Clarification needed: Is UXP publicly available for Illustrator in 2026?

Question

Hi Adobe team and community,I'm developing a UXP plugin that currently supports Photoshop and InDesign, and I'd like to add Illustrator support.The confusion:The official UXP versions page (https://developer.adobe.com/xd/uxp/uxp/versions/) clearly lists Illustrator with UXP support:Illustrator 23.0 → UXP v5.5	Illustrator 27.0 → UXP v6.3However, various forum threads from 2024-2025 state that "UXP is not available in the released version of Illustrator" and that it requires beta access.My questions:Is UXP now publicly available for Illustrator (as of February 2026), or is it still beta-only?	If it's available, where can I find the Illustrator UXP API documentation? I can find docs for Photoshop (require('photoshop')) and InDesign (require('indesign')), but nothing for Illustrator (require('illustrator')).	Specifically, I need to place images into the active document. In InDesign I use app.activeDocument.place(). What's the equivalent API for	  Illustrator? Is it placedItems.add() like in ExtendScript?	Does Illustrator UXP have executeAsModal like Photoshop, or does it work differently?Any clarification or links to documentation would be greatly appreciated.Thanks! / Jan

sttk3 · Accepted Answer

As far as I know, Illustrator's UXP is only used for Adobe's official features. It is not available to us third-party developers.

ByteBard97 · Answer

Hi Jan,

sttk3 is right — UXP for Illustrator is internal only. The version numbers on Adobe's page are misleading since there's no public API or documentation for third-party developers.

I got tired of waiting and built an open source framework called NUXP that bypasses UXP and CEP entirely. A C++ plugin embeds an HTTP server inside Illustrator and you talk to it from a normal
TypeScript frontend over localhost. A code generator parses the SDK headers and auto-generates typed bindings for 400+ functions across 19 SDK suites — art manipulation, layers, documents,
artboards, path geometry, text engine, the works.

For your specific use case (placing images), you'd have direct access to the placed art APIs through the C++ SDK, which is more capable than what ExtendScript or even UXP exposes. And since the
frontend is just a standard Vue/TypeScript app with Vite, you get hot reload, mock mode for developing without Illustrator running, and real-time events via SSE when the document changes.

No more restarting Illustrator every time you change something. No more monolithic ExtendScript files. No more waiting for Adobe to ship UXP support that's been "coming soon" for years.

macOS only for now, MIT licensed: https://github.com/ByteBard97/nuxp
Docs: https://bytebard97.github.io/nuxp/

Happy to answer questions about whether it covers your specific needs.

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