The re:Boot addon is a very simple addon, that saves a bit of time when you want to restart Blender. For some reason Blender starts up slow on my computer maybe due to the speed of my harddisk. And often a restart is required for example when installing an addon, or fixing issues. Instead of shutting down blender and click on the icon for Blender (which one again?) in my takbar, I can do it now in one go. And because the addon doesn’t occupy the N-Panel, it puts a menu item in the file-menu, why not using it. Besides that it’s also a free addon.

How does the re:BOOT addon work?

It’s very simple. In Blender you go to File, and there you see Restart. Be sure to try it first with a test scene. Because: there is a checkbox “Save Prompt” and as far as I understand you should get a warning like “Save Changes before closing”, but in my case that didn’t work on Blender 2.83. So as far as I know you don’t get a warning. Correct me if I am wrong, or let me know in the comments what your experience is. Besides that, It’s my habbit already to save before I close. So I would turn of the checkbox anyway.

UI of the addon

In case you are curious what I mean with the File Menu. The File Menu is as shown below. You see there now the option: Restart.

Shows the UI menu of the re:BOOT addon
Restart in the File Menu in Blender 2.83

Where to get the re:BOOT addon?

The re:BOOT addon is available on Gumroad. The addon is free. To install it you go in Blender to preferences, addons, and there you install the .zip file you just downloaded. Another use of the add-on is to check the source in case you want to dive into coding for Blender. Let’s talk more about that here below.

A peek into the Python code

When you extract the folder you see another folder inside and there you find a __init__.py. That is a good sign, because it means that you can install the addon without the need to extract the .zip file. Open the __init__.py and on top you see there a section bl_info. That is info that shows up in the preferences, and the bl_info is required.
Next section are the imports. Without imports, you have only access to the basic python code, not to the blender API. So you want to import the Blender modules. Next, you see a Class that defines the action, and there is a function to draw the menu to Start the action. At the end there is the register and unregister functions which are always included in all addons.


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