You can enhance your Grafana experience with _plugins_, extensions to Grafana beyond the wide range of visualizations and data sources that are built-in.
This guide shows you how to [install](#install-a-plugin) plugins that are built by Grafana Labs, commercial partners, our community, or plugins that you have [built yourself](/developers/plugin-tools).
- [Panels](/grafana/plugins/panel-plugins) - These plugins make it easy to create and add any kind of panel, to show your data, or improve your favorite dashboards.
- [Data sources](/grafana/plugins/data-source-plugins) - These plugins allow you to pull data from various data sources such as databases, APIs, log files, and so on, and display it in the form of graphs, charts, and dashboards in Grafana.
- [Apps](/grafana/plugins/app-plugins) - These plugins enable the bundling of data sources, panels, dashboards, and Grafana pages into a cohesive experience.
Add new visualizations to your dashboard with panel plugins, such as the [Clock](/grafana/plugins/grafana-clock-panel), [Mosaic](/grafana/plugins/boazreicher-mosaicplot-panel) and [Variable](/grafana/plugins/volkovlabs-variable-panel) panels.
Data source plugins communicate with external sources of data and return the data in a format that Grafana understands. By adding a data source plugin, you can immediately use the data in any of your existing dashboards.
Applications, or _app plugins_, bundle data sources and panels to provide a cohesive experience, such as the [Zabbix](/grafana/plugins/alexanderzobnin-zabbix-app) app.
By default, the Viewer, Editor and Admin roles have access to all app plugins that their Organization role allows them to access. Access is granted by the `fixed:plugins.app:reader` role.
To prevent users from seeing an app plugin, refer to [these permissions scenarios]({{< relref "../roles-and-permissions/access-control/plan-rbac-rollout-strategy#prevent-viewers-from-accessing-an-app-plugin" >}}).
The Grafana plugin catalog allows you to browse and manage plugins from within Grafana. Only Grafana server administrators and Organization administrators can access and use the plugin catalog. For more information about Grafana roles and permissions, refer to [Roles and permissions]({{< relref "../administration/roles-and-permissions" >}}).
- If you are an **Org Admin**, you can configure app plugins, but you can't install, uninstall, or update them.
- If you are a **Server Admin**, you can't configure app plugins, but you can install, uninstall, or update them.
- If you are both **Org Admin** and **Server Admin**, you can configure app plugins and also install, uninstall, or update them.
{{% admonition type="note" %}}
The Grafana plugin catalog is designed to work with a single Grafana server instance only. Support for Grafana clusters is planned for future Grafana releases.
If required, the Grafana plugin catalog can be disabled using the `plugin_admin_enabled` flag in the [configuration]({{< relref "../../setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#plugin_admin_enabled" >}}) file.
1. While logged into Grafana as an administrator, click **Administration > Plugins and data > Plugins** in the side menu to view installed and available plugins.
1. Use the search to filter based on name, keywords, organization and other metadata.
Follow the instructions on the **Install** tab. You can either install the plugin with a Grafana CLI command or by downloading and uncompressing a zip file into the Grafana plugins directory. We recommend using Grafana CLI in most instances. The zip option is available if your Grafana server doesn't have access to the internet.
After the user has downloaded the archive containing the plugin assets, they can install it by extracting the archive into their plugin directory. For example:
The path to the plugin directory is defined in the configuration file. For more information, refer to [Configuration]({{< relref "../../setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#plugins" >}}).
Plugin signature verification, also known as _signing_, is a security measure to make sure plugins haven't been tampered with. Upon loading, Grafana checks to see if a plugin is signed or unsigned when inspecting and verifying its digital signature.
At startup, Grafana verifies the signatures of every plugin in the plugin directory. If a plugin is unsigned, then Grafana neither loads nor starts it. To see the result of this verification for each plugin, navigate to **Configuration** -> **Plugins**.
If you are a plugin developer and want to know how to sign your plugin, refer to [Sign a plugin](/developers/plugin-tools/publish-a-plugin/sign-a-plugin).
| Private | <p>Private plugins are for use on your own Grafana. They may not be distributed to the Grafana community, and are not published in the Grafana catalog.</p> |
| Community | <p>Community plugins have dependent technologies that are open source and not for profit.</p><p>Community plugins are published in the official Grafana catalog, and are available to the Grafana community.</p> |
| Commercial | <p>Commercial plugins have dependent technologies that are closed source or commercially backed.</p><p>Commercial plugins are published on the official Grafana catalog, and are available to the Grafana community.</p> |
We strongly recommend that you don't run unsigned plugins in your Grafana instance. However, if you're aware of the risks and you still want to load an unsigned plugin, refer to [Configuration]({{< relref "../../setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#allow_loading_unsigned_plugins" >}}).
