Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a Native Instruments browser issue I ran into on macOS, in case it helps someone else.
The issue is now fixed on my system, but the cause seems to have been a malformed NI Shared favorites database:
~/Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Shared/favorites.db3
The main symptoms first appeared in Massive X.
Massive X opened normally in Logic Pro, but the browser was incomplete:
- Some Bank / Expansion names and thumbnails were visible
- Many Banks / Expansions showed no presets inside
- Factory presets, Expansion presets, User presets, and Favorites were all displayed incompletely
- After resetting the Massive X database, the browser became completely empty
- After running Scan Content, some Bank / Expansion metadata returned, but many preset lists were still empty
I later noticed the same type of issue in Kontakt 8 as well.
Kontakt 8 showed installed Bank / Expansion names, but the actual preset list was much smaller than expected. This looked very similar to what happened in Massive X: the content metadata was partially visible, but many presets were missing from the browser.
The preset files themselves were not missing.
Factory / Expansion content still existed under:
/Users/Shared/
User presets for Massive X still existed under:
~/Documents/Native Instruments/User Content/Massive X/Presets
Things that did not fix the issue:
- Restarting Logic Pro
- Reloading Massive X
- Opening Massive X in a new Logic project
- Running Scan Content / Rescan in Massive X
- Resetting the Massive X database
- Reinstalling Massive X
- Reinstalling affected Expansions
- Renaming/regenerating NativeAccess.xml
- Temporarily moving User presets out of the User Content folder
The key test was creating a new macOS user account.
In the new macOS user account, Massive X could browse presets normally.
So the issue was not the Factory Library, Expansions, Native Access installation, or the preset files under /Users/Shared. It was isolated to the original macOS user account.
After investigating the user-level NI files, I found that this file was malformed:
~/Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Shared/favorites.db3
sqlite3 reported:
database disk image is malformed
When I put the old favorites.db3 file back, the Massive X browser broke again, not only Favorites.
What fixed it:
- I let Massive X generate a fresh valid favorites.db3.
- I used sqlite3 .recover on the broken favorites.db3.
- The recovered database still contained 230 favorite IDs.
- I inserted only those favorite IDs into the fresh Massive X-generated favorites.db3.
- After that, the Massive X browser, Factory presets, Expansion presets, User presets, and Favorites all worked again.
At one point, User presets appeared empty too, but reloading/rescanning the AU plugin made them appear again. The actual User preset files were still present.
So my conclusion is:
A corrupted or malformed NI Shared/favorites.db3 can affect more than just the visible Favorites list.
In my case, it appeared to affect the broader preset browser/indexing state in multiple NI products, including Massive X and Kontakt 8. The installed Bank / Expansion names could still appear, but the actual preset lists were incomplete or much smaller than expected.
Some other NI plugins I checked still seemed to browse presets normally, but Massive X and Kontakt 8 clearly showed the issue.
I cannot confirm what originally caused the database corruption. The issue appeared after a broad VST3/AU scan in a third-party plugin host, but that may only have been the trigger.
I’m posting this mainly as a workaround/reference for anyone who sees NI product Banks or Expansions visible but the preset lists empty or incomplete, especially if reinstalling the product does not fix it.
Has anyone else seen Massive X, Kontakt 8, or another NI product’s browser break because of Shared/favorites.db3?
Note: English is not my first language. I wrote this in Japanese first and used AI to translate it, so some wording may be a bit unnatural.
