When can plugins be installed directly in the admin panel?

[xu2]

Does the official Discourse team plan to add direct plugin installation from the admin panel in the next version? Like installing themes!

[NateDhaliwal]

I’m afraid this can’t be done via the UI, only via the command-line.

See this guide:

Install plugins on a self-hosted site

This guide assumes that you have a self-hosted standard installation. We only support the standard method of install here, so these instructions assume you have a standard install. This guide only applies to self-hosted Discourse instances. If you are using a managed hosting service, the available plugins are controlled by your hosting provider. For example, on our hosting these specific plugins are available by hosting tier. In this tutorial, we’ll install the Discours…

And as far as I know, there are no plans to add this feature in the next version (or ever?). IIRC plugins may need to interact with the database and other stuff in Ruby which is why it cannot be done via the UI.