino boards platform that adds support to Arduino IDE for the board.

The Arduino IDE developers intended the feature to be used with boards that produce port properties (generally the USB VID/PID pair) that are unique to the specific board model.

This is the case for most of the official Arduino boards, as the Arduino company has purchased a vendor ID from USB-IF, which makes it possible for Arduino to program the USB chip on the boards we manufacture to produce a port with a VID/PID pair dedicated exclusively to the that board model. Other boards manufacturers also own their own VID, so this identifiable characteristic is not exclusive to official Arduino boards.

However, the USB chip on some boards is not programmable in this manner, and instead uses a general purpose VID/PID pair that will be present for the port of any hardware that happens to use that chip. This is the case for the ESP32-S3 microcontroller on your Arduino board. In this case, it is not appropriate for the platform developer to associate that non-unique property with their board definition.

Unfortunately the developers of the 3rd party "esp32" boards platform did inappropriately associate the non-unique factory set VID/PID pair used by the ESP32-S3 (and related) microcontrollers with an assortment of board definitions in their platform. This results in two problems:

  • Arduino IDE may incorrectly identify the model of the boards that have this VID/PID pair
  • Since multiple board models were associated with a single VID/PID pair, the identification changes randomly

The problem in the ESP32 boards platform has already been fixed:

Unfortunately that fix has not yet propagated into the data that is used by this Arduino IDE feature, so the users continue to suffer from the effects of that mistake.