I developed a cross-platform open source app that lets you search a database of Native Instruments products (and third party products that integrate with Native Instruments apps) to discover instruments you might have never heard of, and to also easily find out which specific versions of NI flagship products that various content libraries require.
I got the idea for the app when I discovered that some of the Kontakt instruments I own don't work with Kontakt 6 anymore, which is the most recent full version of the program that I have. Now I can use the app to display a list of all products that use Kontakt, as well as the minimum required Kontakt version. This works for all NI products that support external content libraries (Reaktor, Guitar Rig, Battery, etc.) The lists it provides are sortable, searchable, and exportable.
The app currently comes in three forms:
- A purely web-based version that uses a pre-populated database of Native Instruments and NI-compatible third party products. It works on any device with a web browser. (If you see a message saying the app has been put to sleep, you can wake it back up by clicking the blue button. It takes a few seconds to launch.)
- A Windows-specific version that you can install locally and uses your local Native Instruments product database.
- The original source code, which you can run locally on any OS (inside your default web browser), and which uses your local Native Instruments database. (Please only attempt this if you are familiar with Python and Git.)
For full details about the app, you can check out my Medium post about it.
Here's a screenshot showing a list of all NI-published content libraries that use Kontakt, along with their minimum required Kontakt versions (as published in their own metadata):
